So You Think You Want To Hatch Baby
Chicks In Your Classroom…
Please Think Again
By Suzanne Gassner
At this time of the year, many classrooms are preparing
for a lesson plan that holds a tremendous amount of responsibility--incubating
baby chickens.
Incubating chicks is often more challenging than humans
expect. Chicks that are not incubated properly die or are
born deformed. The surviving chicks don’t fare well
after they are dismissed from the classroom. As a poorly-thought
alternative, many incubation materials instruct teachers
and parents to give the abandoned chicks to a local animal
shelter for “disposal.” Many shelters accept
the orphaned chicks rather than allow them to suffer, but
with no resources to raise the chicks, will euthanize them.
The classroom “life” project has become the
animal shelters’ responsibility and nightmare.
The Humane Society of Missouri’s Longmeadow Rescue
Ranch is one of a very few facilities equipped to handle
farm animals but the non-profit facility is overflowing
with rescued horses, cows, pigs, goats and more. According
to Earlene Cole, director of Longmeadow Rescue Ranch, raising
chicks in the classroom is more daunting than teachers realize.
“The surviving chicks require special feed that is
not readily available in most cities. If not properly fed,
the chicks die or become deformed. The excess handling of
the chicks by students also poses a threat to their well
being.”
The Humane Society of Missouri urges teachers to quit the
classroom practice of incubating baby chicks. If you know
of a teacher that will be participating in a chicken hatching
program, please forward the following open letter. It may
save needless suffering and death to the innocent creatures
involved.
Dear Teachers and Students:
You are about to embark on one of the true marvels of nature.
You are responsible for the lives of tiny helpless creatures.
Consider that a mother hen turns each egg carefully, as
often as thirty times a day, using her body, her feet and
her beak to move the egg precisely in order to maintain
the proper temperature, moisture, ventilation, humidity
and position of the egg during the three-week incubation
period. Un-hatched chicks respond to soothing sounds from
the mother hen and to warning cries of the rooster. Two
to three days before the baby birds are ready to hatch,
they start peeping to notify their mother and siblings that
they are ready to emerge from the shell, and to draw her
attention to any discomfort they may be suffering such as
cold or abnormal positioning. A communication network is
established among the baby birds and their mother. The mother
must stay calm while all the peeping, sawing and breaking
of eggs goes on underneath her. As soon as all the eggs
are hatched, the hungry mother and her brood go forth eagerly
to eat, drink, explore and begin their new lives.
We are, in essence, asking you to do the same. As educators
involved in the embryology project, you have the awesome
task of expanding your student’s capacity to care:
to teach them of empathy and to ask them to feel for the
creatures in their care. Their actions will have a direct
cause and effect relationship to the success of the project.
We ask your students to empathize with the animals to learn
respect and responsibility for all living creatures.
Please enter this project with the respect and dignity
deserving of handling the welfare of living creatures. It
is vitally important to have a farm or suitable home arranged
for the chicks PRIOR to the hatching. It is not advised
to let the student’s handle the chicks or to move
them. Under no circumstances should the chicks be allowed
to go home with students.
Cause and effect is a powerful lesson—but also empowering
to children when they understand they have a direct impact
on their fellow creatures. If that impact is positive, they
will help to build a better world. Isn’t that what
teaching is all about?
