88 animal, vegetable, miraclethrew back her shoulders and announced, “I had to start my own chicken
business this morning.”
The secretary said without blinking, “Oh, okay, farming,” and entered
the code for “Excused, Agriculture.” Just another day at our elementary
school, where education comes in many boxes.
/I already knew what we’d be in for when we got the baby chicks home.
I’d been through the same drill a week earlier with my own poultry proj-
ect: fifteen baby turkeys. I’d lifted each one out of the box and they hit the
ground running, ready to explore the newspaper- lined crate I’d set up in
the garage. Right away they set about pecking at every newsprint comma
and period they could find. These peeps were hungry, which meant they
were born two days earlier. Poultry hatchlings don’t need to eat or drink
for the fi rst forty- eight hours of life, as they are born with a margin of
safety called the yolk sac—the yolk of the egg absorbed into the chick’s
belly just before hatching. This adaptation comes in handy for birds like
chickens and turkeys that have to get up and walk right away, following
Mom around to look for something edible. (Other baby birds live in a nest
for the first weeks, waiting for a parent to bring takeout.) Newborn poul-
try can safely be put in a box right after hatching and shipped anyplace
they’ll reach in two days. Some animal- rights groups have tried to make
an issue of it, but mail- order chicks from reputable hatcheries have virtu-
ally a 100 percent survival rate.
Until I opened up the box and let in the sunlight, my poultry babies
must have presumed they’d spent their last two days of incubation in an
upgraded, community egg. Now they were out, with yolk- sac tummies
crying, Time’s up! I scattered a handful of feed around the bottom of their
crate. Some of the less gifted pushed the food aside so they could keep
pecking at the attractive newsprint dots. Oh, well, we don’t grow them for
their brains. I filled a shallow water container and showed them how to
drink, which they aren’t born knowing how to do. They are born, in fact,
knowing a good deal of the nothing a turkey brain will ever really grasp,
but at this stage their witlessness was lovable. I picked up each one and
dipped its tiny beak into the water. Soon they caught on and it was the