Make a table of 2 columns. At the top of each column, write a number between 5 and 25.

Label the left hand column, "Chickens," and the right hand column, "Eggs."

Count the number brown beans needed for your chickens and the number of white beans needed for your eggs. You will need a supply of extra chickens and eggs. When your eggs hatch, they become chickens!

As the events are described, adjust your chicken and egg populations. Record the number of chickens and eggs after each event in your table.

1. Your chickens get Newcastle virus. Half of them die.

2. A fungus kills some of your corn. Two of the chickens die.

3. A bumper crop of chicks occurs! Your growth curve is in an exponential phase. All your eggs hatch, and half of your chickens lay eggs.

4. Predator! A weasel kills one of your chickens.

5. You get just the right mixture of feed. Your chickens are very healthy. Half of your chickens lay an egg.

6. A snake eats four eggs.

7. Your caretaker, Gargamel, doesn't show up for work for a week. Your chickens are not fed corn and must forage for worms and flies. Three of them don't survive the competition.

8. All of your eggs hatch.

9. Half of your chickens lay an egg.

10. Your sorry caretaker, Gargamel, forgets to water the chickens on a hot day. Two of them die.

11. All of your eggs hatch.

12. Divide your chickens into three groups. The largest group dies.

13. An egg is laid for each chicken in your larges group. Put the chickens back together.

14. Avian influenza (chicken flu) kills half your chickens.

15. Ten eggs are laid.

16. Two eggs hatch.

17. Your pen breaks. Three chickens escape and, in the scuffle, destroy half the eggs.

18. You fire that sorry caretaker, Gargamel, and hire a new brilliant ecologist, Ernst Haeckl, who understands the principles of population growth and carrying capacity. He constructs an ideal habitat. All chickens thrive. Half of your chickens lay two eggs each.

19. All eggs hatch.

20. Out of all your chickens, two are roosters. The new caretaker trades two hens for a stud rooster. Separate those three roosters from the rest of the chickens.

21. Two old maid hens are eaten at the Fourth of July picnic.

22. The three roosters cause half your other chickens to lay three eggs each.

23. Half of your eggs hatch.

24. Your well runs dry. Before you can dig a new well, ten of your chickens die.

25. Half of your remaining chickens lay eggs.

26. Half your eggs are used in the Easter egg hunt.

Questions

1. List four basic needs that chickens need in order to experience population growth.

2. List two predators that chickens have to worry about.

3. Draw a food web that includes Auntie Em, buzzards, worms, oak leaves, corn, chickens, weasels, turtles, Uncle Henry, and bacteria. Then underline the producers, circle the first order consumers, and put boxes around the second order consumers. Darken the name of third order consumers. Use a different color to trace one food chain.

4. What number of chickens represented the carrying capacity of your farm?

5. What resources limited the exponential growth of chickens on your farm?

6. Graph your chicken and egg populations.

7. Who was responsible for a lag phase in growth of your chickens, Ernst Haeckl or Gargamel?

8. Who was responsible for exponential growth of your chickens, Ernst Haeckl or Gargamel?

9. What type of symbiotic relationship does the Avian flu virus have with the chicken?

10. What type of symbiotic relationship does a hen have with his caretaker?

11. What type of symbiotic relationship do chickens have with weasels?