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Benefits

There are many benefits to having free-range chickens at Swarthmore.

Educational:
  • Students gain hands on knowledge in the fields of Agriculture and Sustainability.
    • Student volunteers will learn the skills that are required to care for the chickens. These skills might be useful later in a student's life if they decide to take on a small-scale agricultural project.

  • Students from the Engineering Department are provided with an opportunity to use the skills they have learned for a practical application.
    • Students are being involved in shed building, feed/water system design, and solar power equipment construction. Professor Carr Everbach has agreed to include this project as a laboratory activity in his Solar Energy Systems class this fall.

  • Students not directly involved in the project will be provided the opportunity to learn about sustainable agriculture and local food production through the showing of documentaries, guest speakers, regular project demonstrations, informational signs, and discussions with student volunteers.

    • Community:
  • Club Despertar, a bilingual tutoring program serving English-as-a-second-language students in a largely Mexican-American elementary school in Kennett Square, will incorporate visits to the coop into their program.
    • Kids involved in Club Despertar will become involved with the project by getting demonstrations of chicken caretaking. This experience will hopefully transfer back to their community and give them the confidence and skills it takes to possibly start their own project.

  • Environmental Justice is interested in using the chicken project as a model for the Chester Community Garden.
    • Members of the EJ Chester Garden have expressed interest in looking into eventually incorporating chickens at their garden and are excited to use our project as a model.

  • The Borough of Swarthmore by will become more connected with the College.
    • Citizens of the Borough of Swarthmore will be invited to attend demonstrations and workshops up at the chicken coop, and will also be given the opportunity to buy local eggs produced at the College through the Swarthmore Co-op.

    Nutritional:
  • Eggs that are consumed by students will be fresh, locally grown, organic, and free-range.
    • According to lab results from the USDA-funded Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education program, eggs of free-range chickens contained 34% less cholesterol, 10% less fat, 40% more vitamin A, twice as much omega-6 fatty acid, and four times as much omega-3 fatty acid as the USDA standard.

    Environmental:
  • Decreased carbon footprint created to feed Swarthmore students.
    • There will be no shipping, therefore decreasing the amount of fuel used. Solar powered net fencing will keep the coop safe from predators without using any electricity. 
With the use of a chicken tractor, pasture will be rotated daily and no fuel will be needed to mow the lawn in that area.

  • Kitchen scraps can be composted via the chickens.

  • Manure collected from coop can be composted and used in the campus gardens.

  • Potential long-term environmental benefits.
    • In the long term, providing small-scale agricultural education to students and community members will increase the likelihood that those individuals will take on their own small-scale agricultural projects later on in like, thereby reducing food packaging waste, transportation and refrigeration energy, and kitchen waste sent to landfills.

    Practical:
  • The project is economical with minimal start-up costs, and almost no management costs.
    • The money used from egg sales will be put back into buying supplemental organic feed.