Table of contents for September - October 2016 in Chickens

You may be wondering what the larger implications are when it comes to loss of genetic diversity in livestock animals and poultry breeds. Are we talking about a future in which genetically modified animals and animal products span every farm and dinner plate in America? Are we on the brink of that future, or is it already here in some way? Consider what the current industry standard is for American livestock and poultry. A single “industrial” version of the White Leghorn breed is a common Big Ag egg-producer due to its small size, large white eggs and excellent feed conversion ratio. It is one of only five chicken breeds used to supply eggs and meat to the American people. Of all fowl used for food production, the turkey is perhaps…

You might be surprised how many ways eggshells can be put to good use: around the house, in the garden, even for health and happiness. Read on for an eggucation in how to use them, starting in the chicken house and working our way to the keeper’s home. Pet Supplements Most chicken keepers have probably already heard about feeding crushed eggshells back to the chickens as a calcium supplement. “Chickens need calcium to make eggshells or they start pulling it from their bones to supplement,” says Caroline Turben of ExtravagantGardens.com. Turben’s hens eat the crushed shells at will. “Truth be told, they like it,” she says. Turben first sterilizes the shells by baking them, while others grind them to a powder before feeding. (See “Shell Prep” on page 58 for…

The cast of characters among the flock can be diverse. Some make us laugh, others are curious and creative, exhibit superior intellect, or inform us about their kind. It’s similar with the keepers themselves, and Angie Bishop is one of a kind. Dearly Beloved A homemade chicken coop may not sound romantic, but for Angie, a coop helped her win true love. To woo her, her future husband, Tom Bishop Jr., built one on his property in rural Ontario, Canada. “He wasn’t into chickens,” Angie says. “But he asked me if I’d come by more often if he had a place for mine.” How could she resist? Angie hasn’t always been a chicken enthusiast. “I just wanted a couple of eggs,” she says. “I found out Ameraucanas laid blue ones,…

Jim Adkins’ love of birds started when he was a young boy. He was first introduced to chickens when his father brought home a flock of Cornish Cross and Rhode Island Red chicks, and his passion for these birds grew from there as he became involved with a 4-H club and began breeding and exhibiting chickens, eventually going on to judge poultry himself. As an adult, Adkins started work in the poultry industry, supervising five ranches that raised more than 450,000 turkeys every year — commercial, industrialized turkeys that couldn’t even mate naturally. “The longer I worked for the company,” he says, “the more frustrated I became.” This, combined with the fact that he could see evidence of the steady decline in heritage poultry breeds, led Adkins to take action:…

Nutritionism, a concept that writer Michael Pollan has addressed and condemned in recent years in his book, In Defense of Food (2009), suggests that individual nutrients can provide a complete diet, rather than whole foods themselves. Simply, it’s the idea that the nutritional value of a food is only equal to the sum of its presently identifiable parts. Processed foods, including chicken feeds, often contain synthetic versions of added nutrients, because we tend to value a nutrient itself, rather than the whole of its natural food origin. Foods in their most natural forms possibly contain beneficial nutrients or combinations of them we’ve yet to discover. While chicken-feed labels reinforce the reliability of laboratory nutrition analyses, do the industry standards beat the entirety of known and unknown nutrition in a natural…

WHERE IS THE STRANGEST PLACE YOU HAVE EVER FOUND EGGS? I thought for over a week that my hens had stopped laying; it turned out that my Indian Runner duck (pictured left) was stealing the eggs and hiding them under the henhouse. I found her sitting on about 30! — Wendy Sutton On the air conditioner condenser — outside — in the summer. That hen must have gotten a bottomful of warm air during that lay! — Suzanne Best We were pulling old stumps and smoothing out some land when we found more than a dozen eggs buried completely 2 feet underground! There were no signs of who or what put them that far down. — Teresa Lummus You can clean up your garden after your late-summer harvest with help…

If you’ve been around chickens for any length of time, you’ve probably observed a dust bath or two. Endearing as well as beneficial, chickens will find an area of sand or soil, scratch out a hole with their feet and then proceed to roll until they are covered with dirt and dust, which they then proceed to shake off. Some first-time chicken keepers think there is something wrong with their birds, but in fact, the opposite is true: Chickens enjoy dust bathing, and it naturally controls external parasites, such as mites, as the dust and sharp edges of the particles kill and smother these pests. Dust bathing is an essential part of being a chicken, and they’ll attempt to do it with or without a designated area. So if you’d…

My father had a weakness for strays, so I grew up with an ever-changing menagerie that waxed and waned as they came and went. Some, too broken or dependent to go back to the wild, stayed; others were eager to heal and head for home. He had a soft spot for the rejected and unwanted, the maligned, the mangy, the motley and even the nefarious: raccoons, skunks, crows, a caiman he must have smuggled back with us from Florida, even a lonely squirrel monkey he spotted at the mall. And, of course, there were all the usual suspects: canaries, budgies, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, fish and a funky-smelling stray tomcat named Wally Walnuts, along with the ducks and chickens. It all seemed perfectly normal to me. I loved all the animals,…

While many of us take for granted the almost-daily eggs that our hens leave us, we also don’t always appreciate that the egg is nutritionally well-balanced: It was created to sustain the life of a developing embryo. We’re able to take advantage of that phenomenon and provide our families with a low-calorie food that contains all of the micro- and macronutrients to sustain life, save vitamin C. (Birds make their own vitamin C in their kidneys and/or liver, so they don’t need it from an external source like we do.) Plus, don’t forget the egg comes in a nice convenient package, which makes transportation so easy! Part of a Balanced Diet The recent 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the USDA, which is based in part on recent research and…

Serves 6 The following recipe is one of 100 recipes featured in Happy Hens & Fresh Eggs by chef and chicken-keeper Signe Langford. INGREDIENTS • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil• 1 tablespoon butter• 1 cup sliced halloumi or Canadian Guernsey Girl cheese (about 9 ounces)• 1 small purple onion, finely chopped• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped• 3 small red, yellow and orange bell peppers, julienned• 2 tablespoons za’atar• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt or more to taste• freshly ground pepper to taste• 2 1/2 cups coarsely chopped ripe red, yellow and orange tomatoes (about five small tomatoes)• 1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley• 3 tablespoons honey• 14-ounce can artichoke hearts, halved and very well-drained• 6 free-run eggs PREPARATION Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Into a large oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat (I love cast iron or copper for this), and add the oil, butter…