Half a dozen chickens are enjoying their first winter at a community space in Juneau that’s become their new home.
On a dark, 20-degree afternoon in Juneau, the Zach Gordon Youth Center is bustling. Just a few steps from the front door sits the center’s recreation coordinator Amanda Lovejoy.
“It’s a great place,” she said. “Kids get to come in [and] they can do their homework, they can hang out with their friends. We have a lot of resources we can connect youth with.”
Lovejoy is usually in charge of sports programs and scholarships, but lately, she’s earned an additional job title — the “chicken expert.”
“I used to have chickens,” Lovejoy said. “I had three chickens for several years. So it was just natural for me to slide into it here.”
Inside a small gated area behind the youth center, she’s greeted by six hens strutting over frosted hay. Because this is Alaska, they have a heated water bowl and a cozy henhouse, illuminated with red lights.
“The fun thing is watching them run,” Lovejoy said. “They really do look like little dinosaurs when they’re running.”
The youth center took them in as chicks earlier this year and the now fully grown hens are not just for show. They’re here to serve a purpose.
“The purpose is to have the eggs, really,” Lovejoy said. “The kids are involved in taking care of them and coming in and spending time with them and helping raise them. It’s been fun for everybody.”
The kids who come to Zach Gordon after school bring the hens treats and scour the chicken coop for eggs, but Lovejoy still does the dirty work, like cleaning up poop.
Back inside, some of the youth center’s biggest chicken enthusiasts are climbing the youth center’s indoor rock wall. One of them, 10-year-old Warren Ploof, is eager to chat about the center’s resident farm animals.
“I like going out there and petting them and picking them up,” he said. “I like the white one. Its name is like Mocha or something.”
Warren also loves going outside to look for eggs.
“We once found like 21 [eggs] or something at the same time because they hadn’t checked it in a while,” he said. “They have a little nest and [the hens] just lay the eggs in there.”
Warren is no stranger to being around chickens either. His family used to have some of their own. Now, he gets a kick out of hanging out with the Zach Gordon hens after school.
“Sometimes if you’re eating raisins, they crowd you or if you’re eating any food, they just crowd you,” Warren said. “It’s just fun because they jump on top of you and try to peck you.”
In the kitchen, volunteer Annie Bonino-Britsch pulls out a tray of eggs, all labeled with the date they were found. The youth center uses the fresh eggs to make meals for the kids and bake cookies with them. Bonino-Britsch said they’ve been trying different methods to get the hens to lay more eggs, like feeding them cayenne and red pepper flakes.
“Chickens don’t have the taste buds to taste spiciness,” Bonino-Britsch said. “So they can’t tell that it’s spicy, but it’s supposed to help them increase the number of eggs that they lay and improve the color and quality of the yolk.”
Warren said he doesn’t come to the youth center as often as he used to because he’s gotten busy with other after-school activities, but he still likes to visit the Zach Gordon chickens as often as he can.
