The Library Vault

Last summer, we had fourteen very special guests in the library: two batches of seven chicken eggs, courtesy of a chicken farm in nearby Wallingford, Connecticut. Of the original 14 eggs, 13 hatched into chicks. The chicks visited with Russell Library patrons for about a week and a half, and then were picked up by their home farm to be rented out to new families in hopes of finding their forever homes.

In March 2025, we incubated a new batch of chicken eggs in the Youth & Family Learning department. On March 25th and 26th, five of them hatched into sweet little chicks. They will stay in the department until Wednesday, April 9th, available for any patron to visit with while we’re open. We will repeat the process starting in late May and in late July.

While the chicks are visiting, the most frequent question we get asked at the children’s desk is: Where did they come from? Long story short: they’re rentals.

The national franchise Rent the Chicken contracts with local chicken farmers to rent chickens to local residents who are interested in keeping chickens but are hesitant to commit. At the end of the rental term, the families can decide whether to keep the chickens for a small additional fee or send them back. The five week program’s fee is paid for by Friends of the Russell Library, a non-profit organization that pays for virtually all of our programs at the library. Thank you, Friends!

Many Connecticut libraries have started using Rent the Chicken’s sub-program, Hatch the Chicken, as a low-cost learning experience in their libraries. Individuals and families are also able to use the Hatch the Chicken program, and at the end of the rental term they can decide to keep some or all of the chicks for a small additional fee, or to send them back to the farm for another family to rent and try out.

While our eggs are incubating, patrons write names they’d like for the chicks on pieces of paper and enter them into a jar on the kids’ desk. When the eggs hatch, a librarian pulls as many names are there are chicks hatching from the jar. As they hatch, each chick is assigned a name in the order the names were drawn. By complete coincidence this time, Taylor Chick is the blondest, Sunny is the most yellow, and Romeo and Julieta are the only two with beautiful, mostly black feathers – a matched pair.

The next batch of seven chicken eggs arrives from the farm on Monday, May 19th. Their estimated hatch date (give or take 24 hours) is Monday, June 9th. You can “Hang with the Chicks” (and librarians) on Saturday, June 14th and 21st from 3:30-4:30pm. They will be picked up by the farm on Tuesday, June 24th.

The third batch of eggs will arrive on Tuesday July 1st, with an estimated hatch date of Tuesday, July 22nd. You can “Hang with the Chicks” on Saturday July 26th and August 2nd from 10:30-11:30am and 3:30-4:30pm. The chicks will be picked up on Tuesday, August 5th. The “Name the Chicks” jar will be out on the desk from the day that the eggs arrive until the eggs start to hatch.

Can’t make it to the library? Or just can’t miss any moment of the hatching or the chicks? No problem. As soon as the eggs arrive, our Department of Emerging Technology sets up a 24/7 “Peep Show” (aka web cam) on the incubator. As long as the chicks are with us, the link is right at the top of our homepage: russelllibrary.org.