My life is pretty full..... full of kids, full of animals, full of pictures, just plain full.
1) Play video games
2) Watch regular TV
3) Have a "playdate" with anybody other than cousins
4) Sleep past 8 am
5) Skip a day taking care of the animals
There are probably other things on this list, but the point was to draw attention to things I think alot of other kids do, that my kids don't get to do. I keep telling myself that someday they will thank me for this, as they see how well adjusted they are, and the basic skills they have that many other kids don't. There is alot of screaming, yelling, whining and nashing of teeth that happens in the process, and though I participate, NO, it isn't me doing ALL of it! I just feel driven to do these things. Not only for me, but for them, and also for our well being during the coming hard times. I know there will come a day when having all of these animals, and the skills to take care of them, will become a necessity, and not just a hobby.
Some of the things my kids have learned over the last 3 years:
1) The cycle of life
2) Cause and effect
3) Natural consequences
4) Their actions affect other people besides themselves
5) The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.
THE CYCLE OF LIFE - Animals are born, animals can get sick, animals die, more animals are born, and sometimes animals are killed by predators.
This is the only dog the kids have ever had, Scribbles. She was a very good dog, but I am not a dog person. My kids had been begging me for a dog for months, and somehow through a strange series of events, this little dog came into our hands. She was about 8 years old when we got her, but still behaved like a puppy. She was crazy hyper, and wanted attention all the time. The kids adored her, and she moved in with the goats. The goats didn't really adore her, but after showing her who was boss with a few good head butts, she got the idea, and they left her alone. She, however, LOVED them. She constantly tried to play with them, and chase them, and annoy them, and they were like a couple of old irritated ladies and just let her have it when she got under foot.
Scribbles only REAL flaw, (besides the fact that she was a dog, did I mention I don't like dogs?) was that unfortunately she liked the taste of duck, and chicken. She killed a couple of our baby bducks in the first few weeks. (Even Ben cried over that .) That really should have been a warning sign to me, but instead I tried to use it as a learning experience for the kids, and reminded them that she had to be locked in the goat pen at all times, and if they took her out in the yard, she had to be on a leash, and there couldn't be any birds out. They tried REALLY hard to take good care of her. They loved her, they played with her, they kept her fed, and they even took her on walks.
Now at this particular time, I had hundreds of dollars worth of young chickens from various rare and expensive breeds. I had raised them all from chicks, and they were all living outside, and just about ready to start laying eggs within the next month or so. They were all on the East side of the barn, while Scribbles lived on the west side of the barn with the Goats and a couple of full grown turkeys.
One evening we came home and started the animal chores in the dark, only to find Scribbles tied up on the porch of the barn. That was odd, we thought, as we went to investigate. The site we found will never be erased from my mind, it was like a chicken massacre. There were dead birds EVERYWHERE. All of my precious, rare, expensive babies, and many of my adult laying hens were dead, murdered to be more specific. I was horrified. I was angry, I wanted to KILL that dog! I knew it had been her. Later on we found out she had gotten out, and got into our very INSECURE chicken coops and just killed bird after bird for the fun of it. She didn't even eat any of them. Just bite kill, bite kill, bite kill. Luckily the neighbor noticed what was happening and tried to warn us. After discovering nobody was home, he was kind enough to head into our backyard and get her under control and tie her up to prevent any more loss. He felt terrible that he hadn't gotten to her sooner, but we were soooo grateful that he got to her at all.
I felt really bad, but I knew I had to tell my kids that she couldn't stay. I didn't know anything about dogs, but we discovered later that she was actually a variety of hunting dog (I can't remember, her breed) The kids cried. They were really upset. But I think they knew there wasn't any changing my mind. Chickens are really my thing. I love the different breeds, and I had lots of plans. This incident set me back over a year with my breeding program plans. I am just now, over a year later having mature birds to replace the ones I lost. Not to mention the money that was involved. Lets just not talk about that.
We listed her for FREE to a good home on our local online classified website, and she went to live on a big farm with other goats. We made sure to tell her new owner that she was a chicken killer, but otherwise a great little dog. The kids wanted me to try again, and see if we could find another dog who didn't have such a drive to eat birds, but I told them I was done. When they are all grown up and livng in their own homes, they can do whatever they like.
And here's the real clencher. If a kid oversleeps and doesn't open the barn at a reasonable hour, all the chickens in the barn are short on daylight hours, which actually causes them to lay less eggs that week, or in times of winter, maybe NO eggs that week. We'll discuss this more later under another topic. :-)
My nieces and nephews find it quite the local attraction, and even some of their parents enjoy the interactions:
to be continued..... I have more to this article, but I'll let you get started reading until I finish it.
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