Twenty-six chickens now call Lena High School their home.
The agriculture department has a new chicken coop, built by Kelby Cook Construction with the help of Lena High students, parents, FFA alumni members and donors.
Lena agriculture teacher Roberta Windus said she was inspired to raise chickens after hearing about the Food for All Grant program.
“I saw a Food for All Grant through the National FFA Association and I thought, ‘How would the Lena FFA help our local community?’” Windus said.
After Lena FFA received the $2,500 grant, everything fell into place. The coop is funded 100 percent by the grant and donations.
“It is a service learning project between the agriculture classes, independent students and the FFA … to donate the eggs to the food pantry to help the community,” Windus said.
“I’m learning a lot,” said agriculture student Sarah Carlin, who helps care for the chickens. “I’m learning the processes needed to care for the chickens and a lot about their life cycle.”
But that’s not where the lessons end. Carlin said she’s also learning different ways to help the community.
“A project like this can really teach you more than you’d think,” she said.
Windus said chicken eggs and meat are a good protein source, and clients of the Feed My Sheep food pantry will benefit from having another healthy food source available. The pantry, located at the St. Anne Parish site in Lena, will receive all of the eggs and eventually the meat from the chickens.
“For right now, we’re just going to donate the eggs. Come spring time, we will hatch them out for replacements for some of the older ones,” Windus said.
Feed My Sheep was started 10 years ago by Jackie Linzmeyer and Helen Thomson. Thomson said eggs are rarely donated, so the addition of the chicken coop at Lena High School will be beneficial.
“That would help very much. We get a lot of meat from Feeding America, but eggs are scarce,” she said.
The food pantry is open on Tuesdays, with an average of 40 to 45 families receiving food each week, so donations are always needed, she said.
The coop itself was in the works for four to five months.
The structure took two weeks to build. The final touch was a fence with a net over the top, providing outdoor space for the chickens. With that finished, Windus plans to add at least 20 more chickens to the group.
The initial 26 chickens are a mix of four breeds. Some were hatched at the school from May through July, and others were brought to the coop as adults.
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