New poultry facility at Atwater High School ready for operation

Agriculture students at Atwater High School on Wednesday put the finishing touches on the school’s new chicken coop, a student-driven project aimed at developing farm education and putting extra cash in their pockets.

The school’s agriculture program – which boasts an enrollment of about 900 students – always looks for ways to to increase student involvement, said Dave Gossman, the department chair. The new poultry program is an easy way to pique student interest and get them involved, he said.

“Our program’s goal is to get students involved,” Gossman said. “We use ag as the vehicle to do that, regardless if the students plan on going into ag.”

The new poultry facility was built by students and will be run by students. The facility includes a large chicken coop surrounded by a small grassy yard. The facility is fenced in and accompanied by a shed in an area on the Atwater campus that used to be a garden. On Wednesday, as students finished laying the sod, black and red chickens milled about and nested in the pine shavings that covered the floor of the coop.

Students in all of Gossman’s agriculture classes worked on building the chicken coop starting in late November.

Courtney Creighton, a junior, ordered about 40 chicks on the Internet and raised them on her own to get the process started. Raul Vera, a senior, worked after school every day to complete the chicken coop with poultry adviser Dan Flatt.

The project was made possible through donations, fundraising and district funds, Gossman said. The new facility is valued at more than $25,000.

One of the project’s donors was West Coast Turf, the Livingston company that provided the sod for Levi’s Stadium to host this year’s Super Bowl.

“Unlike the football players, there’s been no complaints from the birds,” Gossman joked, referring to NFL players’ complaints about the Levi Stadium turf being slippery.

The chickens will begin producing three varieties of eggs – white, brown and a blue-green type – somewhere around May. Flatt said to start out, the chickens likely will produce three or four dozen eggs a day in total. Over the summer, students will work to keep the coop maintained and sell the eggs in the community. The proceeds will cover the cost of production, but a portion of the money will also go back to individual students. Flatt said once the project is up and running, he hopes to have 15 to 20 students involved.

Creighton, who has nearly six years of experience working with poultry, said caring for the chickens is relatively easy. Chicken feed and water must be available to the birds at all times, the chickens must have a place to roost and lay eggs, and occasionally their claws may need to be clipped, she said.

“It gives kids the opportunity to learn to market their product,” she said. “They’ll learn how often the chickens produce and what goes into it. It’s the whole ‘farm to fork’ concept.”

For Vera, working on the facility was a way to put his shop skills to use and pick up construction skills.

Vera said he ended up using the poultry facility for his senior project, and Flatt was his mentor.

“If I wouldn’t have been able to be involved, I wouldn’t have learned about surveying skills, laying concrete or roofing. It made me more interested in construction.”

Flatt said the project provides ag experience to students who otherwise might not be exposed to the industry.

“Most kids are urban, either from the city of Atwater or Winton,” he said. “This was something easy and they can do the whole thing, from gathering and cleaning the eggs to marketing their product.

“A lot of students don’t even know the poultry industry exists, even with Foster Farms right next door.”

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 1:49 PM with the headline "New poultry facility at Atwater High School ready for operation."