This article was updated on December 14, 2022.
The popular University of Alberta Adopt-a-Chicken program is ramping up for another year of public awareness initiatives and bi-weekly egg pick-ups.
But don’t start researching backyard coops just yet.
The only thing coming home is a dozen eggs and a whole new appreciation of all things chicken.
The Adopt-a-Chicken Program, developed in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences’s Poultry Research Centre (PRC), began in 2013 as a way to fund the conservation of unique genetic lines through the care and housing of the birds and the hatching of the chicks.
While some of the breeds, like the Barred Rock and the Rhode Island Red, are common, many of the lines housed at the PRC exist only within the program, having been unselected for any specific trait and therefore more or less the same bird as their poultry predecessors 50 or 100 years ago, explains Kerry Nadeau, poultry unit supervisor.
“If a disease entered commercial stocks and wiped them out, we would have somewhere to start again,” adds Dawn Hage, poultry innovation partnership administration, writer and editor. “It’s also really great for comparisons to modern breeds and other areas of research at the university, looking at what has changed and what's working. Professor emeritus Frank Robinson refers to them as ‘living museums’”.
Of the 1,400 to 1,600 free-run chickens who live and cluck at the PRC’s Technology Centre, some are distinguished by their egg laying prowess, like the Plymouth Rock, and others by their deep roots to Europe, such as the Brown Leghorn. (No, there isn’t a breed of Foghorn Leghorns. I asked). Currently, there are approximately ten unique breeds who call the centre home.
Adopters are given a certificate, the opportunity to name their chicken, and a dozen eggs every two weeks from January to September. The program also includes a strong advocacy component, with plenty of photos, newsletters, educational workshops and other speaker events to educate those interested in learning more about the life cycle of a chicken, agriculture, and the poultry industry in general.
Depending on your needs, the public has the option of purchasing day-old heritage chicks at various Peavey Mart locations throughout Alberta, or through the Adopt-a-Heritage Chicken program, the eggs. There is even an option to Adopt-a-Rooster.
The popularity of the program stems from a number of factors, explains Hage.
“The public wants to know where the food comes from, so a lot of our supporters are the kind of people that go to the farmer's market or down the road to buy something from a neighbour. Secondly, people want to be part of something, to know they're putting money towards something that matters.”
Interested in adopting a chicken and receiving a healthy stock of eggs? Visit the website for more details.
Read more about the Poultry Research Centre in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences here.