Why Manitoba must end classroom hatching programs

What came first, the chicken or the egg? If you ask a hatch-kit classroom, it’s the incubator. When we replace a mother with a machine, we should ask what we are really teaching students.

Spring is right around the corner in Manitoba, and loud is the call from hatching-kit companies to educators to reserve their own egg-and-chick order. Hatching kits, or “hatch kits,” are commercial packages that provide fertilized eggs and incubators, allowing chicks or ducklings to be hatched in classrooms, community spaces, and private homes for short-term use.

Hatch kits have been used in Canadian schools for decades, but their popularity has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic as private businesses began to peddle them for education. Kits run $180 -$349, depending on the company, with everything you need to hatch your own chicks or ducklings.

At first glance, these kits may seem to teach empathy, responsibility, and respect for life. Yet, hatching kits send the opposite message to students. They normalize the idea that animals can be created on demand for entertainment or convenience, with little consideration for what happens after the lesson ends. Considering this harmful messaging, along with animal welfare concerns and public health risks, hatch kits have no place inside our schools.

When we know better, we must teach better.

We are becoming increasingly aware of the interconnectedness of our world. How we treat animals is how we treat people, and how we manage our earth is how our children will live.

Hatch-kit companies often emphasize their “no-commitment” model, where chicks are returned to partner farms after the unit ends. Except, animals are a commitment. Keeping an animal only while they are new and low maintenance teaches the wrong lesson, that animals are worth caring for only when it’s exciting. This is the same mindset that leads dogs to be surrendered when they are no longer puppies or rabbits to be abandoned after Easter.

Chickens are already arguably the most abused animal on the planet, and now they are marketed as educational tools. Often missing from hatch kits is any information on welfare standards, education about animal sentience or ethical considerations.

Ducks and chickens are sentient beings with complex social, developmental, and health needs. Artificial incubation cannot replace the care given by a mother hen, who carefully maintains the temperature, humidity, and egg turning (sometimes up to 30 times a day) to ensure the chick develops properly. A hen communicates with her chicks through soft clucking before they hatch. Her chicks in turn, respond to her with chirps from inside the egg. When you remove the mother from the nesting and hatching process, students are left with a misleading lesson on animal life cycles.

Roughly 50 per cent of chicks hatched are male. Male chicks grow into roosters who do not lay eggs and are not used for meat. In the commercial egg industry, male chicks are macerated (shredded) live shortly after birth. Some local hatch-kit providers run small farms and take the birds back once hatched, to be layer hens. But as males do not lay eggs, we do not know what becomes of them.

Health and safety also pose concerns. Chicks and ducklings can carry salmonella and other bacteria, posing real risks to young children with their developing immune systems. Strict cleanliness is required; how well this is enforced varies.

Allergies should be considered, and some school districts have banned hatch projects for these reasons. Seattle Public Schools implemented a ban on hatching projects after learning about the disease risks. In New York, State Assembly Bill 2025-A140 seeks to prohibit animal-hatching projects in schools due to ethical concerns.

Finally, hatch kits beg the question: should children be allowed access to such delicate babies, freshly hatched? As a mother who works in public education, I would say no. Part of the appeal of hatch kits is the “hands-on learning,” aspect, which means, well, handling. Unintended squeezing, dropping and rough handling of the chicks are real risks. As you can imagine, there are many well-documented tragic endings from these projects.

Do hatch kits promise novelty and a structured lesson for busy teachers? Sure.

But are there alternatives that meet curriculum outcome targets and encourage critical thinking, compassion, responsibility, and science-informed biology? Absolutely.

Humane education offers far better options. Virtual hatch-cams, visits to farmed animal sanctuaries (such as local Little Red Barn or Free from Farm sanctuaries), lessons on animal behaviour and sentience, and age-appropriate discussions about our responsibilities toward animals allow students to learn without causing harm.

Teaching children to understand and respect life means modelling that animals are not props to hatch and discard at the end of the lesson. Animals are not tools or toys.

It is time for Manitoba school divisions, and the provincial government, to ban classroom hatching programs and invest in considerate, responsible alternatives that truly prepare students to be the compassionate and critical-thinking leaders the world needs.

Danae Tonge is the organizer of Manitoba Animal Save.