You have to admit, that when a boy wants to accomplish something, he’s gonna get it done.

My 11 year old desperately wants a flock of bantam hens. I don’t know why. I’ve told him all the downsides. But he insists.

Actually, I do know why. Bantams are great setters and he wants to hatch out more laying hens. He figures that if he has 6 or so bantams, he can just stick his Rhode Island Red and Barred Rock eggs under a bantam and increase his flock.

So last week, this is what he did!

Isn’t it cool? We had an old roll of chain link stashed behind an outbuilding and he used that and some T-style fence posts to make his yard. How he drove the fence posts into the ground all by himself is a mystery to me, but he did. The chain link dis-attaches on one end to serve as an entry for the boy.

Then he found an old Rubbermaid bin that was missing its lid and cut an opening in the side to make a doorway. Inside the bin are ice cream buckets full of straw to serve as nesting boxes. He elevated this “coop” off the ground for added protection and constructed a ramp for the chickens to walk up.

Now, let me ask you, “What did this boy learn by doing this project?”

• Perseverence
• Creativity
• Resourcefullness

But more than that, he learned a great deal from studying on his own before he ever built this chicken run. And that, my friends, is what I’d like to discuss in the next post. So stay tuned.

What did your 11 year old do today?

Blessings,