A cracking morning with the Baxter’s 🐣🐔🌾

Wellies on, jackets zipped, excitement real.. Leswalt were off to visit the Baxter’s at Glenhead! 🥚As part of their topic work this term, Primary 1-3 have been learning about farming, while Primary 4-7 have been looking at the ‘food journeys;’ the perfect opportunity to visit P1 Jack’s farm and find out about egg production and their travels after leaving Leswalt.. 🛻

After the muddy hike up through the Wetlands we were greeted by the full Baxter flock; Andrew, David, Jonathan, Rachel and James! First up, we ventured to site 3 where we saw thousands of eggs crated up ready to be picked up. The Baxter family explained that the eggs have a special number on them, which makes them identifiable where ever they go, almost like a passport. They explained that the good eggs will be sold in shops like Tesco and the Coop, while the cracked eggs will be used to make egg whites – so no waste! The boys hand girls had loaaads of questions about the eggs size and colour and speckles.. 🥚. We learned that eggs can be white, brown or even blue?! In perfect timing, the delivery man came to collect the eggs and took them away in his big van.

Afterwards, we ventured across to a different shed, where we had to dip our wellies in special water. James explained that to keep all the chickens safe and prevent disease spreading, everybody and ever vehicle must disinfect before entering a shed. When we got inside we were wowed by the machinery. We met Colin, who was in charge of sorting the eggs and removing any ‘bad’ eggs before they were sorted into egg boxes.

Then.. we stepped inside the chicken shed and were greeted by hundreds and hundreds of little beady eyes and lots of feathers! It was surprising to see just how many chickens were inside the shed! 🐔 The chickens seemed just as happy to see us. Andrew explained that they are flock animals so enjoy spending time close to their hen friends and depending on the time of year they came to live at Glenhead, how much they enjoy going outside.

Afterwards, we were shown where the dung is kept. We were expecting a whole pile of rubbish, but were pleasantly surprised by how clean the shed was (for a dung shed of course!). James explained that Glenhead was the first of it’s kind and that the poo powers the farm! The electricity made from recycling the chicken poo was used to power all the machines we saw earlier – how cool! 🙂

A huge big thank you to the Baxter family for bringing our learning to life and giving up their time to show us around their amazing chicken farm! 🐔🥚