Food & Farming

New University Henhouse Teaches Fowl Lessons

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Johnson & Wales University associate professor Russ Zito, left, and associate professor Jacquelyn Bowser interact with the chickens. (Bonnie Phillips/ecoRI News)

CRANSTON, R.I. — Can chickens be good teachers?

That’s what Johnson & Wales University hopes to find out from its 19 newest residents. The Rhode Island red, Plymouth rock, and black star hens, chosen for their hardiness and ability to survive New England winters, were welcomed to a custom-built henhouse (dubbed Coop-a-cabana) on the school’s Harborside Campus a few weeks ago.

They’ve got a lot on their plate.

Jacquelyn Bowser, an associate professor at the university as well as a veterinarian, is the chair of the Equine Sciences Department and teaches courses on animal husbandry and animal sciences.

It was her idea to apply for the grant that paid for the hens, because “it just seemed like a really natural synergy between sustainability, sustainable food systems, and animal science,” she said, standing in the chicken coop one recent sunny day as the hens pecked at a pumpkin she had carved with the letters JWU.

Students from the university’s Sustainable Food Systems and Animal Sciences programs will mainly interact with the hens, which were born on a farm in Connecticut before coming to JWU, Bowser said.

The chickens, she said, can teach her students about the life cycle of a farm animal, how to care for farm animals, how to breed for certain traits, and how different diets affect egg-laying and the taste of the eggs.

“We’re not trying to graduate our students and have them run a huge dairy farm in the middle of nowhere, you know, like in a big state like Nebraska or something like that,” she said. “Instead, we’re trying to teach them the skills that they need to get into farming here in New England, which is like [a] small, specialized type of farming.”

New England farmers, she said, “usually keep their animals on their property for the entire life cycle of the animal, and then their animals end up in the food system as cheeses, high-quality milk products, high-quality beef, high-quality pork.”

hens gather around a pumpkin
There are three breeds of chicken in the JWU flock: Rhode Island red, (the red hens), Plymouth rock (the black-and-gray striped hens), and black star, seen at the far right. (Bonnie Phillips/ecoRI News)

Johnson & Wales, she said, attracts “a lot of students that want to get into an animal career that is focused on the health of the animal,” as well as animal therapeutics, animal science, and animal research.

“There’s a big need for humans in jobs that take care of research animals to make sure they have the highest quality life that they possibly can have,” said Bowser, noting the number of scientific and pharmaceutical research facilities nearby in Boston.

Meanwhile, Russ Zito, an associate professor in the university’s culinary school who teaches courses on Cooking from the Farmstead and Growing for the Menu, also has big plans for the chickens.

Eventually, he said, eggs from the hens will be used for cooking in his culinary classes, but for now, once the hens start laying, sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving, he plans to enter the eggs into an American Egg Board contest looking for specialized uses for egg yolks. Zito has to wait until the state and the Food and Drug Administration certify the university’s process for collecting and sanitizing the eggs before they can be used in cooking, he said.

“There’s a lot of things you can do just with the eggs without consuming them, like seeing what changes in diet change the quality of the egg,” Zito said.

When the hens do begin laying eggs, Bowser said, they will lay between 220 and 270 eggs a year.

Both Bowser and Zito became increasingly excited when they talked about their plans for “the lovely ladies,” as the hens in question roamed around their coop, pecking at pumpkins, the dirt, and each other. Some lounged in the sun, while others kept a keen eye on the intruders in their house.

Spacious and covered with, yep, chicken wire, the coop was built by Zito and university staff and students. They made sure to extend the coop about 3 feet underground, he said, to make sure industrious foxes or other animals couldn’t dig underneath the coop to get to the hens. There are plans to build a rainwater collection system from the roof of the coop. The design of the structure allows beams to be removed or relocated, allowing the size of the enclosure to be changed, if some birds need to be segregated from the flock.

Besides being hardy, the JWU chickens’ breeds were chosen for a reason that harks back to the Pilgrims, Bowser said.

“In New England, if you were a Pilgrim, you didn’t have a layer and broiler, you had both,” she said, referring to hens who only lay eggs vs. hens that are tasty to eat. “And so the stock [was] developed to be both, to lay pretty well and then at the end of the day to have a pretty decent meat carcass. These ladies are actually not a bad breed for that, all three of them.”

The ladies are garnering a lot of attention on campus, Zito said.

“I come out here every day, there’s somebody sitting out here studying, sitting in the grass back there” observing the chickens, he said. Students seem drawn to them, Zito said; indeed, while Bowser and Zito were in the coop doing interviews, a handful of students stopped to check out the chickens.

He said his culinary students collect food waste from the classes to give to the chickens.

inside of chicken coop at JWU
A chore sheet for students hangs in the coop, below a trail camera. (Bonnie Phillips/ecoRI News)

“I have a small scrap collection system just for the chickens, with my Growing for the Menu students,” Zito said. “A collection of carrots and some of the greens that we have left over, and things that are left at the end of the day from all the students learning their knife cuts and stuff like that.”

Students from Bowser and Zito’s classes also care for the chickens each day, he said. Tied to a pole in the center of the coop is a laminated checklist with chicken care chores to be marked off by students, with a section for notes. The coop gets raked once a week, Zito said, and gets picked out every day, also by students.

Campus safety officials also check on the chickens each day as part of their campus checks, Zito said.

All told, Zito and Bowser said, the chickens at JWU, throughout the course of their “teaching” careers, will have, in some way, reached between 650-700 students at the university.

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