BY AMELIA POSSANZA

In print | Published October 22, 2009

The Swarthmore Chickens project proposal to bring 15 hens to campus was approved by the administration this Tuesday.

In late September, Nick Vogt ’12 and Sarah Scheub ’12 submitted a final proposal to Jeff Jabco, Scott Arboretum’s Director of Grounds and Coordinator of Horticulture . It was then passed along to Vice President for Facilities and Services Stu Hain and the president’s staff. The pair worked with Hain over fall break to clarify some final points before the project was discussed again Tuesday.
“It lets us move forward,” Vogt said of the decision. “[But] there are some other things we still need to figure out before we actually see chickens.”

The project still needs to secure funding, but the approval to move forward will help them, as many of the options the pair is looking into require institutional approval.

The other obstacle they face is securing approval from the Swarthmore Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. The committee, made up of Swarthmore faculty, staff and community members, oversees the care of any animals kept by the school and ensures that USDA standards are met.

“It’s not just a matter of someone at Swarthmore approving it,” Scheub said. “It’s the whole committee. They’re really scrutinizing it.”

The cultural nature of the chicken project complicates approval. While there are clear guidelines for farming animals and research animals, it is unclear which category these animals fall into since they will be used to educate students about farming and to produce a small number of eggs. Currently, the pair is working with the biology department to ensure that the treatment of the chickens will meet requirements for both scenarios.

“The IACUC is willing to work with us,” Scheub said. “[But] it’s really changed the timeline.”
The chicks will arrive as early as December or as late as January. The initial proposed date was November. This setback is in part due to the time it will take to meet IACUC guidelines, but is also a consequence of the chickens that the pair has chosen.

Scheub said that it’s “important to maintain heritage breeds,” which means that the chickens have not bred for favorable traits but, rather, hatch only at certain times of the year. Vogt and Scheub hope to get some of the animals that hatch in November.

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