A bird as a pet?

I have a new family on my roster this school year. Very sweet. Mom has three grown children and has adopted 5 children into her home. 4 of them are in CAVA this year. I stopped by their home to have them sign some paperwork this morning. Avery and Jack were with me. Avery is a grumpy kid to strangers... which is another blog for another time..... so that was frustrating cause she was attached to my hip the whole time.

This family has a mini-farm. They have 7 or 8 baby quail and 1 baby duck. She said they buy the eggs through the internet and then they "heat" them and watch them hatch... WOW... such a cool experience for the kids. They have a duck pond in their back yard with a few ducks and geese. They have 2 turkeys... which they plan on eating in a few months. They also have lots of chickens, which they use for eggs. How cool! I'm not sure I could handle all of this work.... but i think it's so cool that their kids are experiencing all of this.

My kids are huge chickens (no pun intended). They are afraid of everything, especially animals. I carried both kids on my hip - yes, that was 60 pounds in my arms - so we could avoid the D-O-G that would have ate them if they we not in my protective arms. We successfully made it to the chicken coop and I was able to release the heavy weights in my arms. The kids were less then thrilled to see the chickens and ducks. In fact they seemed to be more excited to see the outside of my leg. The other children did not understand why my kids were acting so strangely... I tend to wonder if I'm doing them an injustice for not having any pets or not forcing them to like animals... It's something that stresses me out alot!

As we were leaving, the Mom asked me if I wanted to take home one or two of the baby quail. She said all we would need would be a cage and some feed.... I'm not an animal person (apple doesn't fall far from the tree), but maybe this is the baby step we need to start our kids on the 5-step program towards animal tolerance.