- Owning chickens

Why keep chickens at school?

It's easy to forget where our food comes from - some children don't even know. Living in ignorance about the animals we farm discourages children from making their own choices about which food to eat, which provider they might use - be that a local farmer or a supermarket, and prevents them from learning how to check their food is fresh and healthy for consumption. Chickens are one of the easiest farm animals to keep and show children the farming process from start to finish: how to properly care for the animal, how eggs are produced, and to introduce them responsibly to meat consumption.

By keeping chickens you also teach children many other important lessons:

• Owning chickens is great for the environment. Children will be reducing their carbon footprint with zero food miles on their eggs and - what's more - their efforts should encourage parents to do the same. There'll also be a constant supply of free organic compost for children and teachers to take home.
• Chickens make excellent school pets. Many chicken owners say keeping chickens is less work than looking after a dog and friendlier breeds are ideal companions for children.
• There's nothing quite like collecting eggs fresh each morning, they taste wonderful. Children, parents and teachers alike will never want to go back to supermarket eggs.
• Chickens will gobble up garden pests, so you'll no longer have to use unhealthy, polluting pesticides in the school environment.
• Recent campaigns by celebrity chefs have rightly made people aware of animal welfare on farms. With chickens in your school garden, children will have an intimate knowledge of exactly how the hens that lay your eggs are looked after. The cruelty of factory farming is well documented. Less well known is that even 'free range' chickens are often kept in crowded barns with little access to outdoor space and their beaks cut blunt to prevent them pecking each other.
  

Feeding and Caring for your Chickens

• Chickens are not fussy eaters. Their main diet should consist of layer pellets or mash and mixed corn seed.
• Chicks (age 0-8 weeks) should be fed chick crumbs, whilst growers (age 8-18 weeks) should be fed grower pellets or mash.
• Chickens love treats, such as leafy vegetables, sweetcorn, fruit, or brown bread. These should be kept to a minimum to stop your chickens from getting overweight. Overweight chickens lay fewer eggs.
• Do not feed your chickens meat, fish, or raw potato peelings.
• Water should be topped up daily with at least 200ml per chicken.
• Chickens need access to a dust bath to clean themselves. You will need to clean out their nesting area at least once each week.

The Cost of Keeping Chickens

Domestic chickens cost £8-£15, and are available from poultry farms and some pet shops. Alternatively, you could choose to rehouse ex-battery hens, available free or at very little cost from rehousing charities such as the Battery Hen Welfare Trust.

Your main outlay will be a coop and fencing for a run area in your garden. Choose a good quality coop to last your chickens for their whole lifetime and to keep predators out. Coops cost from around £100 for a basic model up to £400 for a top of the range design.

Feed costs around £10 for a 25kg bag. The amount that chickens eat will vary depending on breed type, the amount of exercise they're getting, local climate, and the type of feed you use. A small laying chicken will eat 100-150g of feed per day (costing you between 4 and 6 pence for feed per day).

Choosing a Chicken Coop

A poultry coop is the ideal home for school chickens. Chickens are sensitive to too much heat, cold, or dampness, and a coop keeps your chickens sheltered from the rain and cold. A secure, well-built coop keeps chickens safe from predators such as foxes and cats.

When choosing a coop, bear in mind that chickens need 1-2 square feet of nesting space and 3-4 square feet of outdoor space per bird. For a small number of chickens, a coop will provide all the space they need. For example, our standard 5'1" x 2'1" poultry ark is suitable for housing three small chickens. To keep more chickens in this coop, you would need to let them roam free in an area outdoors or a larger pen for at least an hour per day.

During the daytime, chickens will need access to exercise space and a dust bath. Day and night, chickens need access to fresh drinking water.

Chickens can live up to 15 years, so not only do great relationships form between the animals and the children caring for them, it's also important to choose a coop that will last well, as different children come and go through the school gates over the course of the years.