In the winter, the Lake Placid Elementary School’s chickens enjoy a cozy indoor coop, a heat lamp and plentiful water kept from freezing by the warm interior. (News photo — Sydney Emerson)

LAKE PLACID — Since 2016, Lake Placid Elementary School has been home to a flock of nine chickens. They eat scraps from the cafeteria, serve as the focal point of some lessons and entertain the students at recess. But what happens to them when the weather turns “fowl,” like during this most recent snowstorm?

“They hang out a lot inside during the wintertime, but just like us, when the weather gets a little nicer, the sun starts shining, they’ll pop their heads out and visit,” said LPES Principal Sonja Franklin.

The chickens have a cozy indoor coop equipped with a heat lamp and a heated water bowl for the winter. Their door to the outside is open, so they have the opportunity to frolic in the snow, but Franklin said that they rarely take advantage of that option. Chickens have poor depth perception, so they are wary of walking on the snow. If LPES staff pack down the snow, though, the chickens can sometimes be coaxed outside.

Franklin spearheaded the addition of the chickens to the LPES garden in 2016, a year after she came to the school. When she moved to Lake Placid in 2015 from western New York, she brought her own flock with her.

“I really enjoyed not only having the fresh eggs but also learning about chickens and the idioms that come from them,” she said. “I learned all about how henpecking is and ‘all your ducks and a row’ and all those things.”

Lake Placid Elementary School Principal Sonja Franklin holds one of the school’s nine chickens. (News photo — Sydney Emerson)

LPES has a vegetable garden during the warm months and a year-round hydroponic garden that grows herbs for the cafeteria. Franklin said that the chickens strengthened the school’s culture of introducing students to fresh, local foods.

“We thought that this would really add more to that farm-to-table understanding and feel that the kids have … that idea that kids can really see where food can come from,” she said. “They can see how you can recycle (food waste) and how the chickens, as part of that life cycle, go through and take some of the ‘garbage,’ or our waste, and turn it into something else, being the eggs.”

The school has a “chicken curriculum” available to all teachers with lessons spanning different grade levels and subjects, all based around the chickens. Some lessons include learning about the chicken life cycle and how to properly feed the chickens. Chicks are hatched every year by the third grade.

“We have a webcam on them so kids and families can watch the hatching process and they can see that not only in school, but if they happen to be home and they hatch during the weekend, they can see that process as well,” Franklin said. “Which has been interesting because they also see what happens if the chicken can’t make its way out of the egg, that natural defense mechanism for the species that shows the kids sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes some of our chickens die and the kids have seen that, too.”

Franklin said it’s important that the kids learn about the entire life cycle of the chickens, even the sad parts. Students are fond of the chickens, and can often be found hanging around the coop at recess, having conversations with the flock and feeding them clover through the wire fence. They have the opportunity to help name any new chickens, too.

Lake Placid Elementary School Principal Sonja Franklin visits with the school's flock. The nine chickens are a hit with students, who get the opportunity to feed and name them throughout the year. With their coop located next to the playground, they are frequent participants in recess. (News photo — Sydney Emerson)

Some students even go the extra mile and convince their family to sign up to take care of the chickens throughout the week.

“Our major, as I call them, ‘chicken tenders’ are families,” Franklin said. “I put a call out each year to see if there are some volunteers out there, some families that would like to take care of the chickens. I have a calendar that we use and they sign up for a day of the week. … They make sure (the chickens) have water and food, and any eggs that the chickens lay, that family can take home that day.”

The chickens’ eggs cannot be used in the LPES cafeteria due to health inspection rules. Since the school does not have a system for grading the eggs — that’s a USDA measure for the quality of the eggs — in the way that large farms do. The eggs are fresh and high-quality, though, and there is nothing that prevents the school from giving them away to local families. Franklin said that it’s a good system for family involvement: families and students get to take home extremely fresh eggs and the school is assured that the chickens will always be well taken care of.

The school’s eggs last 45 to 60 days after being taken home since they are fresh from the coop, whereas store-bought eggs were likely laid around 30 days previously and may only have a week or two of freshness left. Additionally, the egg white is more viscous and the yolk is a bright, sunny orange, as opposed to a store-bought egg’s thicker, drier white and pale yellow yolk.

“They’re sweet animals, they really are,” Franklin said. “They’re a lot of fun. The kids will interact. We’ve got some (chickens) that like to be picked up and held, we’ve got some that don’t want anything to do with that. They each have their own unique personalities. … What a great way that kids can really see how we take care of ourselves, food-wise.”

Lake Placid Elementary School Principal Sonja Franklin, the school's self-proclaimed "chicken lady," poses with the large stuffed chicken that lives in her office. Franklin spearheaded the addition of a flock to the school's garden in 2016. (News photo — Sydney Emerson)