My Autistic daughter and her chickens

A bit of a strange title I think you'll agree. But I want to share with you a lovely relationship between my daughter and her three pet chickens.
My daughter has a fear of quite a lot of animals, and although she loves them and looks at them online or in books, to actually meet them causes her anxiety.
Her biggest fear is dogs, and although she has never been hurt by a dog her fear is intense, she will not even walk near a garden if there is a dog in it and the fence is 6 foot tall.

But like all children she longed for a pet, we thought of different ones but nothing seemed right. In the end we got her a fluffy rabbit but he is now pretty much my rabbit as my daughter is too scared to stroke him or help with any aspect of his care, though she still loves him from afar.

Then one day the idea of chickens came up and my daughter really liked the idea, and I must admit I loved the idea as I thought it would be nice to have daily fresh eggs.
So we took her to a garden center that specialised in chickens and it was lovely to see her eyes light up when she saw all the lovely varietys. The man even got one out for her and she took to it straight away and loved to stroke its soft feathers.

So it was decided and I began work on the chicken run.

I built it at the bottom of our garden and made sure there was plenty of space for them. We decided on three Ranger hens and my daughter named them all after flowers. Rose, Lily and Blossom.

And so the three girls became part of our family and became pets that my daughter could finally stroke and touch and love.

And the best thing for me is all those lovely tasty fresh eggs :)