Poppy and the Chickens

Like most toddlers, Poppy is a big fan of routines. Particularly if it's a routine that she knows well enough to dictate the steps. In her case lately, that means taking care of the chickens in the morning.

She wakes up before the sun, and before the chickens. But as soon as the sun starts to come up--around 6 a.m. these days--I tell her it's time to go let the chickens out and she heads straight to the door to put on her pink boots.* Then she goes to the refrigerator to get the container of chicken scraps and waits at the door until I open it for her.

After getting down the steps and into the enclosed porch, she leads the way to the shop, wherein lives the commercial chicken food. Once there, I fill the container of food for her, and we switch containers; she carries the commercial food and I carry the scraps.

I would rather it was the other way around, because the container of scraps has a lid on it and is therefore much less likely to spill all over if she falls over a rock or into a hole or whatever.

But she wants that open container of food, and she will have it, by God.

No one's telling THIS girl what she can and can't carry.

To be fair, in the two weeks or so that we've been doing this, she's only tripped and spilled the food once, which is pretty good for a kid who's not even two yet.

Anyway.

Once we get across the back pasture to the chicken coop, I open the outer door to the pen, and we both dump our food into the chickens' pan.

At which point she always announces, "Dump!" with great satisfaction as she suits the the action to the word.

Then she exits the pen and I open the door to the actual coop for the chicken rush.

Best to stay out of the way of those birds when they're headed for food**.

As soon as the chickens are released and eating, she heads back to the shop, puts the container back in the bucket of commercial food, takes the empty scrap container from me, carries it inside to the kitchen, and puts it back on the counter, thus completing another successful morning of chicken care.

Pretty soon I bet I can just send her out on her own to do it. 

* Which, incidentally, she can do all by herself. As the parent of any small child can tell you, this is pretty much the Holy Grail of children's shoes.

** Unfortunately, the gray chicken formerly known as Lucy appears to be more of a Lucius and will probably not be with us for long, because I have no interest in having two roosters.