When we moved into our little house in the country, we took on a new challenge that I never expected to happen so quickly.

We adopted chickens.

Suddenly, I find myself going out every morning during my youngest’s morning nap with my oldest, Lloyd, following close at my heels, rubber mud boots flying in the wind. Out to “feed the hens!” he yells, excited to meet and coo to his new lady friends.

We have all been pushed past our comfort zone with these new hens. City girl that I was, I’ve learned how to confidently reach under brooding hens to obtain still-warm eggs, while my son has overcome his fear of the chickens in general and now feeds them bits of clover from the garden and boldly walks into their roosting and nesting house whenever we gather eggs. Which he asks to do 17 times a day.

It’s been great fun so far.

Except that, a week ago, we started out with 16 chickens, and now we have 15.

One of the hens we adopted had fallen off her roost when sleeping about two weeks ago, before we moved in. When we adopted her, we knew she was injured, but both we and the former owners hoped that she’d recover.

As the days went on, she grew weaker, seemed to be in pain, and didn’t move quite as much. I tried to protect her a bit from the other hens, made sure she got food near her and didn’t have to fight the other hens for it, and made her comfortable, but it didn’t look promising for her recovery.

And then, on Saturday, when Lloyd and I went to feed the hens in the morning, I found her. She had died during the night in the yard outside of their house.

Luckily, Lloyd was preoccupied playing in the garden while I fed the hens. I don’t think he noticed her amongst the swarming of 15 other hungry chickens around my feet, and we went back inside without mentioning or pointing out the dead hen. I told my husband when we came in about her passing and he went out and took care of the body.

Like I said, we have all been pushed past our comfort zone.

I wonder, at what age do you discuss death with your children? The hens are not pets; we are raising them for eggs and, ultimately for our freezer, but we treat them with gentle care and kindness. Lloyd knows the chickens aren’t our pets. We’ve discussed that we feed and care for the hens and they in turn give us eggs and meat, but I still was stumped this weekend when I was surprised by nature’s tragic loss.

Since the chickens were still new to us, and we had several, I doubt that my son has even noticed the loss, but as he gets older and we get to the point of either butchering the chickens or experience another, natural loss, I wonder how we go about preparing our children for the experience.

Barring an emergency, tragic need to discuss death, how do you broach the topic? And at what age? What have you done?

Sarah Warren, who is a stay-at-home mom, is married with two sons. Read more from her here.