Chickens!!!

As one of our first homesteading projects, we decided to start with gardening and chickens! We have done lots of thorough research and have begun plotting a large garden to begin a Back to Eden Gardening Method. Will be sure to blog about this at a later time!

For now, this post is about our chickens! As we researched more, we decided to make it a RENU family school project and incubate eggs rather than buying chickens or full grown hens. One of our wishes one day is to have lots of miniature animals, including a couple mini jersey cows (because who doesn't love miniature jersey cows with their big giant brown eyes?!?)... And did you know there are mini CHICKENS? Research on chicken breeds led us to Serama Bantam chickens. These are the world's smallest chicken breed and we think they're just adorable!! So why not get some of those? I was able to find an amazing supplier of Serama Bantam eggs who shipped them to us from Ohio. They sent a variety of types of Serama : chocolate cuckoo, chocolate mottled, chocolates, black model, black, blue splash, etc. They're kinda like a big chocolate variety box. We're really not sure what we'll get until they open up! But they were packaged wonderfully well and this family was so easy to work with. If you're in need of a Serama egg supplier, let us know and I can get you in contact with them!

Obviously living on a ranch with 14 people, having a bunch of tiny chickens isn't going to supply a great food source, so we also researched what would be a great chicken breed for kids that are gentle and sweet but also provide some good eggs. Buff Orpington was our winning breed! We found a local chicken farmer who actually gave us 18 eggs to try to incubate!

So... Here we are... 36 eggs... 18 Serama. 18 Buff Orpington...

It’s been such a cool experience so far! Through egg candling, the kids have gotten to see how they went from an “empty” looking egg inside to seeing a teeny tiny dark red heartbeat, literally the size of the tip of a toothpick. To various sizes of embryos and now where we can literally see the outline of a forming baby chick with little wing and head movements throughout. It nearly makes me cry because it’s just so beautiful to see life literally forming in front of our eyes and see how amazing God is!

Here are some photos of the development at Day 5 and 6 of the Serama Bantam eggs.

And watch this cool video of them at Day 9:

This video is of a Buff Orpington egg at Day 10-11. It's so amazing to see their little movements and how quickly they grow and change!

We should have baby chicks right around Thanksgiving or the day or two after... We are so excited to see how many hatch and are hoping we get at least a 50% hatch rate. Either way, it's been an amazing educational experience and the kids and all us adults have learned a lot about how eggs form, the embryology, and how it all works. There are some great resources out there for learning about chickens. Pinterest has been a great tool to find unit study information. Here are some links of things we have used so far:

http://www.teachyourchildrenwell.com.au/science/poultry.html

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/blog/2013/06/chicken-lapbook-pictures/

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Life-Cycle-Of-A-Chicken-With-Crafts-Games-Hatching-Activities-3118373

Magic School Bus Video - Season 4 Episode 1 is about chickens and how they develop! You can find this on Netflix!

There are also some great YouTube videos on egg embryology and development. Just google!

In the meantime, while we wait for the eggs to hatch, there's one big project needed to be completed... The coop! Jeff is our creative mastermind and so he designed up a pretty amazing coop and the guys have been trying to work on it as they can.

In the process the kids are also helping and learning about woodworking and construction. Everything we do here at RENU Ranch is a great homeschooling opportunity for the kids to be fully involved!

Saturdays seem to be about the only days to work on it, so we haven't gotten it finished, yet. Hopefully this weekend we'll make a lot more progress. Here it is so far! It's gonna be massive...