Chicken revolution: How the humble hen is teaching skills and changing lives

Chicken revolution: How the humble hen is teaching skills and changing lives

2022-08-07

Comfort can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places. In recent years, more and more people have discovered the therapeutic value of chickens. Due to their docile and affectionate nature, chickens are popular at nursing homes, where they give seniors a sense of purpose. They’re also being used in schools, to teach students how to make new friends and engage with their community. Here’s this week’s Sunday special report.

Two net fences on the sides mark off an 8-meter-long race track, where chickens vie for glory. This race was held in December 2021, with chickens raised by three organizations: Ren-ai Senior Citizens’ Home, Kaohsiung Municipal School for Students with Disabilities, and Shen-shuei Primary School.

The chickens wear special outfits for the occasion. But many of them don’t seem too concerned about the competition. They stroll around the track, paying no mind to the humans screaming at the finish line.

The event was sponsored by Kaohsiung’s Animal Protection Office. There were 12 rounds of races to find a winner for the Kaohsiung qualifier, who would later compete against chickens from Taichung and Chiayi for the title of Taiwan’s fastest hen.

Yang Chung-hsun
Kaohsiung City Animal Protection Office
We don’t want chickens to just be seen as an animal that produces eggs. If we are good to them, they will also be good to us. The intangible things that animals give back to us may be even more meaningful and more fulfilling.

How did the care home and the schools get started with raising chickens? It all began with the founder of Hen and Traveler, Yang Huan-ching.

During the financial crisis of 2007, raising chickens in one’s backyard became a popular activity in Europe and the U.S. What started off as a way to save money on food, or to make extra cash selling eggs, eventually became a therapeutic hobby for older adults. In 2017, Yang set off on a campaign to get people in Taiwan reacquainted with the humble chicken.

At the beginning, Yang’s program focused just on older adults. But hens are affectionate and can keep people company just like cats and dogs. They also offer additional benefits.

Yang Huan-ching
Hen and Traveler founder
Chickens live outside, in the garden. So if you want to see the chickens, you have to go outside. You can watch them eat their feed there. So raising chickens can get older adults to head outdoors and get closer with animals and nature.

Ren-ai Senior Citizens’ Home is located in Kaohsiung’s Yanchao District. It houses more than 100 residents. When the facility first started raising chickens, the residents weren’t so enthusiastic.

Yang Fang-yi
Ren-ai Senior Citizens’ Home
At the beginning, when they heard the news, they were all like, “Why should we raise chickens?” “They reek!” “Can we eat them?”

But once the chickens arrived, their affectionate and lively nature captivated the residents. For some of the residents, looking after the chickens was life-changing.

Huang Chao-yang heads outdoors. In his hand is a fly swatter that’s used to keep chickens out of the path of his wheelchair so as to prevent accidents.

Yang Huan-ching
Hen and Traveler founder
He used to be very hot-headed before, throwing tantrums frequently. He had suffered a stroke and would not accept the changes that brought to his life. But he’s all different now. He started changing when he began pushing his wheelchair to spend time at the chicken coop. He’s kind of like the head of chicken affairs now.

Yang Fang-yi
Ren-ai Senior Citizens’ Home
So they started taking care of the chickens. After a while, they would take turns coming here every day to check on the chickens. And we started finding a lot of food in the coop, like steamed buns, rice, grass and veggies. They really look forward to collecting their eggs. We found that some of them would even sit there and wait for the hens to lay eggs. They didn’t want to miss the moment in case someone else took the egg.

Ren-ai Senior Citizens’ Home is a success story for the therapeutic power of chickens.

Over at the Kaohsiung Municipal School for Students with Disabilities, chickens are not only a part of the therapy program. They also help prepare the students for gainful employment.

It’s Friday afternoon and the students are hard at work creating drawings to stick on their egg cartons. Using glue and the scissors is good practice for their fine motor skills.

Since the fall of 2021, the school has reared its own chickens and incorporated them into its coursework. To the teachers’ surprise, the chickens have helped the students by leaps and bounds, even encouraging some students to speak.

Liao Li-wen
Kaohsiung Municipal School for Students with Disabilities
Some of our students have congenital conditions, affective disorders or are on the autism spectrum. They may not be so keen on communicating with others. But after we got the chickens, they started interacting. They’d discuss how many eggs the hens had laid, or ask about whether we had collected veggies to feed the chickens. So we have interactions like these. It’s spontaneous speech. It’s engagement with others.

The students feel attached to the chickens, and that attachment motivates them to get involved in all related activities. Today, they are packing eggs to sell at the market and try their hand at being vendors.

Before opening up shop in the morning, a teacher reminds the students of what they have to say to attract customers. This market sells only organic produce and ecofriendly products. Price isn’t the top priority for shoppers, but value. The young vendors explain what makes their eggs so special.

Their candid explanations endear them to their customers.

Ms. Chiu
Shopper
Just now the kids talked me through how they had raise the chickens, how they feed the chickens mixed grains, and how they give them vegetables too. It seems they all took part in the process, even helping to plant the vegetables.

Through the school’s chicken curriculum, the students engage with society, all while nurturing their professional skills.

Yang Huan-ching
Hen and Traveler founder
I sometimes watch how they are doing. Before, they wouldn’t dare speak to others. But now they stand at the market and call out to shoppers saying, “Come buy free-range eggs!” It fills me with hope.

Liao Li-wen
Kaohsiung Municipal School for Students with Disabilities
Students can get integrated in society in a natural way. And in the future, when they get placed in a job, they’ll have professional skills. They can be confident in themselves and adapt well to the work environment.

Chickens can be used to support therapy and job training. Over at Shen-shuei Primary School, chickens are a way for kids to give back to the community.

Shen-shuei Primary School has four chickens. Every day, students have to feed the chickens, replenish the water in the coop, put in fresh vegetables, and change the sand bedding. The students put their all into these tasks.

Sun Kuo-hua
Shen-shuei Primary School principal
The children raise chickens as part of a comprehensive farming program. They harvest the vegetables they planted and feed them to the chickens. In the process, students also become more aware of their own eating habits and health.

Students report that the hens lay eggs at the same time every day, like clockwork.

The healthy, freshly laid eggs are the beginning of a lesson in giving.

They are used to make steamed eggs to share with the community.

The surface of the steamed eggs glistens like a mirror. These meticulously prepared meals are given to the residents of Ren-ai Senior Citizens’ Home.

Sun Kuo-hua
Shen-shuei Primary School principal
Instilling respect for one’s elders has always been one of the goals of our curriculum. We hope that through these gifts of egg dishes, children and older adults can connect with each other in a beneficial way.

These dishes often spark intergenerational friendships.

The steamed egg delights the residents of the home, whose joy give validation and confidence to the children. It just goes to show how an extraordinary impact can be made with help from the most ordinary chicken.