Spring chicks = summer chickens! While spring seems to be the perfect time of year to hatch chicks, summer is the perfect time of year to begin keeping chickens. The length of time that it takes for newly hatched chicks to grow and develop into fully feathered chickens is about the same length of time that it takes for spring showers to grow into summer flowers. It’s uncanny! So, go ahead and roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer and start the egg-cellent adventure that is chicken keeping.
Keeping Chickens is Fun! Keeping Chickens in Summer is GREAT Fun!
Whether you choose to hatch your first flock of feathery friends or to purchase them at Point of Lay age, summer is an optimal time of year to begin the incredible journey into the wonderful yet wacky world of chicken keeping! The warm sun filled summer season paints a perfect backdrop for beginning chicken keepers-milder temperatures and abundant sun allow you to spend LOTS of quality time lazing about watching your chickens forage and egg-splore. These beautiful, sociable, intelligent, entertaining and practical feathered creatures will captivate your senses, not to mention your actual SENSE-you may just wind up sleeping out under the stars just so you can be there when the sun wakes them. Don’t be surprised though when you awaken from a peck on your cheek, literally!
You are sure to reap twofold, threefold, or more what you sow when you share your summer backyard with chickens:
- With the myriad of breeds and varieties within those breeds, you can create a quite a colourful crowd of clucky chooks that’s just bound to add a bit of spice to your landscape.
- And, what comes with a variety of chicken breeds? Yes, you guessed it-egg shells in pastels, oh so yummy looking chocolatey hues, eggs-quisite speckled masterpieces, and the simple beauty of a bright white egg. Your egg basket is sure to be the talk of the town with a such lovely variety of egg shell colour to “Ooh and Ahh” over!
- Chipper chook chatter will engage you, draw you in, until you find yourself visiting the chicken coop several times a day just to catch up on the clucky gossip!
- Chickens are quite entertaining and these chooky clowns will delight with their acrobatic antics leaving you donning a perpetual smile! They’re sure to “crack” you up as they leap into the air in an attempt to catch a fly away fly, chase the worm quarterback in hopes of an interception, or just suddenly squawk and take a short flight because as we all know, the grass is always greener somewhere else! Ha Ha.
- Get ready, get set, go! Don your leader cap for an egg-straordinarily madcap game of “Follow the Leader”! Have chickens? They will definitely follow the yellow cluck road to wherever you lead! And, as an added bonus, this playful but practical activity doubles as practice-chickens can and will happily flock to you when you call, minus a dilly dallying chook or two who are just too enchanted with digging and foraging at the moment. Having favourite treats handy when calling your chooks will definitely bring them clucking and flapping, as well as, help lure the dawdlers!
- Chickens are playful birds who revel in daily stimulation! They enjoy regular interaction with their human families. So, chat with them. Sing to them! Whistle and hum and watch them react-some may cluck in response, while others may just stop whatever they were doing and stare! Add hanging treats for them to peck at. Add some “bird’s eye view” outdoor roosts in their run. Got some swingin’ hip happenin’ chooks? Install a chicken swing and your flock will be flap-happy with glee!
- And, just think of all the oodles and oodles of new egg recipes that you can egg-speriment with while knowing full well that you’ve just cracked some of the most egg-straordinarily nutrient rich, works of art ever created!
- Consider yourself impressed-your intelligent poultry prodigies have the ability to respond to their names, count and understand the concept of zero, learn to perform tricks, recognize colours, and learn by shadowing their feathery siblings! It’s also a delight to watch a mother hen teach her babies all about life!
Practical Poultry- Pleasurable Garden Party Guests!
Are you an avid gardener? Are you absolutely EGGS-hausted from pulling those wretched weeds? Do you spend more time swatting at overzealous insect pests than you do tending to your fresh vegetables and herbs? Enter a small backyard flock of chickens! Chooks are a gardener’s best friend! Not only is keeping chickens in the summer great fun, but it’s practical-ly a party in your garden! Come one, come all feathery creatures! When you share your summer garden with chickens they’ll have fun, but you’ll have great fun in your new weed and bug free haven! Spring Chicks = Summertime Fun!
We here at Backyard Chicken Coops recently tried our hand at hatching chicken eggs! And, oh what an awesome egg-sperience it was. It was definitely the highlight of the spring season. That was only just the beginning though, because as spring wanes and summer bounds in, the real fun begins! With summertime, comes a whirlwind of change and egg-citement. Spring chicks, although fully feathered and mature, do still continue to grow during the summer. And, as Point of Lay nears, egg-citement abounds! There is absolutely nothing more egg-citing than when you visit the hen house in the morning and spy that very first egg-squisite egg, or your first delicate pink hued egg, or your first summer sky blue egg, and the list goes on and on ! Oh yes, there is beauty in the bounty! Plus,watching your young flock egg-splore your backyard for the first time is truly entertaining-wacky flap-happy chickens flopping around in dirt baths-life just doesn’t get any better than that!
So, how do you spell summertime FUN ? C...H...I...C...K...E...N...S!!
