Children Love Keeping Chickens

Friendly and forgiving, hens make the perfect family pet. A few chickens in your back garden will provide your children with hours of amusement and a whole array of learning opportunities.

If your children handle your hens from chicks they will become very tame

Choosing Your New Chickens

The first event is choosing your new birds. Visit a number of breeders and introduce your children to the world of chicken showing. You can even use our chicken directory to help you find your favourite breed. There are an incredible selection of chickens from the Dutch Bantam and the Malay to the Rhode Island Red and the Silkie. Here at Omlet we keep Gingernut Rangers. They have a wonderful temperament and lay lots of delicious eggs!

Children love keeping chickens and they learn a lot over the years

To begin it’s probably not the best idea to get a cockerel just yet. Cocks can be a little intimidating at first and might put your children off chickens before you have even begun. Go ahead and allow your children to name your chickens. They might end up changing the names quite a lot, but that’s all part of the fun.

Chicken Coops

It’s probably best to begin with only a few chickens to allow your children to really care for each individual.

A little girl and her Labrador looking after her chickens

The Eglu Classic is the perfect starter chicken coop which your children will love

The Eglu Classic is an easy to use starter chicken house, ideally suited for 2 - 4 birds. It’s incredibly low maintenance, easy to clean, it comes in six fantastic colours and chicken love it!

What Can Keeping Chickens Teach Your Children?

Firstly, keeping chickens will teach your children where food comes from. They will soon learn how important a free range and stress free life is to chickens, which in turn will teach them to respect and care for animals.

The reward of a delicious egg every morning might also encourage your children to adventure into the kitchen and begin cooking with their parents.

If you ever decide to breed your chickens, your children will be gifted with the chance to learn an array of mathematical skills. Working out hatching dates and incubator temperature can be a challenging yet hugely rewarding process.

Life and death is certainly a life lesson that can be taught well at a young age when rearing chickens, and the life cycle of a chicken can also be valued by children.

You can even allow your kids to venture into an arty childhood using your chicken’s eggs shells and feathers to make all kinds of wonderful gifts, decorations and jewellery.