Some mini zookeepers in the making have just seen their chickens graduate to the outside world.
As National Zookeeper Week is celebrated from July 20 to 26, some young kids in Tecoma are preparing to see some chickens they hatched on-site move into their new outside home.
Hatched from eggs in June, the local kinder attendees become the daily custodians of their baby chickens, looking after them and learning at the same time.
Laurena teacher from Tecoma Kinder has been a teacher at the kinder for 16 years and said the in-house chicken hatching program gives essential life skills to the kids.
“It creates responsibility and excitement,” she said.
Lauren said the kids have had a great time waiting for the chickens to be born, watching the eggs and waiting for them to hatch.
“If you put the egg up to your ear, you can hear them, you can hear them tweeting,” said Lauren.
The kinder aims to host the hatching program annually and will hatch chicks from eggs to see the chickens grow and then go on to lay eggs. Often, chickens will then find new homes with families who attend the school or live on-site.
“One year we had a broody chick, and so I bought some fertilised eggs and put them under her, and she had her little chicken babies that she thought were her own,” said Lauren.
The chicken hatching program this year saw the kinder kids get to watch the egg-to-chicken process up close, providing education and connection for the kinder and all its attendees and families.
“You can watch the chickens hatch from the eggs, and then you can transfer them into a little viewing box, and the kids get to have cuddles with them,” said Lauren.
“We’ve decided to keep six, three with a family, and three with us, and then we’ve had them inside kinder, just keeping them nice and warm until they’ve got all their beautiful feathers, and they’ve just gone outside into a chicken pen,” she said.
“Some children sit there and watch for ages to see if there’s like, a little crack in the egg.
Quite visual and educational, now that the chickens are old enough to go outside, the real work begins for the kids.
“We look after them, give them food and water, and then once it gets to, I think it’s around 20 weeks, they start to lay,” said Lauren.
“The children really enjoy going out and collecting them,” she said.
Small groups take turns to interact with the chickens and look after everything they need, from cleaning out the nesting boxes to feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs.
Sometimes the kinder use the eggs in cooking exercises, and other times they send them home with families.
The chickens are yet unnamed, but will have their names decided soon by votes from the kids.
The chickens live near the kinder’s veggie garden, fairy garden and resident scarecrow.
“It’s nice to go out and say hi to the chickens,” said Lauren.
The Tecoma Kinder is open five days a week and has plans to install some umbrellas from past fundraising efforts to open up their front area for more outside fun in summer.
“It’s little life skills, and it fits with us and life in the Hills,” said Lauren.
