The chickens at Camp Metigoshe

 This summer brought a very significant change to our garden area and garden learning sessions!  We welcomed 21 laying hens to their brand new coop and outdoor enclosure.  The chickens are a great addition to camp for many reasons.  We are able to reduce the amount of food waste we send to the landfill.  Campers this summer placed their non-compostable food scraps in the “chicken bucket” which was then brought out to our hens to devour!  The chickens then did us the favor of laying fresh brown eggs for use in tasty breakfast items back at the lodge AND providing chicken manure for our compost pile in the garden.  We will have extra rich compost to use as natural fertilizer next summer thanks to the chickens!  We were also able to include the chickens in our discussion of the summer theme “Living in God’s Time”.  In the garden we focused on the cycle of life in creation and our hens were great at demonstrating a functioning cycle of life.  As an added bonus chickens are really fun to watch and to feed garden snacks to.  They quickly became a highlight during camper gardening sessions!  Special thanks for all the hard work by summer staffer McAyla Hegre who was the main person in charge of the chicken project this summer!  She will be able to use this experience to fulfill her livestock internship requirements for college.  Many people asked us “what happens to the chickens when camp is done?”  Well, we don’t have winter facilities for our hens so a farmer who is a supporter of camp volunteered to take them in with his flock over the winter.  We are grateful that he could take our chickens and we look forward to having them again in May!