Shown is the start of what will eventually be a chicken coop on the Wawasee High School campus.

SYRACUSE — Some students who don’t live in an agricultural setting may discover they like working with animals. Knowing this, and considering other factors, work began last week on a building at Wawasee High School that will contain not only a chicken coop, but also a horticulture area.

Approval was given by the Kosciusko County Area Planning Commission and also the county commissioners in July 2016 for the building.

Joan Harden, agriculture and horticulture teacher at the high school, said she wanted to give students who don’t live on a farm experiences of working with animals. “Chickens are fairly easy to raise and it will give the students hands-on experience working with animals,” she said, adding chickens are not very big and there is limited room on the land to be used for the facility.

Also, another goal is to eventually have students doing research projects with chickens such as the different types of feed available and how the chickens react to those feeds.

The chicken coop will cover an area 12 feet by 24 feet on a 30 by 100 foot parcel of land and there will be two separate coops inside, Harden said. One will contain the main egg laying flock and the other an area to raise the baby chicks and for students to do research. The coop will be located near the greenhouse and just west of the building where agriculture classes are held on the high school campus.

There will be roughly 30 to 35 chickens kept and once eggs are laid they can be sent to Purdue University for a nutritional analysis. Breeds of chickens will include ISA brown, Wyandotte, barred Plymouth rock and Ameraucana. Ameraucana is known as an Easter egg chicken because they lay blue or green eggs. The baby chicks were purchased from Big R in Warsaw.

Eggs will be sold after no longer needed and the chickens are being kept only for laying eggs, as well as research.

Originally the idea was for a chicken coop only, Harden noted, but it grew into a horticulture center too. “It will be hands-on for plant science students also,” she said, and there will be flower beds, raised vegetable beds, fruit trees, a composting area and a grape arbor.

Student led and student driven is a theme evolving at Wawasee High School the last few years and quite accurately describes the chicken coop and horticulture center. Engineering students of Allen Coblentz did the design work and blueprints. Jamie McAdams’ Geometry in Construction students are doing the construction work and landscaping students are building the picnic tables, raised flower beds and composting system.

And students will be responsible for the daily care of the chickens, which they have already been doing as some chicks are being raised in a small structure elsewhere.

It is hoped the new facility will be ready for use by the early fall, Harden noted.