Joyce Stuber, director for Dunmore Equestrian, looks over the eggs with Terry Noble and a resident of Chinook Village during Dunmore Equestrian's four-week egg hatching program.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
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Seniors’ homes around the city are on egg duty for another couple weeks.
Good Sams, Masterpiece, South Country Village and Chinook Village seniors’ residences are all taking part in Dunmore Equestrian’s first four-week egg hatching program.
Joyce Stuber, director for Dunmore Equestrian, said it’s awesome how much the seniors have become attached to the program.
“I have seniors walking down three, four or five times a day just to look at the eggs and look at the temperature,” Stuber said. “They all report to people in the home saying, ‘Oh, the humidity is only this much.’ It’s so neat, they have taken ownership of it.”
Stuber said last year they took animals on a rotating tour to seniors’ homes in season and wanted to do something different this year. They found a grant from the federal government, New Horizons For Seniors, which was originally going to be just for pet visits again before settling on the egg hatching program.
With roughly 20 eggs in each home, Stuber said seniors became interested quicker than she imagined.
“We gave each senior an egg, they put it in the incubator and thought this was the best thing ever,” Stuber said. “It was kind of funny because I didn’t think it was really important to them but I had I missed two people at one of the homes, ‘I didn’t get to put an egg in,’ they put their hand up and said, so you knew what was important to them.”
Stuber, along with volunteers, has been checking on the eggs during the weekends and they are trending toward a late April/early May hatching date.
While giving a presentation about the eggs, Stuber said all of the residents who grew up and lived in the city learned a lot about chickens and roosters while she had a gentleman from Chinook, who grew up in the country, teach her some things.
“In the old days, he used to get eggs at the store when he was a little kid and his job was to candle each one to make sure that they weren’t fertile or had any spots in them,” Stuber said. “So when I do my candling presentation, I am not an expert on that. He is, so I’m going to get him to help me.”
After the eggs hatch, Stuber said they will leave some of the chicks behind so residents can handle them and watch them grow older.
“I’m letting them have free rein. If I’m not there, they can lift up the lid and hold them as long as they don’t leave the area,” Stuber said.
She said anyone interested in seeing photos of the chicks can visit Dunmore Equestrian’s Facebook page.
The next step of the program under the New Horizon for Seniors grant, Stuber says, is a caterpillar-to-butterfly hatch after the May long weekend. After that will be pet visits again with donkeys, ponies, rabbits, dog, cats, chickens, sheep and goats all paying seniors a visit.
Stuber said it warms her heart seeing seniors get engaged in outside activities like this program after being “locked in” due to COVID-19.
