Your Family Should Raise Chickens: 10 Excellent Reasons Why
Hey there, fellow homeschooling families! Let’s talk about a hobby that’s sure to ruffle some feathers and crack you up – raising chickens! Raising chickens is the perfect addition to any homeschooling adventure. Are you ready to learn why your family should raise chickens? Keep reading!
Your Family Should Raise Chickens
Before you begin any hobby, it is important to consider the facts. These are the top 10 reasons that I love raising chickens. I think your family will enjoy raising chickens too!
Chickens Lay Eggs
Eggs are the perfect food, in my opinion. They are nutritious, delicious and can be enjoyed countless different ways. They can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner. Eggs are quick and easy to prepare. In fact, my kids can all make their OWN eggs by the age of five years old.
If you need to teach your kids how to fry an egg, or teach them other cooking skills, please read my article, Cooking with Kids- 10 Skills Your Kids Should Know.
Chickens Provide Lots of Entertainment
Chickens are funny animals. Watching them scratch the ground, beg for treats, communicate with their flock, run through the yard, roost, lay eggs, mate, take care of chicks, cock-a-doodle and cluck-cluck is fun to watch.
Homeschooling families are around to enjoy their chickens’ antics. It is therapeutic to watch chickens, just being chickens.
Chickens are Easy to Care For
Unlike most domestic animals, you don’t need to teach your chickens anything. They just instinctively act like chickens, lay eggs, and return to their coop at night. Chickens rarely wander off their property, even if you free range them. They don’t need a lot of feed, and can forage a lot of their nutrition.
Pinterest may tell you differently, but chickens don’t need fancy coops or a lot of space. A dry place to sleep, a nest box for eggs, and a roost to sleep is all that is required. You can raise chickens in a small backyard or side yard, as long as your neighborhood allows it.
Chickens are the Greenest Garbage Disposals
Did you know that chickens love food scraps? All of our family’s eggshells, banana peels, uneaten food, vegetable peelings, apple cores, and more are consumed by our little flock of chickens.
Did you know that approximately one-third of the food produced for human consumption goes uneaten and approximately 15% of municipal solid waste is food? Source: What’s the value of Chickens in reducing food waste? (chickenwhisperermagazine.com)
I hate wasting food, and I love that my chickens turn our uneaten food from waste into eggs! What a difference it would make in the world if every family had a small flock of chickens!
Chickens Teach Responsibility
Chickens are easy to raise, but they teach responsibility.
The chicken chores at our house include:
- Fill water
- Gather eggs
- Feed grain and food scraps
- Keep an eye on feed. Let parents know if we need to purchase more.
- Clean coop
- Maintain roosts, egg boxes and other elements of coop and fencing
- Help with any medical care that arises (we have had minimal health concerns with our chickens over the past 13 years).
- Care for baby chicks- they require special care.
- If we sell eggs, the children can clean them and put them in cartons.
My kids like taking care of the chickens and beginning at age 4 or 5, they can handle most of these tasks. I believe in empowering my kids with responsibility and knowledge, and caring for fluffy, funny chickens is a fabulous way for my young kids to contribute to the family.
Raising Chickens Provokes Wonder
Just as raising chickens teaches responsibility, it is also fun and exciting. Watching an egg hatch into a baby chick is a magical experience. It inspires wonder!
We often order chickens from a hatchery. Cackle is our favorite, and if you order through my link I will receive a small commission at no cost to you. When you order through a hatchery, your chicks arrive IN THE MAIL. They are delivered in a box, right to your post office.
Imagine the excitement of loading all (7) of my kids in the car and driving to the post office to pick up the peeping box. Picture how fun it is to bring them home and place them in their new home, and watch them grow from tiny chick to ugly teenage bird to a beautiful hen. Imagine waiting 4-5 months for those first eggs.
Chickens make you wait (to hatch, to arrive, to lay an egg), but it is a hopeful and joyful wait. You should order from Cackle, and start your own joyful chicken wait.
Raising Chickens Teaches Important Life Skills
Raising chickens will teach important lessons. First of all, researching what chickens need to thrive: food, water, housing, space, and ventilation. Every family raises their flock a little differently; that is perfectly okay. Chickens have been raised all over the world, in every environment, and in every time of human existence. They are resilient, and you will find a system that works for you.
I am passionate about empowering my kids to be able to raise their own food. On our farm, we garden, raise cows, rabbits, and goats. If I could just pick one animal to raise, it would be chickens. Raising chickens for eggs and meat is something I believe all families can do if they just have a small yard.
Raising chickens teaches biology. Chicken mating rituals and egg laying will bring up conversations that can be explained easily through the feathered fowl. Dealing with the death of a chicken from natural causes, illness or a predator, brings up important topics to discuss with our children. Just like Aesop’s Fables, animals can be a wonderful bridge to important life lessons.
The Chicken Community is the New Cool-Kid Club
Chicken ownership initiates you into a club you may not have known about. Get ready for conversations about chicken breeds and egg production, coop designs and the benefits of free ranging or using chicken tractors. Incubation, water glassing, raising chickens for meat, price of a dozen eggs; there is much to learn and much to discuss when it comes to this hobby.
Chickens Can Make You Money
Currently, we have 17 laying hens on our farm. We eat about 2 dozen eggs a day. Our chickens produce enough for our family, and we sell 2-3 dozen cartons a week as well. They almost pay for themselves. If we had 30 chickens, we would be moneymaking.
Our family raises meat chickens for food and for profit too. It is lucrative. You will be proud of your family for raising healthy chickens and providing eggs and meat.
One awesome homeschool family I know has 5 sons. Their oldest sons, at the mature ages of 6 & 8, raised a large flock of hens this year, sold eggs and pullets and made enough money to buy themselves a go-kart!
You will be proud of your family for raising healthy chickens and providing eggs and meat.
Backyard Chickens Are a Fight Against the Broken Food System
Most homeschooling and intentional families know that our food system in America is broken. Animals raised for food are not treated humanely. They are not fed well, not kept in clean conditions and are probably medicated with chemicals you do not want in your diet. The chickens that lay the eggs they sell at the big groceries are probably not living their best lives.
Raising your own flock provides your family with much more nutritious eggs, AND it gives your family the ability to confront the broken food industry. Can you provide better nutrition for your family AND promote healthy, happy lives for the animals we raise for consumption? Yes, you can.
A Word of Warning about Raising Chickens
One word of warning: chickens are known as the “gateway animal.” If your family decides they should raise chickens, and you make that order today with Cackle, beware! You might find yourself and your homeschooled kids on five acres a few miles outside of town in no time at all. You might wake up one morning and your five chickens have multiplied into 30.
Order From Cackle Today
I really do try to encourage everyone I know to raise a few chickens. The deliciousness of eggs, the life skills learned, the responsibilities embraced, the potential for profit and the entertainment value make raising chickens a fun and important family hobby.
Please let me know if you have any questions about raising chickens. I love to share what I have learned and what systems we have tried at our farm.
Chickens on the Farm Copywork
Visit the Homeschool Hobby Store to find a great research tool for chicken breeds. I have made a Copywork booklet of 10 of the most popular breeds of chickens on the homestead. You can use this workbook for handwriting practice or animal science. There is even a space for your child to draw their own picture of each breed and a page to journal one’s own research about chickens. Find Chickens on the Farm Copywork here!
For more homesteading hobbies:
I love how you have the electric fence set up. We used to have free range poultry farm in Australia and I used to use it to keep foxes and wild dogs at bay
Thanks! The electric fence is nice so we can move them around easily.
Very informative! I have no idea about raising chickens and this is very helpful.
Thanks for commenting!
I wish I had the space for chickens. I would absolutely love to have some.
I hope you get some one day. They are so fun to watch, and the eggs are delicious. Thanks for commenting.
What a lovely post, I wish we had the space for chickens. We did look into adopting a couple of chickens that were deemed unproductive but still laid the occasional egg or two.
Although we wanted to save them from their ultimate fate, again we didn’t have the space.
Thank you for an enjoyable read.