vector: douglain

Comparatively speaking, in our industrial agricultural system, these hens are the lucky ones.

Suddenly, the Hunt Is On for Cage-Free Eggs

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/12/3133/

Of course, comparatively speaking, backyard chickens like mine are the Mega-Jackpot Lotto winners in the game of finding favorable re-birth as a chicken in North America in the first decade of the 21st Century.



Most egg-producing hens live like this:



link: http://www.uoregon.edu/~seta/cagefree.php

Fresh from the egg This chick broke through his shell enough to cheep at me while still inside. I peeled away most of it. He spent the first half hour or so of (post-egg) life on my stomach as I sat on the back porch and read a book, but eventually I put him back in the box that the broody hen used to incubate her eggs. The next morning he was following her around the yard with his brothers and sisters. I used the male pronoun, but I have no clue as to the sex of this chicken.

RI_Red_Plymouth_Rock_Barred_cross This baby chick's father is a Plymouth Rock barred rooster, and his biological mother is Rhode Island Red hen. He's hiding behind his brood mama here, the Plymouth Rock barred hen that sat on the egg and upon whom this little one has imprinted.

( Click here to see more photos )

Eggs_backyard_vs_storebought The egg on the left came from one of our backyard hens. The egg on the right came from the store but from a supposedly local source.

C-Realm Podcast

Give it a listen!

Episode 23: Dream Like a Viking




Enjoy! -KMO

( More here. )

I spent Monday and Tuesday night out of town and arrived home just before sundown on Wednesday. Thursday morning when I did a head count, I found that I had two fewer chickens than I did on Monday morning.

Lest it sound like I intend to lay blame at anyone's feet but my own, I will say that I had intended to buy chicken feed before I left so that Lara could feed the chooks in the enclosed chicken run and keep them confined and relatively safe while I was gone. I forgot to do so, passing the farm store several times in my comings and goings in the days before I left town without stopping. As a result, Lara had to let them out to forage. Watching after our two boys demands her full attention, so I could not reasonably expect her to look after Logan, Callum, AND 26 chickens.

In any event, we now have 24 chickens.

I ordered 25 chickens with the idea that we'd loose 10 to grasping child hands in the early days. We lost zero, so I'm still way ahead in terms of bringing the desired number of laying hens into egg production, but the chickens mean more to me than egg output or garden bed construction.

And I ran over a squirrle on my way into town today. :(