It’s time to gear up for the Fall adult learning classes in our town. Once again for the 3rd year in a row, I’ll be offering Chickens 101 and Chickens 102. Each of these classes is a one evening workshop where I get to help other people discover the wonderful world of chickens.
101 takes you from getting chicks to moving them outdoors and getting eggs and Chickens 102 (yeah, I know, I should really come up with better names) is for the more experienced chicken owner and covers things like first aid, sick birds, diet, cold weather care, and yes, coning.
When the program director contacted me to teach these classes, my first response was that it was out of season. No one in New Hampshire is going to be getting new born chicks in September (although I do know of a certain family that got a newborn chick in January – but that’s a different story – can you say Charlie?) May – June are the months around here for getting chicks, the temperatures are just too brutally cold to move much outside of that window.
So why did I go ahead and decide to hold these workshops this fall? It’s because chickens are becoming very popular. Every time I talk to people about chickens they ask me questions like, it is hard to raise chickens? How much work is involved? What are the costs? People want to know about chickens.
And I want to tell them.
I know that some people come to my classes to get background information. They want to hear about chickens to see if perhaps having backyard poultry would be a good fit. They come for the research and will make a decision on chicken owning at some point down the road.
Still others come to my workshops because they have already made the decision to get chickens in the coming Spring and they want to know what they need to do to get ready. They are excited and want to make sure the chicken nursery is ready starting on day 1.
Whether people are trying to decide if they are going to have chickens in their lives or if they are all set and just need to know how to get started – if they want to learn about chickens, they’re more than welcome in any class of mine, at any time of the year.
