11/29/07
11/26/07
11/20/07
11/19/07
The Hard-Boiled Truth: Modern Egg Production in the United States
The Hard-Boiled Truth: Modern Egg Production in the United States
Behind the vast majority of every "incredible edible" egg sold in grocery stores today is a hen so intensively confined inside a wire battery cage, she can barely even move.
With just 67 square inches of space in which to live, she can't even flap her wings, let alone build a nest, perch, dust bathe, or perform many other natural behaviors.
Numerous experts agree that battery cage confinement contributes to a number of welfare problems—and such concerns have prompted many European countries to ban this system of confinement altogether. And barren battery cages will be phased out of the entire European Union by 2012.
Battery cages continue, however, to dominate egg production in the U.S., and the egg industry has long attempted to ignore the allegations of cruelty to animals. But as a growing number of consumers discover the hard-boiled truth about modern egg production, the industry is scrambling to keep its reputation from cracking.
Protecting your chickens combs during winter
Get a friend to pick up a chicken. This is best done when the animals are docile. Chickens are most docile after they have bedded down for the evening, and all but the most skittish of hen can be handled, even without a friend's assistance, during the night.
If you cannot enlist the aid of a friend, secure your chicken in a "football hold", gently under one arm, with both its wings held snuggly against it's own body, and your hand under it's breast bone for support. It helps if you already have your jar of petroleum jelly open, if you're working alone.
Put a small amount of petroleum jelly on the comb (flap of skin, usually red, on the head) of the chicken.
Gently rub the jelly around the comb, making sure it is completely covered. This will insulate the bird's comb and prevent it from suffering from frostbite.
Repeat the last two steps on the wattles (flaps of skin hanging below the beak) of the bird as well. Not all chickens have wattles, but if they do, they will benefit from this.
When you have finished, place the chicken back in its run.
If you cannot enlist the aid of a friend, secure your chicken in a "football hold", gently under one arm, with both its wings held snuggly against it's own body, and your hand under it's breast bone for support. It helps if you already have your jar of petroleum jelly open, if you're working alone.
Put a small amount of petroleum jelly on the comb (flap of skin, usually red, on the head) of the chicken.
Gently rub the jelly around the comb, making sure it is completely covered. This will insulate the bird's comb and prevent it from suffering from frostbite.
Repeat the last two steps on the wattles (flaps of skin hanging below the beak) of the bird as well. Not all chickens have wattles, but if they do, they will benefit from this.
When you have finished, place the chicken back in its run.
Winter Birds
The first thing to recognize about your chickens is that they can withstand cold temperatures if they are dry and can get out of the wind. Generally speaking most of your winter problems are due to poor water supply, poor quality of food and ongoing wet conditions. If these areas are addressed your chickens will fair well through these colder months. In Addition, as stated, your chickens can endure quite cold temps, however; if you regularly have temperatures below zero, you will need to provide a heat source for your birds.
Proper watering of your chickens is crucial to their overall winter health. Ice-cold water is not palatable to chickens, so heaters that take the chill off are almost a necessity. There are a large variety of water heaters available. I would try to avoid heat lamps or overhead heat fixtures for this purpose. They are often fire hazards and inefficient electrically for this purpose. If you use anything metal make sure it is grounded. Make sure that when you set this up in your coop, your birds cannot easily use it for a perch. This will lead to contaminated water. Try to keep your water container slightly above the floor of your coop but not level too the floor because your birds will more easily scatter bedding material into their water.If you manage to keep your birds well watered food is your next challenge. Hens will not lay properly unless they have an easy time eating and drinking as much as they want .
The traditional winter-feeding method involves a heavy feeding of scratch grain in the late afternoon, so chickens go to their roosts with a full crop of grain that they will digest through the night. The grain is fed as whole wheat, whole oat, or cracked corn scattered in the straw bedding of your coop. This will give your chickens winter exercise and fluff up their bedding. Try to keep whole grain in half your range feeders and high protein poultry pellet in the other half. Whole grain is a good foul-whether feed, since its not much affected by rain or snow. Even if it sprouts, its still good for the chickens. Its high in energy, which is what the chickens need if they are wet or cold.
Do not allow your indoor bedding to become overly damp. This will lead to unhealthy animals. To keep your chickens dry inside your coop proper changing of your bedding straw is required. When cleaning your coop rake the old bedding out into the chicken yard and this will help provide a dryer outdoor condition for your birds, and the added natural fertilizer in your chicken yard mixed with any seeds from your indoor winter feedings will help to produce some spring sprouts Since straw is a relatively cheap source of bedding and works well on muddy outdoor situations, it is wise to always have available. Robert Plamondons poultry newsletter was the primary source used for this article.
Proper watering of your chickens is crucial to their overall winter health. Ice-cold water is not palatable to chickens, so heaters that take the chill off are almost a necessity. There are a large variety of water heaters available. I would try to avoid heat lamps or overhead heat fixtures for this purpose. They are often fire hazards and inefficient electrically for this purpose. If you use anything metal make sure it is grounded. Make sure that when you set this up in your coop, your birds cannot easily use it for a perch. This will lead to contaminated water. Try to keep your water container slightly above the floor of your coop but not level too the floor because your birds will more easily scatter bedding material into their water.If you manage to keep your birds well watered food is your next challenge. Hens will not lay properly unless they have an easy time eating and drinking as much as they want .
The traditional winter-feeding method involves a heavy feeding of scratch grain in the late afternoon, so chickens go to their roosts with a full crop of grain that they will digest through the night. The grain is fed as whole wheat, whole oat, or cracked corn scattered in the straw bedding of your coop. This will give your chickens winter exercise and fluff up their bedding. Try to keep whole grain in half your range feeders and high protein poultry pellet in the other half. Whole grain is a good foul-whether feed, since its not much affected by rain or snow. Even if it sprouts, its still good for the chickens. Its high in energy, which is what the chickens need if they are wet or cold.
Do not allow your indoor bedding to become overly damp. This will lead to unhealthy animals. To keep your chickens dry inside your coop proper changing of your bedding straw is required. When cleaning your coop rake the old bedding out into the chicken yard and this will help provide a dryer outdoor condition for your birds, and the added natural fertilizer in your chicken yard mixed with any seeds from your indoor winter feedings will help to produce some spring sprouts Since straw is a relatively cheap source of bedding and works well on muddy outdoor situations, it is wise to always have available. Robert Plamondons poultry newsletter was the primary source used for this article.
11/15/07
11/14/07
11/11/07
11/10/07
Cool article about my Grandhoney
August 2, 1998
THE VIEW FROM/FARMINGTON; Out of Miss Porter's, And on to Cambridge
By STACEY STOWE
ON a cool, overcast June morning as the 1998 school year was winding down, Alice M. DeLana bade farewell to 39 years of teaching at Miss Porter's School in Farmington by delivering the commencement address. By turns elegant, cerebral and humorous, much like the woman herself, the speech asked graduates to revere and appreciate the power of words.
''We must be careful what we say,'' she said, quoting Emily Dickinson, ''No bird resumes its egg.''
In almost four decades of teaching English, computer science and art history, and leading students on tours of several of the world's art museums during her tenure at the 155-year-old girls' school, Mrs. DeLana has taught half of Miss Porter's living alumnae, igniting many to pursue a career in the arts, school staff members estimate. Friends and colleagues say in partial jest that she taught half the staff of Sotheby's. Indeed, in the months before her retirement, when she was on her self-described, ''Grateful Dead Farewell Tour,'' she was honored at the company's London and New York auction houses.
Her decision to retire at the age of 61, prompted by a sense it was time ''to do other things'' before she became too old to do them, also includes relocating from her home in West Hartford to Cambridge, Mass. The move leaves a rather gaping hole in the boards of nearly a dozen Hartford area cultural institutions, including the Hill-Stead Museum, Mortensen Library at the University of Hartford and the Hartford Stage Company.
Grown women become misty-eyed when they recall their student days with Mrs. DeLana. A former student now a teacher at Groton wiped away tears at a recent farewell dinner for Mrs. DeLana. ''I don't think I'm going to be able to keep it together,'' she whispered as Mrs. DeLana stepped to the lectern following a costumed skit spun off of ''Alice in Wonderland.'' (It included Humphrey Tonkin, president of the University of Hartford, in academic robe as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the cleric and Oxford don better known as Lewis Carroll.)
Alice DeLana, said a former student, Sandy Golinkin, publisher of Allure magazine, is ''an amazing woman and she changed my life.''
What is it about this slender figure with a ribbon-tied, silver ponytail and an equally silver laugh that ripples through her conversation like a waterfall? She summarizes her relationship to her students by saying, ''My task, my joy was to get out of their way.''
''I think the function of old people is to set up deadlines and paths for the next generation to walk down,'' she said. ''Within a fixed boundary, the truly creative do something that's really quite spectacular.''
From her small office, on the second floor of a columned brick building on campus, Mrs. DeLana shrugged off the whirl of parties that surrounded her departure as something drummed up by the school alumnae office. She was more than a little embarrassed by all the fuss and is more comfortable striding around a classroom and covering 20,000 years of art in the nine-month school term, engaging the students with question rather than lecture, answering ''Fair enough!'' when a point is challenged.
Mrs. DeLana, whose parents were academics, first arrived at Miss Porter's in 1959, 22 years old, newly married and with little enthusiasm for teaching. ''I really wanted a job that would get me home in time to prepare dinner,'' she said. Yet she was soon smitten with the teaching life and felt fortunate in the early 1960's the school accommodated her schedule, allowing her to care for her two children, Elizabeth and Charles.
The campus she fell in love with then, leafy treed, pathways lined with fresh-faced girls in polo coats, has been a continual source of delight to her. On a brisk, shiny morning in late spring she listened to the Perilhettes, an astonishingly good campus a cappella group.
''Here I am three times their age and we're all in it together,'' she said later. On her desk was a ribbon-tied box of truffles left by a student with whom she'd commiserated after reading a front page story predicting a chocolate shortage. ''That's the way it's been . . . I've loved the children.''
Parents who have accompanied Mrs. DeLana to Europe to chaperone museum tours say she handles the quixotic emotions of teen-agers with aplomb, and is at once respectful and advisory.
Recalling a recent tour, Mrs. DeLana spoke of an evening when, gathered in a small hotel in London, she and the students and chaperones found themselves sentimental. ''We were all in tears,'' she said. ''It was the last night -- no one wanted it to end. We were gathered around. It was like an African campfire, just your emotions, your stories.''
School staff members sometimes bristle at the outside world's image of Miss Porter's, whose alumnae include Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and Laura Rockefeller, as a time-warped place of teas and gentility. Yet Mrs. DeLana seems to have made her peace with that skewed image, confident of the school's rigorous academic program and proud of its insistence on civility.
''We are kind to each other here and there is a basic level of civility,'' she said. ''I think the culture at large has made Miss Porter's School -- because the name sounds kind of funny -- into a throwaway joke that in fact has an almost wistful appeal to it. The world wants to believe there is at least one place on the face of this earth where people don't say 'fuhggeddaboutit'.''
But almost 40 years as witness to the highs and lows of adolescence has engendered in her a certain wry humility.
''As most everyone knows, much of teaching has to do with just showing up," she told the crowd at her farewell dinner (where everything from the invitations to the label on the wine bottles was inscribed with a line from an E.E. Cummings' poem, ''i'd rather learn from one bird how to sing, than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.'')
M. Burch Tracy Ford, head of the school, remembered when she called Mrs. DeLana to ask how she was recovering from surgery, and the latter quipped, ''Some of the girls interested in body piercing would really be impressed with me now.''
Humor aside, she valued her students' scholarship and cultural insights. Colleagues said it was rare to find her without a knot of students, engaged in conversation. She reported the view from her window on teen-age life to her various boards and commissions, she said.
Although Mrs. DeLana has retired from teaching, she may never stop volunteering. She said she could never imagine herself slumped in front of a television when she could be at a board meeting of the Wadsworth Atheneum, where she is a trustee. Even at Miss Porter's, where volunteerism is literally a graduation requirement, Mrs. DeLana's efforts for both school and community were widely considered extraordinary.
An engaging speaker, she was often asked to address cultural organizations on local literary or art history; several of her talks, such as one on George Eliot's influence on Theodate Pope Riddle, whose ancestral home in Farmington is now the Hill-Stead Museum, were published by local historical societies.
''Her ability to use language, to stand in front of a group and speak about anything with style and intelligence is continually remarkable to me,'' said her colleague Brendan Burns, the chairman of the history department at Miss Porter's. ''She just sparkles.''
Fittingly, her husband, William G. DeLana, who was a partner with the law firm of Day, Berry & Howard, matched her with his vigorous intellect, affable personality and commitment to community service. His death in 1987, which left her feeling as though she ''was unable to breathe for several years,'' propelled her into more volunteer work. Her time is also happily divided among her four grandchildren, one of whom coined her current title: Grandhoney.
Her move, to a small carriage house in a new city. would seem to add a touch of daring to one so newly retired. But friends are not the least surprised. Her colleague Mr. Burns said, ''This was the right time. Alice has reinvented herself on a number of occasions.''
How will she fill her days? She answers with characteristic understatement.
''Every college town needs a gray-haired old lady in the back of the auditorium to ask questions after the students have grown bored with the lecture.''
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
11/9/07
11/8/07
Cracked Corn
When entering winter you must have access to lots of cracked corn. The reason why you must have cracked corn is because in the wintertime cracked corn helpes your chickens produce body heat and they think it tastes really great. You can find cracked corn in your local feed store and just look at the tag and looked for cracked corn.
11/6/07
Where I got my chickens
On April 21,I went to Danvers Agway to pick up my chickens. When I picked them out I only picked the ones that were always watching me wherever I went. I am really glad that I picked the chickens that I picked because I would definately not like having a flock other than this.
11/5/07
The dangerous outdoors
Today when I went over to visit the chickens I saw a big healthy fox looking in the outdoor pen trying to grab its dinner. Since I wanted to make sure that the chickens were going to be safe I chased the fox out into the field. Now every day I will make sure that the fox isn't getting any ideas.
11/4/07
Competition at the fair
Next year at the fair I think that the competition will be a lot harder because the man who I bought the cochins from is one of the best cochin breeders in the world but that also means that I bought some of the best cochins from him. I decided to get polishes because there is a girl who has polishes and I wanted to have some more fancy breeds. For the eggs I am going to enter Butterscotches turquoise eggs.
New chicks next year
Next year when I get new chicks I am going to get a chicken called a polish. I might get one or two. The polishes are special because they have things on top of their heads called crests. Crests are basically feathered hats that are on top of their heads.
Blue eggs from Butterscotch
My dear sweet butterscotch is the only hen that is laying blue eggs right now. She will lay a blue egg every 2-3 days. So far Butterscotch has layed 9 or 10 eggs.
11/3/07
Winterizing
We know there’s every situation out there from poultry living outside with very little shelter, to those living in the lap of luxury in heated coops. So we’d like to simply address some basics. You’ll have to decide how to apply them to your own operation.
The first thing is to understand how the cold (or any dramatic temperature change up or down), can effect your birds’ health. When a bird gets cold, it must do certain things in order to keep itself warm and alive through the night. Most people don’t realize that many of the wild birds outside do not make it through the night when there’s frigid weather or a severe snowstorm, unless they find food and shelter. The same is true of our chickens and waterfowl.
Nature provides for a natural instinct for all birds to ‘feed up’ and find shelter just prior to going to roost for the night. If you observe the wild birds in your yard, you will actually learn many common sense things about your own poultry. Have you ever noticed that before a bad storm comes in, the wild birds are in a ‘feeding frenzy’? That is because their instincts tell them that bad weather is coming and they need to feed while they can and then go find shelter to ‘weather the storm’. The same principal applies to your birds. No matter how many times you feed and water in a day’s time, the most important feeding and watering time of the day is right before night. It is imperative that your birds go into a cold evening with both a full crop and a good drink of water. The feed will generate heat in their system (especially if you provide a little corn on the coldest days), and the water will hydrate them, which in turn also helps them keep warm.
The second thing that seems to come up a lot is those frozen combs – or frostbite. Some people mistakenly think that frostbite can only occur on single comb chickens, and even then, only on the roosters. The truth is that although the single comb breeds are more susceptible, any type of comb (or wattle) can freeze, given the right circumstances. The reason most females don’t experience this is because they sleep with their heads buried under their feathers. But a hen that doesn’t follow this practice is just as susceptible to frostbite as any rooster, if she has a larger comb. Two things cause frozen combs – drafts and moisture when below freezing temperature conditions exist.
If you can eliminate the drafts and keep the moisture level down inside of the coop, then you’re halfway there. If the temperature gets low enough though, there isn’t much you can do. But there is one practice that seems to help reduce the damage. Many people believe that if you massage Vaseline into your birds’ combs and wattles, they will not freeze. We ran a study of our own on this last year and found that although Vaseline versus no Vaseline made little difference, what did make a difference was the time we took to massage the Vaseline into the comb. In other words, although we think the Vaseline does work to seal out moisture and drafts – the two main culprits in frostbite – what was actually more important was the activity of massaging the Vaseline in. The longer we massaged it in, the more effective it was. So the conclusion we came to and later confirmed with a Vet was that the most vulnerable combs were those with poor circulation, and by massaging these combs, you can actually increase the blood flow to the area and therefore help keep it warm.
Another way to keep your birds warm is to house them together. For example, we put all of my breeding trios together even before we begin turning the lights on for breeding season. This serves two purposes – it helps keep them warmer at night because they huddle together, and it also helps by allowing the birds to work out their differences before the added stress of laying comes on for the hens. This is the time of year that we don’t worry so much about condition because as soon as the weather starts to break and breeding season is over, we still have enough time to put the individual show birds up for conditioning before my first show.
Deep bedding is another way to help your birds keep warm through the night. If you ever felt underneath a bird that has borrowed itself into a nice little nest-like seat on top of deep bedding, you know how warm it can get. WE always use deeper bedding in the winter than in other seasons. Soft, white pine shavings or clean straw are the best for this purpose.
The first thing is to understand how the cold (or any dramatic temperature change up or down), can effect your birds’ health. When a bird gets cold, it must do certain things in order to keep itself warm and alive through the night. Most people don’t realize that many of the wild birds outside do not make it through the night when there’s frigid weather or a severe snowstorm, unless they find food and shelter. The same is true of our chickens and waterfowl.
Nature provides for a natural instinct for all birds to ‘feed up’ and find shelter just prior to going to roost for the night. If you observe the wild birds in your yard, you will actually learn many common sense things about your own poultry. Have you ever noticed that before a bad storm comes in, the wild birds are in a ‘feeding frenzy’? That is because their instincts tell them that bad weather is coming and they need to feed while they can and then go find shelter to ‘weather the storm’. The same principal applies to your birds. No matter how many times you feed and water in a day’s time, the most important feeding and watering time of the day is right before night. It is imperative that your birds go into a cold evening with both a full crop and a good drink of water. The feed will generate heat in their system (especially if you provide a little corn on the coldest days), and the water will hydrate them, which in turn also helps them keep warm.
The second thing that seems to come up a lot is those frozen combs – or frostbite. Some people mistakenly think that frostbite can only occur on single comb chickens, and even then, only on the roosters. The truth is that although the single comb breeds are more susceptible, any type of comb (or wattle) can freeze, given the right circumstances. The reason most females don’t experience this is because they sleep with their heads buried under their feathers. But a hen that doesn’t follow this practice is just as susceptible to frostbite as any rooster, if she has a larger comb. Two things cause frozen combs – drafts and moisture when below freezing temperature conditions exist.
If you can eliminate the drafts and keep the moisture level down inside of the coop, then you’re halfway there. If the temperature gets low enough though, there isn’t much you can do. But there is one practice that seems to help reduce the damage. Many people believe that if you massage Vaseline into your birds’ combs and wattles, they will not freeze. We ran a study of our own on this last year and found that although Vaseline versus no Vaseline made little difference, what did make a difference was the time we took to massage the Vaseline into the comb. In other words, although we think the Vaseline does work to seal out moisture and drafts – the two main culprits in frostbite – what was actually more important was the activity of massaging the Vaseline in. The longer we massaged it in, the more effective it was. So the conclusion we came to and later confirmed with a Vet was that the most vulnerable combs were those with poor circulation, and by massaging these combs, you can actually increase the blood flow to the area and therefore help keep it warm.
Another way to keep your birds warm is to house them together. For example, we put all of my breeding trios together even before we begin turning the lights on for breeding season. This serves two purposes – it helps keep them warmer at night because they huddle together, and it also helps by allowing the birds to work out their differences before the added stress of laying comes on for the hens. This is the time of year that we don’t worry so much about condition because as soon as the weather starts to break and breeding season is over, we still have enough time to put the individual show birds up for conditioning before my first show.
Deep bedding is another way to help your birds keep warm through the night. If you ever felt underneath a bird that has borrowed itself into a nice little nest-like seat on top of deep bedding, you know how warm it can get. WE always use deeper bedding in the winter than in other seasons. Soft, white pine shavings or clean straw are the best for this purpose.
Homemade Mash for Winter
WINTER MASH
Feeds a flock of 20 (with enough left over that everyone gets some)
1-2 pints yogurt or other cultured milk product
1 pint low-salt cottage cheese
2 pounds ground beef
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch lemon balm
1 head garlic
1-2 cups raw pumpkin seeds
1 pint baby tomatoes
enough pellet feed to make a mushy consistency
2-3 casserole type pans
Put all the pans on a counter or work space where you can evenly divide the ingredients between the 3 pans.
-Add the yogurt & cottage cheese
-Remove leaves from lemon balm and add to pans
-Take parsley, and using scissors, snip entire bunch into small pieces
-Put in ground beef, yes, raw
-Slice all tomatoes in half and add
Mix with hands, getting ground beef and cottage cheese thoroughly mixed
-Add a small quantity of pellets to mash, enough to make it thicken
-Peel most of paper husks off garlic cloves, and add cloves to Cuisinart
-Add pumpkin seeds to Cuisinart, and blend until both garlic and seeds are in bits
-Add this mixture to mash
Mix well, and serve (put the dishes in various parts of the run so all hens, low and high in terms of pecking order, can eat freely)
I don't always use all these ingredients, but a little about what the benefits are for your flock:
Cultured dairy products are as beneficial for hens as they are for humans. Cultured dairy is high in protein and calcium, and the friendly flora helps prevent diseases and parasites in a flock.
Meat, as I've already mentioned, can be an excellent periodic supplement to a flock diet. This is especially true after winter, illness, or a molt when a hen's protein needs increase dramatically. Additionally, according to the Weston Price Foundation, there are fat soluble vitamins and activators that only meat can provide. Since raw is better, put your meat in the freezer for 2 weeks prior to feeding to your birds, to kill any possible parasites, etc. Feel free to search the archive for a post about feeding raw deer liver to the flock--they loved it!
Lemon Balm is a powerful antiviral--our flock was exposed to viral poultry pox, which is sort of like human oral herpes in that it is non-fatal and they carry it for life. So for our flock, treating with lemon balm is a good thing.
Parsley is extremely high in minerals and vitamins. I've also been known to use granulate kelp and dulse.
Garlic is a potent antiviral, antifungal, antiparasitical, and antibacterial. Organic poultry farmers rave about use of garlic, and the mash is the best way I've found to get the girls to eat it.
Raw pumpkin seeds are noted in Chinese medicine to be excellent at expelling worms and other parasites in humans, I hope this is true for hens. If nothing else, it's a great vegetarian source of protein and zinc for the flock. Zinc is another immunity booster. Sunflower seeds are a great substitute if all you want is the protein boost.
Tomatoes are reputed to be useful in changing internal ph so that a hen's body is not hospitable to parasites and other disease bearing invaders. I have also heard that pomegranete seeds and cranberries are useful for the same thing.
Feeds a flock of 20 (with enough left over that everyone gets some)
1-2 pints yogurt or other cultured milk product
1 pint low-salt cottage cheese
2 pounds ground beef
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch lemon balm
1 head garlic
1-2 cups raw pumpkin seeds
1 pint baby tomatoes
enough pellet feed to make a mushy consistency
2-3 casserole type pans
Put all the pans on a counter or work space where you can evenly divide the ingredients between the 3 pans.
-Add the yogurt & cottage cheese
-Remove leaves from lemon balm and add to pans
-Take parsley, and using scissors, snip entire bunch into small pieces
-Put in ground beef, yes, raw
-Slice all tomatoes in half and add
Mix with hands, getting ground beef and cottage cheese thoroughly mixed
-Add a small quantity of pellets to mash, enough to make it thicken
-Peel most of paper husks off garlic cloves, and add cloves to Cuisinart
-Add pumpkin seeds to Cuisinart, and blend until both garlic and seeds are in bits
-Add this mixture to mash
Mix well, and serve (put the dishes in various parts of the run so all hens, low and high in terms of pecking order, can eat freely)
I don't always use all these ingredients, but a little about what the benefits are for your flock:
Cultured dairy products are as beneficial for hens as they are for humans. Cultured dairy is high in protein and calcium, and the friendly flora helps prevent diseases and parasites in a flock.
Meat, as I've already mentioned, can be an excellent periodic supplement to a flock diet. This is especially true after winter, illness, or a molt when a hen's protein needs increase dramatically. Additionally, according to the Weston Price Foundation, there are fat soluble vitamins and activators that only meat can provide. Since raw is better, put your meat in the freezer for 2 weeks prior to feeding to your birds, to kill any possible parasites, etc. Feel free to search the archive for a post about feeding raw deer liver to the flock--they loved it!
Lemon Balm is a powerful antiviral--our flock was exposed to viral poultry pox, which is sort of like human oral herpes in that it is non-fatal and they carry it for life. So for our flock, treating with lemon balm is a good thing.
Parsley is extremely high in minerals and vitamins. I've also been known to use granulate kelp and dulse.
Garlic is a potent antiviral, antifungal, antiparasitical, and antibacterial. Organic poultry farmers rave about use of garlic, and the mash is the best way I've found to get the girls to eat it.
Raw pumpkin seeds are noted in Chinese medicine to be excellent at expelling worms and other parasites in humans, I hope this is true for hens. If nothing else, it's a great vegetarian source of protein and zinc for the flock. Zinc is another immunity booster. Sunflower seeds are a great substitute if all you want is the protein boost.
Tomatoes are reputed to be useful in changing internal ph so that a hen's body is not hospitable to parasites and other disease bearing invaders. I have also heard that pomegranete seeds and cranberries are useful for the same thing.
Restaurants that serve "humanely raised"
Only a handful of major chains have signed up to serve "humanely raised and slaughtered" meat and eggs. Here are a few:
Wolfgang Puck Cos. (started March 2007)
100% cage-free eggs
100% crate-free pork and veal
No foie gras
Carl's Jr. and Hardees
15% crate-free pork, up to 25% by January 2009
2% cage-free eggs by July 2008
Burger King
2% cage-free eggs this year
10% crate-free pork this year
The Cheesecake Factory
100% humanely raised chickens
Chipotle Mexican Grill
100% humanely raised pork, beef and chicken
2000 (pork), 2001 (chicken), 2003 (beef)
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
Wolfgang Puck Cos. (started March 2007)
100% cage-free eggs
100% crate-free pork and veal
No foie gras
Carl's Jr. and Hardees
15% crate-free pork, up to 25% by January 2009
2% cage-free eggs by July 2008
Burger King
2% cage-free eggs this year
10% crate-free pork this year
The Cheesecake Factory
100% humanely raised chickens
Chipotle Mexican Grill
100% humanely raised pork, beef and chicken
2000 (pork), 2001 (chicken), 2003 (beef)
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
Polish chickens
These are the next birds I would like to get.
The Crested Dutch, or Polish, of early writers were imported from eastern Europe, and upon landing in England, these were called "Poland Fowls." On the Continent of Europe, the name "Padoue" is applied to crested breeds. Charles Darwin classifies all the races of fowl with top-knots as "Crested or Polish" but does not give any data regarding their origin.
Polish is a long established race of domesticated poultry. It was mentioned as a pure breed as early as the sixteenth century. It is among the most ornamental and beautiful breeds of poultry, highly prized for exhibition and the production of white-shelled eggs. The most striking characteristic of the Polish fowl is the large protuberance or knob on top of the skull from which the crest of feathers grow and the large cavernous nostrils are found only in crested breeds.
This is an ornamental fowl. It is a non-sitter. The egg shells are white.
Papa in the news
Against the Grain
Newburyport - Still enjoying the success of his sons’ chickens at the Topsfield Fair, Henry Fox shows off his entry in the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association annual auction to be held this weekend.
The piece is just about as unusual as two kids who live in downtown Newburyport raising prize-winning chickens.
Called “Pushmepullu” after the “Dr. Doolittle” character with heads facing both back and front, the cabinet was originally designed to open either left or right by flipping it over. That didn’t work out from a design standpoint, but the name stayed.
The striking contemporary cabinet, made of tiger maple, madrone (an evergreen native to the Pacific coast), ebony and sandblasted aluminum, was shown at the Smithsonian Institute in April, in Concord during the month of August and at the Cushing House Museum in Newburyport.
The original design came to Fox when he was commissioned to make a piece of furniture to fit in a particular space in a customer’s apartment.
“He wanted to fill a space with a table, but he wanted something dramatic,” Fox says of the customer. Fox, in turn, suggested something bigger and higher — and thus was born “Pushmepullu.”
“I have always thought in three dimensions. I work in a similar way to an architect, but I don’t build houses. I build furniture. Everything in our portfolio and in here was designed and built as a response to a request — us trying to solve a problem.”
That aside, he adds that sometimes ideas for materials come while he is just “fooling around” with something — like chair seats and backs made from Knoll Imago, for example. This is a textile sandwiched between layers of (hardened) opaque resin.
“It’s highly unlikely someone would come in with an idea like this,” he says.
The chairs are quite popular. The substance is flexible enough to lend itself to the curved seat and back and makes quite a visual impact.
Fox has also used the material in other pieces, such as a table he modeled after the greenhead boxes that dot the marshes in the summer. Not unsurprisingly, the table is called “The Greenhead Table.”
Fox Brothers is rather unique in that they make a lot of chairs, Fox says.
“Chairs are sort of interesting. Many people that make furniture don’t make chairs — I think because they’re challenging. They have to be light and strong and there are no hidden parts — at least the way we design them.”
And ergonomic precision makes Fox chairs appealing from any aspect. Fox uses a typical human being as the model for his chairs — himself.
Behind the name
The studio/shop is called Fox Brothers, so you expect to see Henry and assorted brothers working industriously at their benches. In actuality, Fox says, “I’m the father.”
The sons are his own sons Orren and Willy of chicken-raising fame.
“I’m not sure they’re going to be furniture makers — but who knows?” he says.
The boys, age 10 and 13, spend some of their spare time in the shop behind the studio with their dad working on various projects. An optimist’s pram, a kids’ sailboat made from one sheet of plywood, stands at one end of the shop.
“The boys love to come down here and do various projects,” Fox says.
As for the chickens, the kids entered 11 chickens and 12 eggs into the Topsfield Fair and one of the birds was named the grand champion.
“They were ecstatic,” Fox says.
The chickens, by the way, are kept at a farm in Newbury.
Creating furniture
Fox came to Newburyport some 20 years ago and began his trade at The Tannery before it was a mall, repairing rowing shells. He saw work that a friend was doing, was taken by the pieces and started crafting furniture.
There are three people in his shop, including him, and Fox says all of them learned a lot of their skills right there.
“It’s a different approach than going to school and becoming attached to a mentor,” he says. “In some cases you can identify the school in the people’s work … they eventually achieve their own style.”
Standing in his shop, surrounded by the tools of his trade but not by sawdust — that is collected straight from the sander and sent to a room at the back of the building — Fox can look around at the end of the day and see what he has achieved. He likes what he does.
The auction
The auction preview starts at 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 21 at the Wentworth-by-the-Sea Hotel in New Castle, N.H. The auction is to benefit the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association’s educational initiatives, the largest of which are the Prison Outreach Program and the Studio-Based Learning Program.
Now in its eighth year, the Prison Outreach Program complements the New Hampshire State Prison’s Hobby Craft Program and enables NHFMA members to enter the state prison and offer instruction to inmates who wish to further their furniture-making skills.
Industrialized chicken farming.
I would like for people to consider eating less chicken, or at least eat chicken that has been farmed with care. Eat local chicken, where the chickens can walk around and live a happy life.
Read the description below to know how many chickens live before showing up in the supermarket.
New Yorker writer Michael Specter, on his first visit to a chicken farm:
"I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe….There must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way."
—Michael Specter, New Yorker
American Poultry Association - Coop Tender
I am now working on the level.
COOP TENDER
“Second Level”
Age: You must be 10 years of ago or older to be tested for this level.
Record Book: Mandatory
To achieve this rank, a young person should be able to demonstrate a fundamental understanding of the poultry animal and its basic care, of show preparation, should have participated in competitive activities with an individual animal and should be participating either individually, or with others, in some poultry related activities. This level should know basics on feed, some education on the more common external parasites and internal parasites and how to treat or prevent them, worming and how to prepare a bird to show. He should know the basic external parts of a chicken, be able to tell the sex of a bird, know the breed and breed class of the bird he/she is showing. You should be able to coop in and coop out a bird properly and be able to hand the bird from person to person properly.
At this level parental help and guidance is acceptable for activity, competition and educational projects but practical “hands on” learning is very important, not just memorizing from a book.
COOP TENDER
“Second Level”
Age: You must be 10 years of ago or older to be tested for this level.
Record Book: Mandatory
To achieve this rank, a young person should be able to demonstrate a fundamental understanding of the poultry animal and its basic care, of show preparation, should have participated in competitive activities with an individual animal and should be participating either individually, or with others, in some poultry related activities. This level should know basics on feed, some education on the more common external parasites and internal parasites and how to treat or prevent them, worming and how to prepare a bird to show. He should know the basic external parts of a chicken, be able to tell the sex of a bird, know the breed and breed class of the bird he/she is showing. You should be able to coop in and coop out a bird properly and be able to hand the bird from person to person properly.
At this level parental help and guidance is acceptable for activity, competition and educational projects but practical “hands on” learning is very important, not just memorizing from a book.
Little fat Cochins
I went to the barn today and while we were there we weighed the little cochins. Sugar weighs 1.5 pounds, Lola weighs 2.5, and cocoa weighs 2 pounds. They are such great little birds. The walk around as if they own the joint, chatting and gossiping the whole time! I sure hope they do well at the fair next year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)