My Neighbors Chickens – guest post by Brandy Tanner

This is a guest post by Brandy Tanner who runs a NH Mom blog and is always looking to life as if the glass is half full instead of half empty.

image courtesy of happilyblended.com

In August of 2011 I was given the chance to move back home to the house I grew up in with a pond, six acres and neighbors I had known since I was only five years old. I took this chance in a heart beat, after all I was in a position where I had to move and so why not go back home? My mom moved in with her fiance so the idea of having this place all to myself sounded fantastic! After moving the family into the home and getting settled in, we spent time trying to be neighborly with the older couple next door, after all he knew me since I was five why not be friendly?! Well it seems my munchkins are more interested in the chickens next door than being sociable with the adult neighbors, which makes perfect sense to me.

We soon noticed that our neighbors have chickens and wouldn’t you know my kids are used to going to Friendly Farm in Dublin, NH where they can hold chickens, so it was only natural for the three munchkins to attempt to get close enough to pick up our neighbors chickens. Let me tell you what, this was the most hilarious moment of my life! I loved watching those kids get bread and try to bribe the chickens into getting closer, but all it did was make the chickens grab the bread out of their hands faster.

Those chickens were pretty smart but obviously they haven’t been handled much because they just had zero interest in allowing my munchkins close enough to touch them, let alone hold them. While watching my kids go outside and spend time giving the neighbors chickens bread, talking to the chickens and really trying to gain their trust, I decided it would be awesome to get chickens of our own this upcoming Spring. After all my kids eat a ton of eggs, the three year old alone would eat a dozen eggs a day if I let him, so why not try to get chicks and handle them as a way to encouarge trust between the chicks and my kids? Of course I am thinking yummy eggs for breakfast and possibly dinner some nights, but the kids are more thinking along lines of new pets.

My munchkins love this idea of having baby chicks and getting the barn ready so that the chickens do not get upstairs into my mom’s storage area of the barn. It will take a lot of hard work and preparation, but I am looking forward to teaching my kids a little bit about farm life this Spring, even if we are simply getting some egg laying chickens for our scarmbled egg eating pleasure.