Hen House Helping

Training our Hen House Helpers

by Anya O’Halloran, PCLF Hen House Helper Coordinator

Our 102 lovely hens are currently laying an average of 95 eggs (nearly 8 dozen!) each day.  Have you ever wondered who collects all those eggs every day?

As a farm whose mission is to “educate and inspire people to value healthy food, land and community through experiences on our farm,” the Learning Farm has established the Hen House Helper (HHH) Program to offer people the opportunity to participate in caring for our chickens.  HHHs (individuals, families, or groups of students) commit to volunteer for a regular weekly shift, either in the morning or the afternoon – for a four month period of time.  Hen House Helpers are trained, and then they cover their assigned shift on their own.  They collect the eggs, wash and candle them, and package them for sale.

As the Hen House Helper Coordinator (since Fall 2012), I provide these training sessions – which is the favorite part of my job!  For some HHHs, this training session is their first time at a/our farm and the first time caring for chickens.  There is always a surge of excitement present throughout the training, as the individuals participate in this new learning experience. 

The young children joining the training sessions are especially excited.  From the moment they hop out of their cars, they are jumping with anticipation.  Foreheads pressed against the door to the chicken house, they look intently at the chickens walking and scratching around the ground looking for bugs.  When it’s time to collect the eggs, they, with eager hands, grab their first egg from the nest boxes and have been known to then plop it into the egg collecting basket (at which point we again talk about putting eggs into our basket gently!).  They pet and hold their first chicken – beaming proudly all the while.  Then with great enthusiasm they throw some scratch (chicken candy!) or veggies over the fence to the ladies, and giggle with glee as a hundred pairs of wings flutter and a hundred chickens all scramble for the extra treat.  It’s a great joy for me to watch these children enjoying themselves as they participate in real farm work on a real farm.

Adults, too, are eager to learn about the farm, the chickens and their care, and the HHH Program.  I love all of their questions, and answer them as best I can.  It’s wonderful to see such enthusiasm! 

 

 

As I educate and inspire those in our HHH Program, I am mutually inspired by their great eagerness to learn about doing real farm work on a real farm!  It makes my job fun!

We are currently about mid-way through our Winter 2012-2013 HHH session.  If you are interested in becoming a Hen House Helper for future sessions, please feel free to contact me at aohalloran@prairiecrossing.com!

 

Media (and candy) hungry hens

I got a call a few weeks ago from a local reporter, Sheryl DeVore from the Grayslake Trib Local, doing a story on backyard chickens -- she wondered if our hens might be available for a photo session. Of course! Our hens LOVE media attention so we set a date for Sheryl to visit. I arranged for our regular Friday morning Hen House Helpers to come a little later than usual so they could be part of the story too.

It was a beautiful day on the farm, and the hens were very enthusiastic subjects! The Hen House Helpers demonstrated how they gathered eggs -- some of the younger (and shorter) children in the family carefully reached above their heads to gather eggs in the upper nest boxes. All the nest boxes -- high and low -- were diligently checked and emptied by the children. Nestled carefully in the egg baskets, the morning's eggs were collected and ready to be washed.

Before we headed to the Egg Wash Station, Sheryl wanted more shots of the chickens in their outdoor chicken yard. The EggMobile is constructed so that volunteers can collect eggs without entering the chicken yard, but she wanted to walk around inside with the hens and get the full chicken experience. We turned off the electric fence, opened the gate, and she slipped inside.

The chickens were very excited to see their visitor! They hustled over and crowded around her feet -- anxious to get in the newspaper I'm sure. As you can imagine, it's difficult to take pictures with over 150 enthusiastic chickens clamoring at your feet. The kids and I tossed in some "chicken candy" to distract the hens and give her some breathing space to take photographs. What is "chicken candy"? It is a mix of grains with some bits of corn. The corn is not particularly good for laying hens, but they LOVE to eat it -- hence the infrequent "candy" treat.

The hens were happy, the reporter relieved, the children entertained -- AND Sheryl had taken some wonderful shots of the beautiful Prairie Crossing Learning Farm hens. The end result was the following two TribLocal articles (plus some extra video/photo footage embedded in the first article):

http://triblocal.com/grayslake/2011/09/05/learning-farm-raises-chickens-for-eggs-education/

http://triblocal.com/round-lake/2011/09/05/residents-want-backyard-chickens-legal-in-county/

Enjoy! If you have a chicken story you'd like to share on the blog, please let me know.

Erin Cummisford

The hens are getting bored in the winter, what can we do?

A couple of things, we have noticed as well as some of you...the hens are getting bored! This tends to happen in the winter when they don't like to venture out as much, so we are going to do some things on our end to help entertain them, such as hanging cabbage, carrots, etc. in the coop.
If you would like to help them from getting bored feel free to bring any unspoiled, organic vegetable or fruit scraps for them during your shift. The scraps must be organic to meet the regulations for organic certification. PLEASE do not bring onions, meat and dairy. If you do bring any scraps go ahead and throw them around the inside or even the outside coop.