TEXAS NEIGHBORS | SUMMER 2023 By Emmy Powell Communications Specialist County Farm Bureaus in East Texas hatched an idea to bring agriculture to classrooms in the area. The new program, Eggcellence in the Classroom, encourages students and teachers to learn more about poultry production. Nacogdoches, Jefferson, Tyler, Jasper, Polk and Houston County Farm Bureaus purchased egg in-cubators for local classrooms so students could experience the beginning stages of a chicken’s life cycle. “We knew there was a need to get into the schools to incor-porate agriculture,” Jodie Goff, Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) Area 9 field representative, said. “After visiting with a teacher, we dis-cussed ways we could incorpo-rate agriculture. Life cycles are an important lesson for elementary classes, and we realized the best way to incorporate life cycles and agriculture would be bringing in an incubator.” The county Farm Bureaus sup-ply the 30-day incubator, eggs and curriculum. Goff said the program quickly became popular within the East Texas classrooms. Nacogdoches County Farm Bureau was the first to purchase an incubator, and now the county organization has seven. Since beginning the program in March, 30 classrooms have hatched chicks through the fun and educational program. “County Farm Bureaus have made the initial investment with buying incubators and provides the curriculum, as well,” Goff said. “This program helps bring agriculture to the classroom and builds relationships between the county Farm Bureaus and local teachers.” Goff said that teachers are already signing up to bring the incubators to their classrooms next year. One teacher who was excited to sign up again is Nacogdoches High School biology teacher Roya Dinbali. “The students loved this proj-ect. With each egg that would hatch, they would get more ex-cited,” Dinbali said. “This allowed me to show them how to be a good steward of animals and how to help them grow.” She noted they discussed how the eggs grew and evaluated the eggs in each class, breaking down each stage. “I recommend this program to all teachers. Students don’t get to see this stuff often. They may just see a chicken outside at their Courtesy photo WWW.TEXASFARMBUREAU.ORG