Eau Claire (WQOW) - A grant will puts high school students right in the catbird's seat. The Eau Claire Future Farmers of America chapter was given a grant that will help give students a hands-on education about chickens. Eau Claire North and Memorial high school students will soon learn while they give back to the community at the same time.
A grant may soon have more of these students working on a project that's for the birds.
"We have students who will go out and help take care of them, clean them, collect eggs," said Jan Hildebrandt, the Eau Claire Area School District's FFA Advisor.
A $1,500 grant will help from the FFA will help high school students raise chickens as they learn about sustainability.
"We're going to be starting with juvenile birds, so how do you feed them vs the adult birds. Especially being that they're layers, we need to feed them enough so that they're producing the food. And also they're out on free range so how much do we feed, how often do we feed," Hildebrandt explained.
After the birds are grown, their eggs will be given back to the community through the Trinity Lutheran Food Pantry.
"We serve about 600 families a month. There just isn't enough food to go around. So any time that a community can band together and serve the less fortunate, it's always a win-win," said Sharry Hebert, the Trinity Lutheran Food Pantry coordinator.
In all, about 20 chickens will be raised on one of the student's farms.
"The goal is to be able to ultimately donate up to 14 dozen eggs per week," Hildebrandt said.
"Eggs are the one thing that all of our guests will take. And whenever we have them, they're excited that we can even get them, because we don't have them all the time." So when she approached me on this idea, it was just a perfect fit," Hebert said.
The coop that will house the chickens is being built right now. The FFA hopes to make the first egg donations early in June. Grant money was supplied by the National FFA organization, Farmers Feeding the World, Living 2 Serve Organization, and the Howard G Buffett Foundation.
