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Teaching food security Reynolds students raise hens to give to families to promote local food sources
Last year, Saanich eased up on its backyard chicken bylaws, allowing for up to five hens – roosters aren’t allowed – on single-family properties that are 557-square-metres or larger. Eggs can’t be sold and the chickens can’t be slaughtered. Kyle Slavin In addition to the hens that Reynolds News staff will be giving away, the recipients will also get a free chicken coop, along with What initially started as a want by stu- a continual stream of eggs and manure. dents to have chickens running around “The kids raised amazing chickens. the school’s courtyard transformed into They’re some of the friendliest I’ve ever a prize-winning initiative to help pro- seen,” said Darren Copley, president mote local food production. of the Victoria Natural History Society. Reynolds secondary is about to give Copley donated the eggs to Reynolds. live hens – incubated, hatched and “They’ve been coddled and handheld raised within the school’s walls over the – it’ll be really nice for the people adoptlast three months – to about 10 Greater ing them.” Victoria families. The chicken fostering project was one “I don’t know if there’s of two initiatives at Reynolds that anything else like it out won a B.C. Green Games award there,” teacher and leaderearlier this month at Science ship advisor Heather Coey World. said about her school’s The second initiative was the chicken fostering program. salad bar program, where stuSpearheaded by a small dents use locally grown produce group of students, including (from no more than three kilo17-year-old Meaghan Dinmetres away) to create healthy ney, the fowl fostering prosalads, soups and other edibles gram forced them to learn to sell at lunch. anything and everything Heather Coey Reynolds earned $2,000 for the they could about raising pair of wins. hens. The money will buy a freezer to help On Feb. 13, 17 eggs hatched and all 17 store more fresh produce. birds lived. For its wide-ranging green initiatives, The students have had to care for the the school was also among 10 in Canada animals as pets – feeding them, cleaning that earned a $25,000 prize from Staples. the chicken coop and making sure they That money, announced last week, will get out every day to run around. And go to a new computer lab. though there remains a bit of a novelty Coey hopes to repeat the chicken fosin having chickens at school, the project tering program next year. is more about the greater good. “This helps us meet one of our goals, “It’s one thing to do something that and that is food security. It allows the changes things in the school, but it’s kids and the staff to see that you can another thing entirely to do something raise your own food source, and it gets that changes things in the community,” it out into the community.” Dinney said. kslavin@saanichnews.com
Kyle Slavin/News staff
Grade 9 student Elizabeth Kyle, 14, holds one of the hens being fostered at Reynolds secondary school. Seventeen birds were hatched and then raised in a chicken coop in the school’s courtyard. The fowl, and a free chicken coop, will be given to homes in Saanich, Victoria and Metchosin to help promote local food production.
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