This week on Inspire, we're sharing a Kansas story that's changing how children learn and how compassion is taught.

Meet the women behind Hatching Kindness.

Coming up next on Inspire.

Inspire is sponsored by the Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation, and by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith.

Hello.

Welcome to inspire.

I'm always thrilled to be here with my beautiful co-host, Lesley Fleuranges.

What if I told you that there's a unique and compassionate initiative changing how kids learn about animals?

This Kansas-grown project is touching hearts far beyond farm fences.

And trust me, this is not your typical science project.

To share with us about Hatching Kindness.

We're joined by Chris Taylor, founder of Shy 38 Incorporated, and Elizabeth Wallace, curriculum specialist for Shy 38 Incorporated.

We are so glad that you are here, and I've been so excited about this since I first saw it online, which is amazing.

And we're going to talk about chickens.

But there's more to Shy 38 and for.

Thank you so much for what you're doing to rescue.

Who do you have there besides chickens?

We are a vegan farm sanctuary in Lawrence, Kansas, and it is home to about 200 animals, chickens, cows, sheep, goats, horses, pigs, turkeys.

Just your typical farm animals.

Most of them are birds.

Yeah.

And I, they rescue animals.

Or are they, they are, they are.

They come from different places.

We have pigs that have fallen off of transport trucks on the highways.

We have, owner relinquished animals, animals, that needed a place, as a part of a divorce situation, that kind of thing.

A lot of dumped chickens, mostly roosters.

Our Humane society might contact us occasionally about, an animal, that kind of thing.

It takes a very empathetic and special person as the both of you are.

How did you decide?

Hey, I'm just going to be the one to do it.

No.

Well, it wasn't my, life's dream.

In 2015, my family lived in a house.

We rented a house next to a farmer's herd of cattle, and, my kids were little then.

And, of course, kids love animals.

So they were drawn to them.

We we'd watch them.

I'd never been that close to a cow before.

So we didn't know until then that they all had, you know, individual personalities, likes and dislikes.

They love their babies.

They play.

They weren't that much different from the dogs that we share our homes with.

The kids name them, and they, they've learned their names just like dogs.

And, we'd see them.

Most of them come back after year after year.

We'd see them grieve when their babies were taken away.

And, so I thought, what's right in the middle of cattle country?

Of course.

So that there were there's farms.

There's farms everywhere.

But I wasn't so sure if I would find anyone with cows that were rescuing them or were just able to live peacefully.

And of course, I didn't find that.

And so I thought maybe other people could benefit from this type of experience.

Right.

And, so Shy 38, was born.

The namesake is one of those cows from that original herd.

She her ear tag was just 38, so she was just known.

Known by that.

But she was, one of the cows that always kind of stood in the back and was curious, but never got real friendly with us.

So that's that's where our name, her name came from.

And, now we have cows of our own, and, Helen is one of them.

She was rescued a rescue dairy cow.

And, had a horrible start in life.

But is just so friendly and loves attention and loves people.

So, I get a lot of feedback about her.

People that have visited, they'll contact me later and say, you know what, I. I don't eat meat anymore.

But Helen, you know, she's just like my dog or, you know, that, that kind of thing.

So, so.

And how did how do people get to interact with the the animals that you have on the farm?

We do public events spring through fall.

We also do private tours, which are very popular.

People get to come and, you know, you walk in guided tours and we meet everyone.

There are some that come from really bad places and don't like human interaction, and that's fine.

So but we do interact with the ones like Helen, you know, that that enjoy it.

People are able to, you know, give them treats, maybe brush them, you can hug them, which is always great because it's good therapy.

Yes.

Well, we're going to let's be hatching here.

What where did this even come from?

I did not realize that students hatched eggs in classrooms.

Yeah.

So it's a really popular experiment.

You know, kind of a science.

Experiment to teach the life cycle.

And it is pretty prevalent in most schools.

I originally started working with Chris about, a children's camp, which we're working on, you know, hoping to get that off the ground pretty soon.

But in the meantime, we kind of found this immediate need of, you know, when there are chickens hatched in the classroom, about half of them are going to be roosters.

And you don't find out until about, you know, what, four weeks, four months on foremost, you don't find out until that four months after.

Oh, you're so right.

So you hatch all these chickens and, you know, it's cool, it's interactive.

But then what do you do with them?

Well, you send them to the only sanctuary in Kansas and they're full.

So it was kind of an immediate need of, can we reduce this?

Is there something that we can do?

You know, I joke that our curriculum is almost the path of least resistance.

You know?

You know, there's no coming in on the weekends to check on the chickens.

There's no having to explain what happened.

If, you know, one of the eggs doesn't hatch or, you know, something happens.

So, that's kind of how it came about, is can we reduce it?

Can we give an alternative that is just as engaging, just as interactive, just as memorable without, having that live component to it?

So, you are the director of curriculum, correct?

What does that mean?

In the, in the sense of a of a farm?

Yeah.

So, I was looking for ways that I could get involved.

I work a full time job.

You know, getting out to the farm is a little difficult.

So I was trying to think of other ways that I could be an advocate.

I could be a volunteer.

I could give back.

So in my.

I was a public school teacher for a long time.

And now I work as a senior training developer.

So I have kind of a unique set of skills where, you know, I have I can reach an audience of all different people.

I have a background of designing, curriculum and instruction.

And, we really thought we could make something with this.

So we kind of got together and brainstormed and then put it together.

So it's been really fun to see it grow because we don't want, after they are hatched in the classroom.

They don't want like a our director was saying, well, maybe people just think that, hey, they can take him to Animal Farm and they'll take him, but then you'd have to worry about bird flu or any kind of other thing.

Yeah.

So you have a lovely.

Yeah.

Little, show and tell here.

Yeah.

And I love it.

Will you explain this?

Of course.

So there's a lot of components in the curriculum itself.

It's a three week program, about two days a week.

The lifecycle of the egg is about 21 days.

So this replaces that.

It's a little interactive kit.

And this comes from Animal Learn, which is a company that we partnered with.

They have a lending bank.

So they have all these resources.

You just submit it and they send you a package.

Right.

This is something that comes in that package.

And there are individual eggs inside of here.

And they're numbered one through 21, one for each day.

And when you open up the egg, if I can get this one to open, I can pick it up.

It shows you the life cycle up to that point.

Yeah.

So when you open up the egg, you can see there's a chicken inside of it and it has the number at the bottom.

And which number is this one's day 11 day.

So you can see what the chick actually looks like inside of the shell on day 11, which is something that you can't do with a traditional egg.

You know, you can't see inside of it, right?

So this is pretty fun.

They open one a day on the on Mondays.

They would open some for the weekend.

And then at the very end, the day 21 has a little chicken, a little chicken side, which is so fun.

You know, you get to open it up.

It's exciting.

And that's when you're chickens hatch.

So again, this is just one component of it.

But it has that interactive piece and it's really exciting.

You know who doesn't love opening a little egg and seeing what's inside.

So yeah.

And chickens need a lot fresh water.

We explain that that portion they do.

But, I think the most important part of, teaching a life cycle in schools or anywhere is that it's incomplete.

Probably the most important aspect would be the mother hen.

Mechanical incubation, is not natural, and it comes with mistakes.

So only the mother, meaning that just like incubator.

Yeah, the box.

Okay.

You know, and and that rotates the eggs.

But you can never duplicate what the mother hen does.

I mean, she turns and moves her eggs almost 100 times a day.

Yeah.

And she knows exactly how to do that.

So with the incubator, you might have, chicks that don't hatch at all, or they are not developed correctly.

And that kind of thing.

That's I think the most important missing component of all of it is the mother hen.

They even vocalize with their with their chicks in, in the egg and bond with them before they're ever even born like women.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Let's say it is great to see the compassion and the respect for nature, starting with our young people in the state of Kansas is leading the way, which is a beautiful thing.

We'll have more coming up on inspire, so stay with us.

We're going to pick up where we left off.

How can education combine with empathy to help us build a better ecosystem?

We are back with those answers and more with Chris Taylor and Elizabeth Wallace from Hatching Kansas and Hatching Kindness with Shy 38.

So if we can go back to where we left off, with the artificial hatching, if you will, what is the outcome when that happens, when they're using artificial as opposed to alive?

Mom and, I think they are it's important to know that we're bringing lives into the world and they're not just disposable.

Right?

Right, right.

And there's never going to be enough homes for them all, specifically the roosters.

So it's it becomes an ethical concern.

Well, that's that's that's enough said.

Right there of an ethical concern.

Okay.

So we were looking at these eggs in the stages of, of the cycle for 21 days.

This is just a portion of the program.

Please continue.

Yeah.

So when you think about, you know, hatching life chicks in classrooms, the them in the egg is just one part of it.

You know, I have the lifecycle of a chicken here.

So, you know, you have just this portion of the chick hatching, but we go all the way around, you know, and we're not even focusing on what happens to the chickens when they grow up.

You know, it's just one portion of it.

So our curriculum kind of addresses some of that too.

We have, we have a story that you can read to kind of follow a chicken through, you know, their life cycle.

There's an app called Check It Out, which is free.

You can download it.

There's an actual chicken in it that you can move, you can manipulate, you can see it as well as the egg too.

So there it goes, a little bit more in depth than what just hatching eggs in a classroom could do.

So bottom line, what do you hope when people come to see Shy 38?

What are you hoping to, you know, have people go home thinking about and considering what what what impact do you want your Shy 38 to have on folks?

Our mission has always been on compassion, and rescue and empathy and, humane education.

So this takes live animals out of the classroom.

And it kind of lets us address the issues at the source.

I was just wondering how the egg industry does it.

I mean, yeah, I don't think the general public realizes what goes into that.

Right?

Right.

So, you know, when you think about a typical farm, you think about, you know, a place that manufactures eggs, you have to think, you know, why aren't we running into the problem of all these roosters that don't have homes?

The answer is because they're culled, which is a polite term for killed, as soon as they are born, basically, if you think about roosters, they're kind of useless, in the sense of you know, what humans, you know, generally use them for, they don't lay eggs, they can't reproduce.

So they are discarded.

They're killed.

And so when you are doing that in a classroom, a lot of people have moral qualms about, you know, I'm not going to just kill this chicken like someone else is going to take it.

But what we're trying to get at is there's no where else to bring them.

There's no one else that can take them.

We're full.

So what are you going to do with them?

And how can we prevent this from being a problem in the first place without losing that interactive, learning experience?

So I think one of the things is, you know, you're you're running a vegan farm.

Is that not so?

And so one of the things that I guess comes out when someone visits your farm is, hey, let's think twice about eating eggs.

Let's think twice about eating beef, because that actually means that a live animal is being destroyed as a result of that.

Yeah.

Is that sort of right where you're going?

And when people when people do visit, they are able to see firsthand the animals that came from those systems, their food, the food systems, when they learned their stories and, you know, meet them face to face.

It, it really does make you think.

Yeah.

And I love that.

I've heard people say that I don't want to eat anything that has a face.

Yeah, but the face of this Shy 38, is Walter that you guys have!

Please tell us about Walter.

Walter was one of 31 chicks that we took from a local school.

Two years ago.

They had a live chick hatch hatching project.

And I think a first grade classroom and 31 chicks were born.

Most of them actually were male.

And, Walter is a bird rock.

He is one of them.

He was one of our most outgoing, friendly.

Like, he loves people.

He will follow me around.

So he kind of became the face of the Hatching Kindness Project.

So he's on Earth, I love it, I love it so.

So when you go into a school now, I mean, I think, you know, Easter will be coming soon.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

And everybody thinks, oh, let's get some chicks and have them.

What do you say to that?

It's kind of the same thing.

The chicks are going to come from your local feed and farm store, which came from a hatchery, which came from artificial incubation.

Again, no, mother.

They're bringing new life into the world.

Most of them will end up abandoned, or they'll die or have just rehomed over again.

A lot of our, bird residents have come from abandonment situations, just like that.

Let's keep going.

Positive.

We want to go.

Because if I go down or not, let's let's turn to positive.

What can we do?

What can the general public do to to help?

Yeah.

So I think, starting the conversation is huge, right?

I mean, that's where it all starts is, is having that conversation and thinking twice about what you're doing and what you're impacting.

All of our choices matter, right?

Right.

So it's thinking about, you know, should I be buying this?

Where did this come from?

Should I be doing this experiment?

You know, just just giving that moment to pause and reflect.

I think it's the first step in continuing to have those conversations and really think critically about what you're doing and where it's coming from.

Well, because remember, you know, like the whole thing with what's the price of eggs?

Yeah, I mean, that was a big deal.

It's like, okay, there's alternatives, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

I mean I haven't had eggs.

Oh gosh.

Since like 2012.

So, you know, you can make a tofu scramble.

There's a brand called Just Egg which is made out of mung bean does I mean, it's delicious, right?

Yeah.

So, so there's a bunch of different options that you can do.

You know, if you're baking, there's flax egg.

There's, you know, you almost don't need it.

I mean, you don't need it, you know, and so I think it's as you start to have those conversations, you start to think more.

You dig into those avenues of what can I replace?

What can I change without even feeling like I'm giving up anything?

You know, if it's not sustainable, people aren't going to do it.

And I'm here to tell you that, like, you're not going to die.

It's fine.

I've been doing it for a long time, and I feel great.

So we're glad I was.

Go.

So both of you don't eat eggs.

You don't eat beef.

You don't eat chicken?

No.

Plant based vegan lifestyle.

Yeah.

No animal products.

You know, it's amazing to know someone who lives their mission.

Right.

And I think that's a beautiful thing.

I really do what?

You know, what I think about, you know, movies and things like that.

And I think of the way that some animals are treated in movies.

It's amazing that we're not thinking about that.

And I think, you know, folks like you and what you're doing can really help to change.

And, you know, make people think twice about how we portray animals and things.

You know, we're animals.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, hello.

So, you know, it's amazing to me that we just don't think that way.

And hopefully, you know, as time goes on, we'll begin to start thinking about animals the way we think of ourselves.

Because as you said, you know, they are living beings just like we are.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let's end where we started and thank you guys for what you're doing for animals and and give us an opportunity to help.

How can we do so you can visit us on the web at shy38.org.

Contact us to see about volunteering opportunities.

You can also donate.

And thank you for allowing us this opportunity.

We truly appreciate it.

And, you can find the chick life cycle.

Yeah.

If you're an educator, if you work with the library, if you're someone that works in education, yeah.

You can get the whole curriculum on thesciencebank.org.

And it's a free, curriculum.

It's a free curriculum, like we said.

So if you can just request it and they'll send it to you, you send it back.

Absolutely fabulous.

Wow, that is amazing.

It is so amazing.

Well, Chris and Elizabeth, we thank you for being here and for teaching us that empathy is a lesson we all can learn.

And we'll be back with a few closing thoughts in just a moment.

Do stay with us.

My name is Hunter Mangel.

I am the acting education director, and I've been here a little over four years.

And the education department, we are in charge of all of the education programing, so that could be youth and adult camps, homeschool classes, preschool classes, monarch tagging classes, of course.

Right now in September, we do camps as well.

So, youth camp in fall, winter, spring, summer teen camp, all of those things.

We partner with the Kansas Museum of History.

Just down the road here.

And they have a beautiful natural prairie.

And so we go out, we teach kids about the monarch migration that's happening right now, and then we teach them how to catch monarchs, teach them how to tag them, and we send them on their way to Mexico right now, in the fall.

This is their big southern migration.

And so they're going from the north of the United States.

All the way down to a nature preserve in Mexico.

Now, all of the monarchs in the entirety of the United States, they're heading to that one spot.

And so when we're sending them on their way to Mexico, we're basically just putting a little identification sticker on them, and then we're letting them go for the rest of their migration.

Each monarch that we catch, we put a little sticker on them.

They have their own identification number.

It's a combination of letters and numbers.

And then we put all of that data into the monarch watch database.

Now, monarch watches the organization that really fronts all of this citizen science and monarch tagging, throughout the entire year.

So we give them our information and they kind of compile it into a huge database.

They show how the monarchs are doing, where they are at certain points of the migration.

And, kind of a rough generalization of how the population is doing as well.

These nets, we have, a lot of these nets.

So if you do come to a class, you'll get your own net.

And they are specifically made for butterfly catching.

So, they have this really great, wide opening so that when you're swiping to get those butterflies, you have a much better chance of catching them versus a smaller net.

And then they're really long as well.

So whenever you swipe and you say you get a butterfly on your net, it's really easy to just kind of close off the end here so that the butterfly is here and, and easily graspable.

So that's why we use these particular nets.

But yeah, if you come to your class, you get your own net and you get your own chance to catch.

So catching butterflies is definitely a practice, practice, practice thing.

Some people really get it right off the bat.

They're really good at it.

And others like myself, definitely have to take a few times to get that swing of things.

No pun intended.

But yeah.

So basically, if you are catching butterflies, the biggest thing that we always, always say, wait till it lands, you have to wait until it lands.

It's really one.

It's really hard to catch them out of the air, but two, they know that you're trying to catch them.

So, yeah, if you try to get it out of the air and you swipe at it and you miss it, that butterflies like, hey, I probably shouldn't be here right now and they will go completely to a different location, so you'll probably won't see that one again.

You will try to keep them in this bottom part as much as you can.

So practice makes perfect I guess is the technique for.

That this has certainly been an engaging conversation about how we learn and have a healthy respect for nature.

What were some of the takeaways you had?

Well, you know, years ago I saw a video of veal and I have never I mean, what happens when the calf was slaughtered and I have never, to my knowledge, eaten veal.

My result as a result of watching that and, you know, and my nephew's son, as a result of a program like this doesn't eat eggs.

So I think when we can humanize the animals, and I know it's probably going to make some viewers upset, but that's a life that's a being.

They have feelings, they have emotions, they have personalities.

And I just applaud these two and the rest of the group for doing for doing the business that they're doing.

I can honestly say, as someone who cares for cats and dogs, I have not ever given a second thought necessarily, of other animals, like like chickens.

Like it would never occur to me to think about a chicken in that way.

A cow, you know, something bigger than that.

But chickens.

That's a new thought for me.

And I'm not a fan of eggs.

Yeah, so I have no problem giving that up.

I mean, because it seems to me that the amount of chickens that probably go and roosters that are destroyed is unthinkable, frankly, all over the world.

And so for me, I mean, this has been an incredibly eye opening and deep conversation to think about all animals besides just cats and dogs or, you know, cows or what have you.

This is it's been kind of life changing for me, frankly.

Right.

And, and and we are older.

So what I really love about their program too, is that it's focused on school aged children, and that's who our next generations are going to be.

And the more they can be educated and know what's going on, the more they can do something about it and the empathy that is taught to them.

And and if that's the way to do it, you know, I think that's perfect, right.

And and I would hope too, that, you know, going back to the fact that we are animals, too, that when they think about these chicks and what happens to them and to be more thoughtful and, and kind about thinking about life, that they would think about their own friends and people who are different than them.

Right.

And that they will treat all people, all animals, all of us differently.

As a result of that, I think it's a fantastic, curriculum to have, and I hope that our viewers think that they would like to do more and order that curriculum for their school or for their teacher and make a donation, because I'm making a donation because I just think this is an amazing opportunity to think twice, think more than just yourself.

I agree, I agree totally, okay.

We want this to be uplifting.

So we do hope that you're going to find out more about Shy 38.

That is all the time we have for today.

We thank you and we thank our guests Chris Taylor and Elizabeth Wallace of Shy, 38, incorporated.

And as a reminder, you can watch this program again at watch.ktwu.org.

And if you're so inspired to learn more about our guests, find out about what's coming up on future shows and get access to additional content.

Be sure to visit our website at www.ktwu.org/inspire.

Inspiring women, inspiring people to have more loving, respectful connections with all living beings.

Inspiring you on KTWU.

We thank you for watching.

Inspire is sponsored by the Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith.