Chickens provide so much more than eggs

When my daughter was in kindergarten they hatched eggs in the classroom.  Then pressured parents to take the chicks home.  That adorable little kindergartner is 24, and we have had chickens ever since.  So many people are getting chickens for the eggs, but they are so much more.  I enjoy my chickens. Thay are always thrilled to see me! (It's not because I the food lady, they love me ha ha). I is wonderful to have fresh eggs that don't have antibiotics, or other harmful crap in them.  They are fun to watch, make great fertilizer, they make me a more adventurous gardener. I know I can try new veggies and if no one likes it, I know the chickens will eat it.  Sometimes if I'm between growing seasons I will let the chickens in the garden.  They are great at reducing bug population (with supervision or they will also kick the soil out of the raised beds)
My son took the skid steer and scraped a very weedy areas ( his way to clean it up "sigh") he wanted to dump it on my hugelkulture to replace the soil the chickens removed. Being the contrary person I am I didn't want soil full of weeds on my hugelkulture.  So now we have weed mountain. Chickens are the perfect solution. I had him dump the pile in the chicken yard.  They will eat or kill all the weeds in it. Eat the bugs and have days of entertainment flattening out that mountain. I will give it a few months, then when I need some soil I will be able to  get it, and it will be relatively weed free, a reduction of pests, and it will be super charged with a combination of chicken manure, aeration and be mixed with all the broken down wood chips from there constant digging and moving the soil around. So especially they also save lives, at least they saved my son's life (ok maybe not life savers, but it got him out of the dog house) Of course you can eat them. We don't, but if need be we could.
Chickens are so much more than egg factories.

Our daughter thinks of her chickens as if they were her children (so these chickens would be my grandchildren).

All fun aside, chickens are fun to watch.  A person can even make them a playground so they would be even more fun to watch.

For all the things I can complain about with my flock, I enjoy them. They give me something to do every day that gets me outside and in nature.
Yes, they are so much more than eggs. I've only ever thought of them as "recycle machines" first, egg layers next and portable meat makers third. The only thing and critter does well is make poop and some poop is more "valuable" than others.
The chickens are great at taking food items that would be otherwise wasted and turning it into egg and poop.
They take grass cutting, pulled weeds, old veggies, old "leftovers" and the occasional forgotten whatever and turn it into eggs and poop. They are great at enriching sawdust and dried leaves that I use as bedding and making that a great soil additive.

 I get to get out in a few minutes and play around with chicken "dirt", the good soil they've helped me make, and some relatively "untouched by chickens" ground and try to make it good enough to grow tomatoes and potatoes. We'll see how far I get.
Chickens are fun and funny. I talk to my Tree Chickens while washing dishes. I can go for walks around the yard with my geese and their commentary. I can garden with the hens who learned that gardening means grubs and things.
They are good company and great listeners. They don't offer a lot of advice, but they also don't take sides and don't judge.

Sometimes I meet chook-a-roos and think "what dumb buzzards."

Other times I meet a chook-a-roo who pecks at my boot and looks at me with a penetrating and enquiring gaze, and get this strange twinge that I'm being messed with by a super-evolved dinosaur on par with the pandimensional mice in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Dunno. Maybe it depends on what I had for lunch.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Other times I meet a chook-a-roo who pecks at my boot and looks at me with a penetrating and enquiring gaze, and get this strange twinge that I'm being messed with by a super-evolved dinosaur on par with the pandimensional mice in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
)

I have a hen who watches for me to go back to the shed to set up tomorrow's feed. She has learned that if she follows me in, taps on my boot and looks cute, I'll give her a little snack from the corn can. The rest of the flock will follow me from the porch to the shed when I first head out, but they don't seem to care much once I start dishing out the chicken chow.

I have hens who have learned to climb the mulberry trees for the ripe berries, and birds who look confused when a mulberry falls to the ground. Sometimes it's the same chicken.

Pandimensional chickens seem a bit much, but I'll go along with being kept as a pet by super-evolved small dinosaurs. There are days when they seem baffled by a bucket, and then days when they have better object permanence than 5 year old human children. I don't know what to think and have started to wonder if they're messing with me.

While I'm very glad for how it worked out for you folks, I'm vehemently opposed to teachers doing things like pressuring parents to take chicks the class watched hatch.  The chicken is a living breathing animal that depends on humans for a good life, and many families are not prepared to meet the needs of such an animal, especially for the 4-8 years they often live.  If they want to hatch out chicks for a class project that's fine, if they have homes prepared to properly care for them lined up ahead of time.

Here's an easy fix on weird governmentally contracted adults pressuring your child into doing things without your knowledge that might have an impact on your home life - home school. Or Pod School. Or saying no.

No is both a complete sentence and a firm answer.

I have every sympathy for parents who are trying to manage their home lives while dealing with whatever your local education system is, but there are alternative answers for most circumstances that surround our communal children.
I did not get into chickens because of my kids - I wasn't that lucky. I got into chickens because I wanted to get into chickens. I'm sorry that wasn't your situation.

Kristine Keeney wrote:Here's an easy fix on weird governmentally contracted adults pressuring your child into doing things without your knowledge that might have an impact on your home life - home school. Or Pod School. Or saying no.

No is both a complete sentence and a firm answer.

I have every sympathy for parents who are trying to manage their home lives while dealing with whatever your local education system is, but there are alternative answers for most circumstances that surround our communal children.
I did not get into chickens because of my kids - I wasn't that lucky. I got into chickens because I wanted to get into chickens. I'm sorry that wasn't your situation.

QFT!

We homeschool our 4 kids.  Not because of chickens, though I suspect we wouldn't have decided to get chickens if we weren't homecschooling.  But the situation from the OP is one of innumerable reasons I'm glad we homeschool.

In defense of the amazing kindergarten teacher. She asked the parents when children were otherwise occupied, and had no problem with no for an answer.  I volunteered in the classroom and at this point knew the teacher quite well.  Although I never really thought about having chickens, coerced was probably a bad choice of words on my part. I apologize.  I'm glad my children got to have the experience, and  that led to years of enjoying our chickens.