Chickens and Children

The grandchildren were here last weekend.  There were 5 of them in all and they are all fascinated by the chickens.   They loved to take vegetable scraps from the kitchen out to the chickens and they were constantly asking if they could pet or hold the chickens.  

I made the mistake a couple of months ago of catching a chicken and letting one of the younger granddaughters hold it.  So, now she sees herself as an expert on chickens and, much to my surprise, caught one by herself to demonstrate to the others how to catch and hold a chicken!

Now, these chickens are not necessarily tame and they will flap and cackle something fierce when you try to catch them.  So, anyway, the children were given orders that they were NOT to catch anymore chickens unless an adult was there to supervise!  To pacify them, we let them go  look of eggs every day....several times per day, in fact.

One time, one of them asked Tom if she could go look for eggs.  He said, "Sure" and then got busy doing something else.  So, it was quite a while later that he realized she had not come back.  Upon going to check on her, he found her and 2 of the others standing in the chicken coop watching a chicken sitting on a nest.  They were "waiting" for the chicken to lay her egg and get up!  He shooed them out, telling them that the chicken needed "privacy".

Later that day, he retrieved the wildlife camera that we had placed in the chicken coop to monitor when the chickens were laying eggs.  We all had to laugh at the sequence of pictures it caught of the grandkids waiting for the chicken to lay her egg.

Chicken enters nest.

Chicken is discovered by grandchild.

Second grandchild comes along

And another!  The more , the  merrier!

Getting a better look

Watching

Waiting

Watching

It was along about here that Tom came in and found them.  He went out there after lunch and got the egg.