Kiddicraft Brick Farm – Manure Pile with Chickens Building Set KC1102

Kiddicraft's Manure Pile with Chickens is built from 83 pieces — a farmyard muck heap with five chickens, plus fencing and foliage. Age 5+.

Chickens really do live on the muck heap, and there is a reason

A manure pile is an odd subject for a toy and an entirely accurate one, because it is where the chickens are.

Two things draw them. First, heat: a composting heap runs at fifty to seventy degrees at its core from the bacteria working inside it, and the surface stays warm all winter. A chicken standing on it in January is standing on the only warm ground on the farm.

Second, food: the heap is full of fly larvae, beetles and worms, which is protein a chicken will work hard for. Left to themselves, hens spend most of the day scratching through it.

The farmer benefits from both. Chickens scratching a heap turn and aerate it, which speeds the composting, and they eat the fly larvae before they become flies.

Modern German farms have to store manure on sealed, kerbed slabs with drainage to a collection tank — a Mistlagerstätte — because the runoff is far too rich in nitrogen to reach groundwater. The old open heap in the yard is largely gone from working farms, which makes this set a period piece as much as a farm one.

A small first build

Eighty-three pieces is perhaps fifteen minutes, and the five chickens are what make the scene. A heap without birds on it is a pile.

In the Brick Farm range

Sets KC1101, KC1103, KC1104 and KC1105 are the other small animal scenes; KC1106, KC1108 and KC1112 are the buildings.

Specifications

Pieces: 83 · Five chicken figures, fencing and foliage · Series: Kiddicraft Brick Farm · Age: 5+ · Compatible with leading brick systems