Supporting City Kids Learning to Farm

Located in the heart of Auckland is the Mt Albert Grammar School (MAGS) farm – one of the most unique school's in New Zealand. When MAGS asked for support to help raise its chickens, NRM delivered. 

In the concrete jungle that is New Zealand’s largest city, the 8ha Mount Albert Grammar School (MAGS) farm offers a taste of rural life to the school’s mostly urban students. Coadette Low, Head of Agriculture at the school, says the course has been growing in popularity. “We have over 200 students taking the programme, which is pretty cool for an option subject. The majority are from an urban background.”

The farm offers a mixture of learning experiences for the students across both agriculture and horticulture. It has calves, lambs, dairy sheep, a citrus orchard, raised garden beds, vertical garden and even a gold kiwifruit educational licence. Last year, they added rearing chickens to the mix. “With the Year 12 programme, they do our livestock growth and development unit and we thought, let's do chickens, because we can get them as chicks and the kids can see their progress throughout the year, to becoming layers,” Coadette says. She approached NRM after getting great results for the chicks (now young pullets) on the NRM Chick Starter feed.

“We are proud to support the health of the animals and help develop the knowledge of the students. Consequently, we delivered copies of the updated NRM Chook Book and Farmlands Calf Rearing Guide. It is great to see young Kiwis take an interest in agriculture, especially in a city like Auckland where their opportunities might be limited.” The 30 pullets are now feeding on NRM Pullet Grower Pellets and which they'll be on until they reach point of lay. Having hard copies of the books is a great resource as well. Most of these kids probably won’t go into farming poultry, but half of them might end up having backyard chickens.”

With family sizes shrinking and New Zealand’s population becoming more urban, Coadette says it’s important for the future of the rural sector to give city kids a chance at farming. “We've got kids who are applying for Smedley [a training farm in Hawke’s Bay] this year and they have a clear passion, yet they are not off a farm, with others looking to head down to Massey or Lincoln University,” she says. “They have this innate want to do it, whereas we all know people who have grown up on the family farm who would never in a million years go back and run it; it's just not what they're interested in.”