The time has come again for the St. Louis school chapter of FFA to raise meat chickens for the Broiler Contest. During this contest, three groups of five students will take the chickens to get butchered and then the best are picked to be taken to the contest.
There are many valuable experiences that are gathered from a contest like: how to be responsible, caring for another life, and how to work with other students. Mrs. DeGroft says, “I am most looking forward to the experience that this will bring to my students. As a teacher who has not done this before, and having students that have not gone through this, it is a really fun opportunity, and a student can learn a lot from this.”
An animal like a meat chicken is raised with the purpose of being killed to feed people. It’s a sad reality, but yet it is still reality. It’s one of the biggest struggles for the students participating. Putting that much time and effort into raising chickens and having to watch them die is hard. Senior, and president of FFA, Rebekah Ross recounts, “The biggest struggle with this contest is having to process them once they are fully grown. Maybe not all, but I come to appreciate the work this small contest takes, and I have started to like the chickens. Overcoming it can be difficult. I almost cried my freshman year when I first participated in the processing. You have to accept that the purpose of these chickens is to eat them, and that is why they were created. It’s like raising a market animal for the fair. You spend so long and put so much effort into these animals that watching them get butchered can be really hard to accept.”
The students are quite content now with the small animals, but the birds are getting bigger everyday.
