Long ears, a short tail, long hind legs, and continuously growing incisors.

Many might have noticed the inclusion of some new furry friends located in the Natural Resources hub. Welcome Crunch and Munch—two adorable critters from the school’s farm! The two English Spot Lionhead rabbits are over from Vet Tech at the Career Center.

According to Mrs. Heather Kidder—someone very involved in Elkhart High School’s agricultural program—the reason for the introduction of the bunnies is due to complications in taking all students out to the farm, so the solution was “bringing some of the farm to them.” Kidder then clarified that, at the farm, the rabbits there are meat rabbits, serving an entirely different purpose from that of the ones in the school. The meat rabbits at the farm exist for two reasons: “In FFA, they are taken to show and judged on their meat quality based on their movements—with six champions at the farm going to contest next year—and, just like it sounds, they are meat, so if they don’t meet quality, they do go to process and can help feed the community if needed.” 

These contests usually occur in the fall, but unfortunately as Elkhart High School being the only school in District Two for FFA to successfully reproduce, the contest was canceled this year. However, there is also good news! Kidder excitedly proclaimed that EHS has a male rabbit out of our six champions; this is a big deal because, as Kidder states, “getting a male is very rare—that being a huge success—and now we have a lot of schools that are trying to fight over our one male rabbit!”

As of right now, there are unfortunately no plans to bring in more farm animals to the school, as they don’t do so well in the classroom, but Kidder did point out that “we try to at least get most of the farm animal experience out at the farm. [On March 19], we did do an Ag Day, where we brought in fifth graders from Elkhart Community Schools to the fair grounds and gave them the one-on-one experience, which was amazing.” While Kidder would like to make this a recurring event, the challenge that is being faced is that “ag (agriculture) teachers are working during the day, making it really hard to go ‘Hey, let’s go do a field trip!’ because elementary and high school have different time frames.” Kidder further explains that “we still definitely try to incorporate ag as much as possible.”

One way that Kidder achieves this is by having a day where younger students come to the farm every year, with this year “getting ready after spring break to start having all different grades in the elementary classes and even some middle school classes [come to the farm] and hatch some baby chicks.” What’s the reason for this? A lot of people don’t know where it is their food comes from, so Kidder’s main objective throughout all of this is to “not just educate them on the animals, but also [educate them] on where their food comes from, understand how it is raised and the different qualities, and knowing what to look for, because it matters to us, especially as we become adults, knowing what to look for is very important for our health.”