URBAN CHICKENS FACILITATOR NOTES OBJECTIVE STUDENTS WILL CONNECT THEIR

Recipe Ingredients:

• Chicken Field Guide

• Poster or real life examples of different egg types

• Pictures of different types chickens (website: www.backyardchickens.com)

• 11 plastic eggs with true or false questions (and answers inside)

Introduction: (10 mins)

Overview of the workshop/ what to expect from the next 25mins

• What's neat about Chickens (10 minutes)

• True or False: Facts and Myths about Chickens! (interactive egg game) – 11 questions (10 ­ minutes)

• Debate – facilitated by asking for persuasive arguments against the practice (5-8 minutes)

• Vote! (5 minutes) and chicken petition

Put these facts inside your plastic eggs for students to discover…

• Chickens are neat! Why are people so interested in chickens, and so many people are keeping chickens in cities now?

  • They connect us to our food source

  • They provide animal companionship

  • They're funny, we like them

  • Their manure also makes good compost for gardens

  • They trim your lawn and they peck and scratch the ground, helping to keep the soil aerated so plants can grow more easily (because roots need airspace in the soil to establish for healthy plants)

  • They're also the perfect size for a backyard – not like cows or pigs, which are much larger and require more space.

• There are lots of different varieties of chickens – some people keep chickens for pets and food, some people keep them for show.

  • Examples of urban chickens (portraits, names)

  • Examples of show chickens (extraordinary chickens)

  • Some chickens lay 300 eggs a year (almost one a day), some lay less than 200. Different varieties also lay different colours and sizes of eggs (small white, large brown, dark brown, speckled, blue – show real examples, and / or poster)

  • Backyard chickens lay eggs with higher nutritional content (show poster comparing) and compare grocery store egg with backyard egg

True or False - Facts and Myths about Chickens! (10 minutes)

Pass out plastic eggs one at a time with 11 true or false questions on the outside – answers on the inside (6 have the answer 'true' inside and explain the answer, 5 have the answer 'false' inside and explain answer). Ask the person holding the egg to read the question, then ask the students to vote and/or discuss true or false: then ask the person holding the egg to open it and read the answer.

Questions:

1. Female chickens are called hens, and male chickens are called roosters, true or false? [true: chicken is the species name, hen and rooster is how we differentiate between males and females]

2. Hens need a rooster to make eggs, true or false? [false: hens' bodies make eggs as part of their natural, reproductive cycle]

3. The eggs you eat would turn into chicks if you left them in a warm place, true or false? [false: the eggs we eat are not fertilized by a rooster, which is necessary to make chicks]

4. Brown eggs and white eggs have the same nutritional value, true or false? [true: the egg colour has no relation to the nutritional content, though many people believe that brown eggs are more nutritious]

5. Chickens eat eggshells, true or false? [true: chickens need calcium to make eggs, and a good source of calcium is eggshells – lots of people feed chickens their eggshells, but they have to be crushed or the chickens get a taste for eggs and then peck their own eggs before we can eat them!]

6. Chickens lay one egg every day of the year, true or false? [false: some chickens lay over 300 eggs a year, while others lay less than 150 eggs a year – the number of eggs also varies throughout the year, depending on the length of days – in the summer, when days are long and the chickens get a lot of light, they lay 1 egg a day, but in the winter when nights are longer and they get less light, the chickens might only lay 1 egg every 2 or 3 days]

7. Chickens need dirt or some other gritty substance in their diet to digest food, true or false? [true: the gizzard, a digestive organ found near the chicken's stomach, helps to grind the food for digestion, usually with rocks or gritty substances – they need to eat dirt regularly to stay healthy]

8. A chicken makes more poop than a dog, true or false? [false: dogs make about ten times the amount of poop as a chicken]

9. You can keep just one chicken as a pet, true or false? [false: chickens are social animals, and require companions, groups of 3 or more are best]

10. Chickens can live as long as 8-10 years, true or false? [true: most chickens can live quite a long time as long as they are healthy]

11. Chickens are illegal in the city of Toronto, true or false? [true: the city by-law names Galliformes as prohibited animals in Toronto, an order of bird that includes species of chicken, turkeys, grouse, pheasants and guinea fowls]

Have your say on chickens in the city – the importance of debate and voting (5-8 mins)

You've heard a lot of good things about chickens, can you think of any reasons why people wouldn't want chickens in the city? Ask students to make arguments against chickens in the city.

If no one has any thoughts initially, offer prompts:

• How would you feel about having chicken poop in the city?

• How would you feel about hearing the sounds of chickens sometimes, maybe even in the morning?

• Would you be ok with chickens next door if there were four? What if there were 24?

Take a vote: do you want to see chickens in your city? If you support chickens in the city, sign a petition!

Serving Suggestions:

Chicken Field Guide

5

Field to Table Schools Program

www.foodshare.net

Urban Chickens

Reviewed September 2012