25-05-2025
At this school, chickens and students are growing up together
On a sunny morning in a small courtyard at Walt Whitman Middle School, a 14-year-old with a purple buzz cut cradled a plump chicken in her arms.
'Her name is Betsy,' Maicy Nealy, an eighth-grader at the Alexandria school, said as the animal's eyes softly fluttered shut in her lap.
Nealy used to be afraid of chickens as a young child. Now she spends hours after school collecting their eggs and cleaning the coop for the school's five hens. And though she says she was never an outdoorsy type, she feeds them their worm meals as well.
