Chickens Return to Sonoma State

[Shepherd]

Chickens Return to Sonoma State

By Shepherd Bliss

A small flock of chickens made a triumphant return to SSU on Oct. 20, delighting students, staff, and faculty with their playful antics. The Sustainability Work Group (SWG) invited them to a Sustainability Day. They were contained in a mobile coop located near the new Farm Stand at the front of Stevenson Hall, which is there on Wednesdays over lunchtime. The chickens accompanied a webcast presentation happening nearby on how to start a campus sustainability movement.

The winged ones frolicked together in an elegant eight-foot high “chicken tractor” build over the weekend by Ryan Hammes and Ryan Fitzpatrick of the Rec Center, whose mission statement includes a commitment to sustainability. In the bottomless unit they could engage in the typical chicken activity of “scratching,” in this case consuming grass. Philosophy professor Zeno Swijtink, a chicken owner himself, provided kitchen scraps, which animated the fowl as they competed playfully for human food, such as strawberry leftovers and corn kernels. Yum! Yum!

Chickens that originated from Chile, Poland, Australia, Rhode Island and a Native American tribe visited their two-legged relatives—humans. The group of visitors to the chickens who stayed the longest were the two- and three-year-olds from the Children’s School at the edge of campus near the Environmental Technology Center, the garden, and Copeland Creek, three elements of SSU’s ongoing sustainability efforts. They sat on the grass and looked eye-to-eye with their new feathered friends.

The chickens were on loan from John Taylor. He maintains them at Cosmic Eggs, which is located at the award-winning Laguna Farm about 20 minutes from campus, south of Sebastopol, where it maintains a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation. People can subscribe and get a weekly basket of local food.

Since the land that SSU occupies was built on what used to be Fred Rohnert’s farm, it is likely that chickens were in residence here even before the large number of that other two-legged that currently occupy this turf. Rohnert Park, Cotati, and Penngrove are part of the outer reach of what used to be the “egg capital of America”—Petaluma.

“Why do you have these chickens here today?” a number of people asked. SSU freshman Mac Hart of the First Year Experience (FYE) community, who currently does an internship at a local farm, was one of the chicken tenders. “The value of having chickens here is giving SSU students a glimpse of an alternative method of feeding and providing for ourselves,” the Environmental Studies and Planning major noted.

“Chickens are great to recycle foodstuff and get compost for the vegetable garden,” Prof. Swijtink commented in an email. Political Science professor John Kramer noted, “I heard the chickens from my office, so I came by to see them. I think it is wonderful.” Students with brightly-colored hula hoops stopped by at least twice and gazed with smiles into the chickens’ new home.

“Your chickens are so cute,” a student from Los Angeles observed, where it is legal to have chickens, as her family does. A former SSU student who now works at SSU’s Dialogue Center, Lily Rex, reported that “a couple of years ago I called the City of Rohnert Park to see if I could raise chickens here. I was told that I could not.” However, in nearby Cotati, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Santa Rosa, and Petaluma, chickens are legal. Perhaps an appeal can be made to the Rohnert Park City Council to legalize this other two-legged.

One local student now at SSU, freshman Rudi Schlaepfer, reported the following: “I grew up with chickens here in Rohnert Park. It was a feeling of responsibility. We had to look after them. Then we got fresh eggs.” A flock of chickens taken care of by a human family can indeed have benefits for both creatures. “We need to do things locally,” added first year student Tyler Stenzel. “We need to have more chickens in backyards.”

I must admit that I been called a “chicken man.” I consider chickens my “power animal.” They are prey, which have a lot to teach their two-legged relative, who are predators. For each of the three years that I have taught at SSU I have brought chickens to my classes as Teaching Assistants.

“Chicken Wisdom” titles a chapter that I have published in a psychology book. Among the many things that humans can learn from chickens are the following: greet each day with enthusiasm, enjoy the flight, show your beauty, delight in simple things, keep dancing, recycle, snuggle into the Earth, cuddle at night, slow down, protect the vulnerable, persist, let go, and express gratitude.

The chickens demonstrated that sustainability can be both educational and fun. They contributed to a successful community-building day that involved many elements of the SSU village.

(Shepherd Bliss teaches Humanities, FYE, and a Leadership course at SSU and can be reached at [email protected].)