Our Summer Project 2008 - Raising Chickens Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Why would we want to raise chickens? Well there are many reasons!! But at the time, the purpose was to get us back home!

There are many folks who, in their ignorance about homeschooling, think that homeschoolers must be isolated at home. They must not be getting any social time with peers. Well, I am here to tell you that that isn't the case for any of the homeschooled kids we know. At the end of the last school year, we were so exhausted, burned out, and DONE with the social scene (Or at least I was. I think the kids were having fun), that I just wanted to spend the whole summer at home! I felt like we should spend more time as a family. So we bid farewell to all the chaos, put the school books away, and found ourselves at the local feed store. BTW, I don't recommend buying chicks at a feed store. More on that later.

We didn't have a coop, a place to put a coop, feed, or any other paraphinalea that might go along with owning chickens. But, I figured if we got the chickens, they would live in a box for a few weeks which would give us time to get all that hammered out, right!?

We bought 6 chicks from the local Pet Food Depot. We were told we were buying 3 California Whites and 3 Brown Leghorns. All great egg layers. Leghorns were just what I was looking for. California Whites are a cross between a Leghorn and a California Grey, so good enough. They were all healthy and perky. However, now that they are 5 months old, I can say with confidence that the feed store had NO IDEA what they were selling me! What I actually have (after one of the "leghorns" died) is ONE California white hen, 2 Speckled Sussex hens, A Red Sex-Link hen and a Sex-Link ROOSTER!! HELLO?! Reason #1 for not buying chicks at the local feed store.

We put the chicks in a box with the little water thing and the feed and the wood chips and a heat lamp left over from when we kept that horned toad a couple of years ago. We set them up in the laundry room and closed the door so that our dog couldn't eat them.

Okay! We are chicken farmers now!

NOW WHAT!!??