To view the 4-H Agri-Science in the City Rothenberg Program Plan click the link.
Discover Agri-Science through the eyes of Nikayla and DiMiko, characters developed by the Program Manager and the Students of the 4-H Agri-Science in the City Program at Rothenberg Preparatory Academy.
Nikayla’s Chickens
By Tony Staubach
Nikayla is just like every other girl in her class. She likes hot fries, riding bikes and watching Sponge Bob Square Pants after school. But something makes Nikayla different from everyone else. Nikayla’s parents are Urban Farmers.
Nikayla’s mom and dad started a community garden four years ago. They grow fresh lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes and they raise chickens. Raising chickens in the city isn’t easy, but it’s not harder than taking good care of another pet. The only thing is that chickens need to live outside.
The chickens live in a chicken coop. Nikayla and her parents painted their chicken coop red, but made it out of a recycled play house Nikayla used when she was a little girl. Her parents had to put a fense around the coop because the neighbors and hawks hurt the chickens. While free range chickens are happier, the neighborhood needed to get used to having chickens.
Nikaya’s chores include feeding the chickens and taking care of the chicken coop. Since her parents made the coop out of an old play house, Nikayla is a great size to go in and clean. The chicken coop is 5 feet by 5 feet, Nikaya’s parents have 5 hens. They don’t have a rooster because they like to eat the eggs that the hens lay.
Inside the coop the chickens build nests in nesting boxes. Inside the boxes the hens lay about an egg a day. Some weeks Nikayla and her family have 35 eggs, they sell the extras to neighbors. Nikayla has a big sister in high school and two little brothers in preschool. Her brothers help her feed and give the chickens water every day before and after school. The chickens eat corn and other vegetables, in the summer they use the left over vegetables from the garden to feed the chickens. Chickens also like to eat bugs which helps keep the garden pests free.
Nikayla helps her big sister clean the chicken coop ever week. Cleaning the chicken coop isn’t hard but it can be dangerous. Chickens use the coop as a bathroom so every week they have to clean the whole coop and shovel out all of the chicken droppings. They don’t want the chickens to live in the dirty habitat because that could contaminate the eggs. Nikayla helps her sister use a shovel and clean the floor of the coop and the nesting boxes.
It might be a lot of work to keep chickens, but Nikayla likes to get up early every morning and walk out to the chicken coop and pick up the eggs. Some mornings the eggs are shaped like normal eggs, but sometimes she gets eggs that are misshapen. Some are more like an oval and some are almost like a rectangle.
Once a year Nikayla’s parents ask a local hatchery for 12 fertilized eggs so that they can hatch some chicks. They keep one or two chicks and donate the rest to a farm outside the city.
Chickens stop laying eggs after about 4 years. That’s when Nikayla’s parents send a chicken off for processing. Once the chicken is processed it is turned into the chicken we eat. Nikayla’s family is sad to see the chicken go, but they knew that they had to send off the hen. It had outlived its usefulness and was getting sick and tired. Before the family eats dinner provided by their home grown chicken they give thanks and reflect on the circle of life.
But when one chicken is sent off for processing another baby chick gets to stay and grow up. It takes 21 days to hatch the egg. Once the egg is hatched the chicken lives in a small brooder with other baby chicks. In the brooder they learn about how to get along and feed themselves. After 60 days the baby chick is ready to live with the adult chickens.
Nikayla’s Eggs
By Tony Staubach
Last week Nikayla’s parents ordered eggs from a local hatchery. The eggs have been in the incubator since that time. The family received 12 eggs, but only 80% of the eggs will hatch, that’s about 9 eggs. This week she is going to try to figure out which 3 eggs are the duds?
Nikayla has a device called a candler. With the canlder she is able to look inside the eggs. It isn’t like an x-ray. She can’t see everything, but if she sees a dark spot she knows the baby chick is growing.
Nikayla checks all 12 eggs. Of the 12 she sees dark spots in 7 of them. In a few eggs it’s hard to tell. She thinks they might be duds, but she won’t know for sure for a few more days.
When Nikayla holds the egg up the candler she can see several things. First she can see the air cell. The air cell is where the baby chick will get its first breath. She can see the yoke and a tiny embryo.
Nikayla is excited to see inside her eggs. Even though she knows what the baby chick is going to look like, it is exciting to see what is happening inside her eggs.
Nikayla and DiMiko are Cousins.
By Tony Staubach
DiMiko spent the night at Nikayla’s house. Nikayla’s parents have chickens, so they ate eggs for breakfast a lot. One morning Nikayla and DiMiko went out to the chicken coop to pick up the eggs.
DiMiko was fascinated by all the chickens and the 5 eggs that the 5 chickens laid. He was excited to eat the fresh eggs.
Nikaylas Mom made eggs in three different ways. Some of her eggs were scrabled hard boiled and Over easy.
DiMiko had never seen a hard boiled egg. So he had trouble telling the difference between hard boiled eggs and fresh eggs while they were still in the shell.
Nikayla taught DiMiko a really cool way to test to see if an egg was hard boiled or not. She said “Take the two eggs and spin them on the table. If one wobbles while it spins it is uncooked, if it doesn’t wobble it is hard boiled.”
DiMiko tried spinning the eggs. Nikayla was right, one wobbled and the other remained steady. She told DiMiko that the liquid is moving around, that is why the eggs wobbles when it spins.
Nikayla and DiMiko find Chicks
By Tony Staubach
“Shhh!” Whispered Nikayla, “the chicks have hatched.” DiMiko and Nikayla woke up early on a Tuesday morning to walk down to the chicken coop and see if the young chicks were finished pipping through their shells.
When they got there they found four new wet baby chicks. The new chicks were only a few hours old. They found them chirping and making a lot of noise. Nikayla looked at DiMiko and said, we can’t pick them up yet.
DiMiko said “,Why?” He was confused, they looked like chicks. Nikayla said “, you can see their skin, the chicks need to be dry before we can handle them. If we pulled them out of the incubator right now they might freeze to death.” Chickens are not warm blooded like us, so their down feathers play a very important part in the regulation of their temperature.
Tomorrow when the chicks are dry we will move them to the brooder, the brooder will be filled with food, water and wood shavings.
DiMiko asked “, without food how are the chicks going to live through the night?” That’s a great question thought Nikayla. Nikayla said “, the chicks will live on the rest of the yoke and the egg shell for nearly 48 hours.”
Nikayla saddly looked at the eggs left behind. She said “, those eggs probably won’t make it.” She thought to herself that some of them are unfertilized, but some of them were just too weak to develop or they were mishandled. Nikayla and DiMiko decided to start brainstorming, what could have happened to the eggs?