Fresh-laid free-range eggs from rare breed hens raised by youngsters as part of their school lessons are going on sale to the general public for the first time.
Ysgol San Sior in Llandudno turned down a deal with supermarket giant Tesco and instead opted to sell specialist eggs through Bodnant Welsh Foods in the Conwy Valley.
The school’s hens – bred from eggs bought from eBay – are cared for by pupils as part of weekly lessons, plus a small group of students who give up their break time to help clean nest-boxes and collect eggs.
Until now the eggs have only been on sale as Wyau San Sior (San Sior Eggs) at the school gate to parents of pupils, with profits ploughed back into the educational budget.
Head teacher Ian Keith Jones revealed: “We turned Tesco and Londis down as they wanted to launch Wyau San Sior. We felt that the link with Bodnant Welsh Food Centre means the children get a great insight into how a successful business operates. In addition, we can sell the eggs in school holiday time, when the hens still lay, but our usual customers in the local community aren’t around.
“We sell them in transparent boxes of seven eggs – one for every day of the week – which vary in colour from pale blue to white to chocolate brown. The labels for the boxes are designed by the children as well.
“Our hens now produce around more than 400 eggs a week and we expect to produce even more soon, including quail’s eggs. In addition, we’ve just had our first hatching from incubated eggs from our own hens, with some even more unusual cross breeds, so we should have a bigger variety of egg colours,” added Mr Jones.
Though he was a novice chicken breeder a year ago, he’s now such an enthusiast that he’s joined Gwynedd Poultry Club and plans to exhibit some the school’s flock at club events and agricultural shows, helped by pupils.
Bodnant Welsh Foods shop supervisor Hayley Roberts is delighted with the new addition to the centre’s range.
She said: “We like to showcase the best artisan produce of Wales. Around 75 per cent of what we sell is from Wales and nearly half is produced here – we make our own cheese and bake our own bread while our meat comes from the Conwy Valley.
“So having eggs that are produced locally while helping to promote numeracy and literacy skills in children, and foster an understanding of both agriculture and business, is in keeping with our aim of being part of the community we serve.”
Ysgol San Sior Eco Ambassador Evie Barrasford, 10, from Llandudno, said: “Our school business is a team effort instead of just a few people. Each week a different class gets to care and look after our chickens. This helps our maths and even our English, by writing articles to doing a tally chart of how many eggs are laid each week. At the end of the week the class shows the whole school what they have been doing.
“In April 2013 each of our classes were given an incubator and eggs – 21 days later each egg in the incubator had hatched, and every single child in the school had witnessed a chick hatch out of an egg.
“When the chicks were ready to move to an outdoor coop we needed somewhere for them to go. They couldn’t stay with the flock of nine Ginger Nut Rangers we already had so Mr Jones thought of the idea of turning the part of land at the back of the school into a chicken coop. We got the money to do this by recycling.
“Once we made our nursery chicken coop, the young chickens happily moved in. But we still had a bit more land that we wanted to extend for our growing flock of nine Ginger Nut Rangers. So we made chicken run for our senior chickens, which meant that they could run around all day and lay more tastier eggs.
“We thought of an idea to sell eggs to parents and the local community. So we asked the egg inspectorate to come and see if we could sell our eggs to parents.
“They said we could but we needed a unique code to stamp them with before we could sell them.
“Once we got our business running we had normal cardboard boxes to hold six eggs in and had a label designed by a graffiti artist who has done other things for our school. But we felt that we weren’t different to everyone else like we wanted to be, so we thought of having seven eggs in a box, one egg a day.”
Also part of the chicken team is Nathan Williams, 11, from Llanrhos, Tayo Lunstram, 10, from Llandudno, and Ethan Thomas, 10, from Llandudno.
“I enjoy looking after the chickens, with the food and water, plus cleaning them out. It’s fun and I think it’s really helped with other things like counting,” said Tayo.
Ethan is looking forward to seeing more of the eggs hatch in the school’s incubator.
He said: “Our first chicks have come out black, though we thought they’d be speckled, and so produce blue eggs when they get old enough, so we’ve no idea what colour their eggs will be. It’s interesting waiting for the chicks to emerge.”
The school has 90-plus laying hens and nine cockerels, along with 29 quail and Chinese golden pheasants, said Nathan.
“We have 17 varieties, all quite unusual – such as Italian Ancona, which lays white eggs, French Copper Maran, with dark brown eggs, and the Lavender Araucana from South America, which has blue eggs. We’ve also Speckled Sussex, Silken Cross, Bluebell, Silver Appenzeller, Ginger Nut Rangers, Old English Game Bantam, American Plymouth Rock and German Langshan,” said Nathan.
The school recently won a Welsh Government Enterprise Trooper contest to find Wales’ savviest students, and have previously won a Tesco competition.
for more information about Bodnant Welsh Food visit www.bodnant-welshfood.co.uk
