Are chickens a good family pet?

 We have officially named our chickens. Great. If I had a sarcastic font that "great" would have been in bold Sarcastica.  We first decided to get chickens because we had heard they were nice and low maintenance animals. So we went to our local farm store and purchased three cute fluff balls.

Cute, kinda. Well we kept them under a heat lamp all day and night. My two year old was caught giving them kisses. GREAT. The cats LOVED to watch them and a few overturned chickies later they were ready for outside. My daughter and her friends thought that they were little babies to take care of and they would sit on my daughters shoulders and lay in there laps when they would swing on the swingset.

 We had made a cute coop for them stapled down the chicken wire. Added all the stuff they need like roosting boxes and bare ground to scratch at. Next night. BAMN. Three chicken exploded. Thats what I told my eight year old. I did'nt want to tell her that a racoon had tore apart the chicken wire. TORE Apart! Vicious. So back to the farm store.

                                        More cute chickens later. Ok they are kinda cute.

         And here is my master chicken catcher. All in all they have been fun for my girls. She named one Punk rock (Who we found out one week ago is a Cockadoodlin Rooster) The other one that follows that one around is Rhodie. Then there are two others that I can't remember, anyway they keep all the bugs away. That is a good point I suppose. Can not wait for the eggs, any day now!