My wife’s always been an animal lover and it seems we have a new project on the go. Ever since we first met she’s wanted to have chickens. Even when we lived 3 stories up she wanted to have chickens!

Anyway in just under two weeks time the first batch of chickens will be arriving so we’ve got a lot of work to get done in preparation. This weekend we have to get the garden cleared, the coop put in place and the run built. It’s been a good few years since I built anything on a scale like this so I’m eager to see how things turn out but I’m also looking forward to building it with the help of my 6 year old step son and my 2 year old.

photo credit: thegreenpages

There are lots of things to take into account when building the run such as making it fox-proof and the like so almost everything we do I’m going to have to explain why we’re doing it. Why dig and lay the fence under the ground for example.

Most of all though it’s the first step in our plans for getting home grown food on our plate. We’ve got a vegetable patch to set up as well but its the life cycle of the chickens that I think will have the biggest impact on the kids. We’re starting off with a few hens to see how things go but pretty soon we’ll have an incubator and will be hatching our own and there is the very real chance we will be eating our chickens. Whilst I’m perfectly happy with this I can see our kids quickly becoming vegetarians overnight. If you explain where beef comes from to our eldest he screws his face up and says thats disgusting but will still eat it the next time it’s put in front of him. I think it may be a different story if he seen the animal pecking away in our garden the day before it ends up on his plate though.