Classroom Is No Place For Baby Birds

Every year, teachers and young students place thousands of fertilized eggs in classroom incubators to be hatched within three or four weeks. These birds are not only deprived of a mother; many grow sick and deformed because their exacting needs are not met during incubation and after hatching. Chick organs stick to the sides of the shells because they are not rotated properly. Eggs can hatch on weekends when no one is in school to care for the chicks. The heat may be turned off for the night or the weekend causing the chicks to become crippled or to die in the shell. Some teachers even remove an egg from the incubator every other day and open it up to look at the chick in various stages of development, thus adding the killing of innocent life to the child’s experience.

Because a child bonds naturally with infant animals, students and even some teachers are misled to believe that the surviving chicks are going to live out their lives happily on a farm. In reality, most of them are going to be killed immediately (working farms do not assimilate school-project birds into their existing flocks), sold to live poultry markets and auctions, fed to captive zoo animals, or left to die slowly of hunger and thirst as a result of ignorance and neglect.

Each year, animal shelters are confronted with unwanted chicks and ducklings from teachers who never thought of the fate of the birds, or, if they did, could not find homes for them, adding to the tremendous burden that is already borne by the shelters.

Increasing urbanization and zoning restrictions enormously compound the problem. Residentially-zoned areas prohibit the keeping of domestic fowl. Even people who are willing and able to provide a good home for a chicken or a duck can accommodate only so many roosters and drakes. Normal flocks have several female birds to one male, and roosters crow before dawn. Half or more of all the chicks and ducklings born are males.

A brooding mother hen is one of the marvels of nature. She will carefully turn each egg as often as 30 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 incubation period. About 24 hours before the baby bird is ready to hatch, it starts peeping to notify its mother and siblings that is ready to emerge from the shell. A communication network is established among the baby birds, and between the baby birds and their mother, who 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 and explore.

Instead of teaching these valuable lessons, school hatching projects mislead children to think that chicks and ducklings come from machines with no need of a mother or a family life. Supplemental facts, even if provided, cannot compete with this barren, mechanistic, and decontextualized classroom experience.

School hatching projects, which began in the 1950s, need to be replaced with state-of-the-art tools, including colorful books, filmstrips, videos, computer programs, overhead transparencies, and vinyl plastic models that can be used interactively to teach life cycles.

In addition, an understanding of the natural life of chickens and ducks, can be encouraged by quietly observing a nest of wild birds. This may include pigeons, sparrows and other birds adapted to city life. Field trips to places where chickens and ducks can be seen socializing, sunbathing, dustbathing, foraging and enjoying themselves outside will help students to see these birds in a sensitizing and appealing perspective.

It is disturbing that a project that deprives chicks and ducklings of a mother, and brings life into the world as a brief experiment, is often presented to students as a lesson in responsibility.

Schools should replace this well-meaning but negative lesson with positive learning programs. Readers are encouraged to contact United Poultry Concerns for our free guide booklet, Replacing School Hatching Projects: Alternative Resources & How to Order Them.

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