Greetings! My name is Heidi and I am a science teacher at an alternative high school in Maize. Each spring, I do a unit on chickens during which we hatch eggs. The "Agricultural Ornithology" unit is divided into sections where students learn about the History of the Chicken Industry, Anatomy and Physiology, Embryology, Chicken Intelligence, Chicken/Chick Care and Needs, Uses and Benefits of Owning Chickens, and the Industrial Treatment of Chickens. At the end of the unit, students are allowed to take 2 chicks home for two weeks and care for them to get credit.
I'm wondering if there is anyone in the Wichita area that would like to come speak to my students about chickens or allow my students (about 15 high schoolers) to visit their chicken farm. If anyone is getting ready to butcher a chicken, I would really like my students to see that so they have a better appreciation about the true price of chicken meat. I'd be open to other ideas too.
Are there any Chicken People around me that would help?
Hey Heidi,
I am Karen S., mom to 8 kids, 7 of them still at home. I homeschool 3 of the middle schoolers. We live on approx 5 acres and have had chickens for 3 years. We use electric poultry netting to protect the birds from predators but they free range inside the netting. I would be happy to have your kids come to our place and have my homeschooled kids and I talk with them about how we do things.
There are many, many types of "chicken farms" but many of us here are just backyard chicken keepers who want fresh eggs and keep our birds as pets. Some are breeders of rare and/or heritage birds, others raise layers to sell farm fresh eggs, hatching eggs and chicks. Fewer raise their own meat to avoid the antibiotics fed to grocery store meat birds from start to finish and avoid contributing to the current ecologically disastrous methods of raising eggs and poultry meat. Of a fairly recent concern is the GMO corn and soybeans fed all commercially raised chickens. I am not a chicken farm but I am a good example of raising some food for our own table. One year my children and I processed 70+ birds for our own use. That's 70 less birds raised in factory farms.
This time of year around here is not good for processing birds because we are just now incubating the chicks that will be used later. We haven't started hatching the ducks yet, either. Commercial type chickens and ducks take about 6 weeks to raise to slaughter.
I am raising birds in an effort to create a new breed and perpetuate a few old ones. My focus is on Buff Sussex, a rare chicken in the States originally imported from England. I am adding Light and Speckled Sussex birds this spring. These birds are in need of perpetuating. Many older breeds have diminished extremely in numbers due to factory farming of the Cornish X broilers and hybrid layers. I am incubating Buff Sussex eggs this year to sell and will raise meat for our family from the ones that do not sell. I am also using these birds in my breeding program to increase size and structure of a project bird called the Aloha chicken. There are probably only about 20 flocks of Alohas in the United States. I kept 2 of my best Aloha hens and will be breeding them to a Mille Fleur Sussex (a cross between Buff and Speckled Sussex). The Aloha is intended to be a dual purpose bird, good for meat and eggs. The color I am shooting for is a ginger colored bird with evenly distributed white spots (known as spangles). The Aloha is currently a very flashy, but small bird without structural integrity. We are working hard to change that but breeding is a very slow process.
Years ago, a cousin's family and a long time friend's family, raised the typical factory layers in Kansas and Missouri, so I am familiar with those methods. I have used youtube vids to demonstrate those methods with my kids as to how grocery store eggs and meat are typically farmed. My homeschooled kids and I are currently working on a unit on exactly that topic.
I, and my middle schoolers, would be very happy to have "your kids" come to our place and see our natural methods of keeping our small flock and explain to them why and how we do what we do. We have one bird we could use to demonstrate the butchering process and talk about the robotic processes that result in a lot of salmonella and camphylobactor contamination in grocery store chicken.
We typically cull before winter so the flock is smallest in the Spring with only the breeders remaining. We have appoximately a dozen chickens and only 4 ducks right now but have 51 eggs in two incubators.
My mother was an organic gardener before it was cool and even though I was raised in the city, my mom and grandfather tried to teach me a lot about respecting the earth and using natural methods for raising food. My mom is gone now but I feel it is part of her legacy that I am passing along that mindset to our children. I would enjoy sharing it with yours.
