Unit 6 — February: Chicken Husbandry, Anatomy, Health, and Care
Description
This unit deepens students' practical understanding of chicken care and management. Students complete a habitat webquest to determine appropriate space, nesting boxes, ventilation, and outside run design. They learn about feed for different life stages and calculate feeding amounts. Daily care routines (warm-up activities) include changing water, providing feed, and cleaning bedding. Students identify chicken breeds, calculate percentages related to breed composition and survival rates, and compare prices. A veterinary component teaches disease and illness identification; students visit stations with model chickens displaying symptoms and practice diagnosis and treatment recommendations. Anatomy is studied through identifying external structures and understanding health indicators.
Essential Questions
- What physical and nutritional environment do chickens need to thrive?
- How do we calculate and manage feed costs and other resource needs?
- How do we identify and respond to chicken health problems?
Learning Objectives
- Design appropriate chicken housing using criteria from habitat webquests.
- Calculate square footage and material requirements for chicken structures.
- Match feed types to chicken life stages and calculate daily feeding amounts.
- Identify chicken breeds and track flock composition using percentages and ratios.
- Identify common poultry diseases and illnesses and recommend treatments.
- Perform basic health assessments using visual and behavioral indicators.
- Explain the relationship between husbandry practices and animal welfare.
Supplemental Resources
- Graph paper and calculators for habitat square footage and percentage calculations
- Index cards with symptom descriptions for chicken disease diagnosis activities
- Markers and colored pencils for designing habitat layouts
- Printed feeds and nutrition guides for matching feed to life stages
Crosscutting Concepts
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Earth and Space Sciences
Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science
Life Sciences
Science and Engineering Practices
Students read informational texts about agriculture, food systems, natural resources, and animal science, and produce written work including research reports, blog posts, portfolio updates, and writing assignments. Students engage in collaborative discussions, present findings to peers, and cite evidence from multiple sources to support claims across all units.
Students apply mathematical reasoning across units including calculating food costs, feed amounts, percent loss, square footage for coop design, lumber quantities, soil nutrient amounts, population graphs for carrying capacity, and data collection and graphing in macroinvertebrate and plant biodiversity studies.
Students conduct hands-on investigations aligned to life science, earth science, and engineering design standards. Topics include plant cell structure, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, genetics and heredity, animal systems, water chemistry, ecosystems, food webs, population dynamics, natural resource management, DNA extraction, and aquaponics and hydroponics system design.
Career readiness, financial literacy, and 21st century skills are embedded in every unit. Students explore agricultural careers, practice agribusiness skills including budgeting and record keeping, develop personal and professional skills through FFA activities, and investigate how education and training affect earning potential in agriculture and related fields.
Formative Assessments
- Observations of students completing habitat webquests and making design decisions
- Pair-and-share discussions identifying chicken breeds and calculating flock statistics
- Lab practical activities diagnosing chicken health problems at model stations
- Self-evaluations and discussions about daily chicken care responsibilities
Summative Assessment
Webquest projects with chicken coop designs, projects analyzing breed composition and prices, lab practicals diagnosing diseases, and portfolio updates
Benchmark Assessment
— not configured —
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through a teacher-led discussion or recorded verbal response explaining chicken housing requirements and feed selection instead of written components. Simplified habitat checklists, labeled diagrams of chicken anatomy, and disease identification cards with images and text support may be provided as needed.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students may benefit from visual and tactile supports during anatomy and health assessment activities, such as labeled diagrams of chicken external structures or physical models to reference during station work. For calculation tasks involving square footage, feeding amounts, and breed percentages, chunking multi-step problems into smaller sequential steps and providing graphic organizers can reduce cognitive load. Oral responses or dictated explanations should be accepted as alternatives to written output during disease diagnosis and daily care reflections. Progress checks at the start of hands-on activities will help ensure students are processing directions accurately before working independently.
Section 504
Students should be given extended time to complete habitat webquest design decisions and any calculation-based tasks involving feeding amounts or breed statistics. Preferential seating near demonstration areas during station-based health assessment activities will support access and focus. Printed copies of on-screen webquest directions and step-by-step task sequences should be available to minimize barriers during multi-part assignments.
ELL / MLL
Key vocabulary related to chicken anatomy, husbandry practices, and poultry health should be introduced with visual supports such as labeled diagrams and picture-supported word banks before instruction begins. Directions for habitat webquests and station activities should be simplified and delivered in short steps, with opportunities for students to restate the task in their own words before proceeding. Where possible, connecting terminology to familiar concepts or home-country agricultural practices can help build meaningful background knowledge for this content.
At Risk (RTI)
Connecting chicken care concepts to observable, hands-on routines — such as daily feeding and health checks — provides accessible entry points for students who benefit from concrete and familiar contexts. Reducing the number of simultaneous variables in calculation tasks, such as focusing on one life stage or one breed at a time before comparing multiple, helps build confidence and mastery progressively. Structured templates for webquest design decisions and disease diagnosis activities can guide students through the thinking process without removing the intellectual challenge of the work.
Gifted & Talented
Students who demonstrate early mastery of husbandry fundamentals can be challenged to investigate the economic and welfare trade-offs of different housing designs or feeding systems at a commercial scale, drawing on real agricultural industry data. Extending the veterinary component to include research on biosecurity protocols, antibiotic stewardship in poultry production, or the role of veterinary oversight in food safety adds meaningful depth beyond symptom identification. Students may also explore breed selection criteria from the perspective of a small-scale farmer or agricultural entrepreneur, integrating cost analysis, sustainability, and animal welfare considerations into a more complex argument or proposal.