20/10/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/18NcCofRfe/
We’ve become so disconnected from animals that we no longer recognize what’s missing from their lives.
Today, a social media post celebrating a classroom chick-hatching project appeared in our news feed. Students had spent 21 days watching eggs develop in an incubator before celebrating the arrival of baby chicks. It was presented as a heartwarming lesson about the beginning of life. Someone was missing from that lesson: their mother.
In nature, a mother hen carefully incubates her eggs, turning them, keeping them warm, and even communicating with her developing babies through soft vocalizations before they hatch. When her babies emerge, she’s there to protect them, shelter them beneath her wings, and teach them about the world around them.
Instead, we place eggs in an incubator, wait 21 days, and celebrate as babies emerge into a world without their mother. Then we call it a lesson about the cycle of life.
Have we become so accustomed to treating animals as “things” that we no longer recognize what’s been taken from them?
We could be teaching children about the extraordinary bonds between mothers and their young, the remarkable ways chickens communicate, and the responsibility humans have toward the animals whose lives we affect. There are educational resources that teach embryonic development without bringing more animals into the world.
Because there’s another reality these projects often overlook. Approximately half of the chicks will be male, growing into roosters in a world where safe, lifelong homes are already heartbreakingly difficult to find. Sanctuaries and rescues are continually contacted about unwanted roosters, including those hatched in classrooms.
They are not disposable teaching materials. They are living, feeling individuals whose lives matter long after the classroom lesson ends.
Somewhere along the way, we became so fascinated with watching babies hatch that we forgot there was supposed to be a mother.
Perhaps it’s time we started teaching children that part of the lesson, too. ❤️
