Animal of the Week #2

#2 The Chicken

The chicken is a farm animal. They are also very intelligent! Did you know that you can teach a chicken how to play checkers? Chickens will eat almost anything, and although little baby chicks are cute, they are hard work!
We started out with 26 chickens, and ended up with 8! One chicken got killed by a hawk, one chicken died in a storm, and all of the other 16 all were killed to eat. Trust me, we did not want to kill them, but we had to. Our homemade coop could only hold up to eight comfortably.
Our chickens started to lay eggs when they were about five months old, and each chicken now lays about an egg a day! We are loaded, and we only have 7 hens (female chickens)! The hens actually do not need a rooster to lay an egg! The hens will lay even without one! So why do we use roosters? It is not because we want to wake up early at their crows at sunrise, but because to get chicks, you HAVE to have a male!
After some of our chickens started to lay, we kept the eggs in an incubator, which is a fancy word for a place that will keep the eggs warm so that they can hatch. We have hatched 6 little chicks right now, and keep them underneath a heat lamp in our garage and gradually lower the temerature over a couple of weeks until it matches what it is outside; that is when you move them into the coop. It is best to move them in when you have a lot, that way they will be better protected by the older chickens.
The chicks really smell after a while, so you have to clean them out every day! It is not hard to do, but it is REALLY smelly and messy work. The more that you handle the little chicks, the less they will fear you. I just love holding them on the couch, and rubbing their little heads until they fall asleep in your hands! Be sure that you hold a napkin, or a folded paper towel just in case that the little chickies have to poop!
Although messy, little chicks are well-worth your time. If you do not want chicks though, and you just want eggs, then do not bother with a rooster! Chickens are very smart, so do not think that chickens do not have a brain, because they do!