Chicken Club more than a tasty sandwich at Brant-Argyle School
Town council allows chicken coop at school to teach kids about where food comes from
At Brant-Argyle School in Argyle, Man., the chicken club is not a tasty sandwich — it's a program that teaches kids about raising chickens.
The school has received a conditional use variance that allows children to keep chickens in an outdoor coop in the schoolyard in the hamlet of Argyle, 40 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.
Grade 5 student Matteo Simard is president of the Chicken Club. Simard, who helped make the school's case in front of the rural municipality of Rockwood's council, is a big fan of chickens.
"I think they're absolutely awesome," Matteo told host Marcy Markusa on Information Radio. "I like how you can just hold them and cuddle with them, and they're just perfectly fine with it, and they make adorable sounds as well."
School principal and teacher Sarah Hadfield helped make the pitch to council. The chicken club provides an educational opportunity, she said.
"It's really just to promote growing your own food and knowing where your food comes from, but also to support empathy and to really support all of our existing programs," Hadfield said. "We have gardens, so we planted things that the chickens would like to eat and we're working it into our ELA [English language arts] lessons and our science lessons, and it just fits so well."
The Chicken Club hopes to begin serving eggs produced by hens as part of the school snack program. Currently they have 10 chickens, and they plan to acquire eggs in the spring to hatch into chicks.