Chicken “Carved” Jack-O-Lantern

This was a fun project that my young grandsons enjoyed doing with me. Our chickens “carved” out a very scary Jack-O-Lantern for our Halloween decorations

A pumpkin, mine was about 1’ x 1’ tall and wide

A marker for outlining the face

A knife for cutting out the bottom

A bowl for the seeds

Vinyl gloves are optional

A surform tool or the same knife used for cutting the opening

Several chickens

Grandchildren optional

Draw the face features or let your child or grandchildren draw them

Cut the bottom out of the pumpkin so you can access the inside of the pumpkin. If you cut out the top, the chickens will enlarged the hole so that the “lid” will no longer fit

Remove as much of the insides as possible. You can save the seeds or feed them to the chickens

”Break” the skin or outer layer of the pumpkin to expose the softer layer in the areas marked out for the face features. You don’t want to make the exposed layer too large because the chickens will enlarge it even more

Place the pumpkin on something, I had a cement block, that the chickens can reach. Stand back and allow the chickens to peck at the soft spots the you created in the pumpkin skin. Let them go until they create openings all the way through the pumpkin. It took my chickens about 20 minutes.