The Birds, the Bees and the Circle of Life

[Tracey Smith]

We have been rearing chickens, ducks etc for the last couple of years and we have a very healthy boy chook (spam detector, get that one...).

He looks after his girls well and rounds them all up for bed and comes steaming in if he thinks one of them is in danger.

He also leaps on them at any given moment and gives them a right feathery seeing to without a second thought....

My children are 4, 6 and 7 now and are completely aware of the 'circle of life', reproduction, fertilisation, eggs, seed and the necessity of both, what intensive farming is like (as we rescued a batch of 1 year olds last year who were in a terrible state and also because I made the kids all stand beside each other for 5 minutes, explaining the relevance.....which at first they thoght was funny, then all hell soon broke loose...) despatching, plucking and dressing (very handy extra hands when doing a batch of the feathery critters).

To my 3 and for all their chums that live the same way, it's all part of their country life.

As a mother and explainer of the birds and the bees, I am grateful to my lovely boy chook for taking away some of the mystery.

I just have to tackle monogamy now and we are laughing!