a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Free Range Eggs?

    What images float through your mind when you see a carton of free range eggs? Idyllic scenes chickens foraging on grass? Chickens out enjoying fresh air and sunshine? Chasing bugs and scratching for grubs and earthworms?

    OnTheGrass
    The reality is sadly, often not what you imagine. In the United States, there is no legal definition for free range eggs. There are no standards as to what a farmer must do to label their eggs: free range eggs. It basically just means that the chickens are not in cages. Often they are cooped up by the thousands in huge houses. And when they are crowded together, problems such as cannibalism, high ammonia levels, and stress arise. To prevent cannibalism, hens in these crowded facilities have their beaks trimmed so they don’t hurt each other when they peck. These chickens are not living the life you want them to live, nor producing the quality of eggs you deserve.

    The best way to know if the eggs you are buying are coming from chickens living the way you want them to live, is by calling the farmer who produces your eggs. Ask them what kind of pasture their chickens have. Ask how much space their chickens have. How much time do they spend outdoors?

    You have a right to know how your eggs are produced. You are the one eating the eggs and incorporating the eggs into your body. The protein and minerals in the eggs you eat are going to end up being your bones, your skin, your organs … in other words: you!

    Below are images of the way some free range chickens are raised. You’ll never see chickens raised this way at a man and his hoe®.

    FreeRangeNoted
    OntarioChickensNoted
    12 things you should know about eggs (crunchybetty.com)
    Free range eggs (wikipedia.org)
    Free range eggs vs caged eggs – What’s the Difference Nutritionally? (healthambition.com)

  • Strike a Pose

    Chickens are born show-offs. And they have a lot to show. The colors and patterns they wear are often more intricate and elaborate than anything the haute couture houses of Paris, Adeline André, Chanel, Givency, or Versace ever imagine. The chickens know this and strut their beauty at every chance.

    StrikeAPose
    Strutting
    WhoAreYou
    YukiHime

  • Minimum Wage

    The news is full of articles about raising the minimum wage. There’s no question that workers need a reasonable minimum wage in order to buy the things they need to live. Animals are no different. Now chickens have no use for money. They are not going to take a bill full of dollars and walk to the store to purchase things. However, they still deserve something of value in exchange for the eggs they provide. And what is amazing, is that the more you pay them in the way of space, pasture, and brush, the more they reward you with higher quality eggs.
    The next time you purchase eggs or chicken meat, ask your grocer what sort of wages the chickens which laid those eggs receive? How much space does each hen have? How many acres of grassland do they have? Do they have roosters they can flirt with?
    In the pictures below, I’ve listed a number of things I consider should be part of any chicken’s compensation package.
    CleanComfortableNests
    Outdoors
    DirtAndSunBaths
    PlantsAndFlowers
    ThickBrush
    SeaOfGrass
    WalksInTheWoods
    RoostsToGossip
    Saferoost

  • Maple or Ina?

    Ina

    It’s easy to tell chickens apart when they are as different as Ina and Maple. But how does one tell chickens apart when they look very similar?

    Maple

    Chickens of the same breed have slight variations in their color, shape, size, and personality. One thing that is unique to each chicken is the size and shape of their comb. When you look directly at their face, which is how chickens recognize each other, each chicken looks very different. There are flat combs, straight combs, wavy combs, spiky combs, wide combs, narrow combs, and on and on.

    MapleMidgeMolly

  • Disordered Hyperuniformity

    Chickens have amazing eyesight, able to see ranges of color we humans can’t. Now, researchers from Princeton University and Washington University in St. Louis have discovered that the cells in a chicken’s retina have an unusual arrangement, and is the first known biological occurrence of a new state of matter known as “disordered hyperuniformity”.
    CellArrangement
    Over large distances, they display order, but over small distances, disorder. For example, take crystals of sand. Each bit of sand is different, but when you look at a large volume of sand, it appears to be similar. At the same time, disordered hyperuniformity substances are similar to liquids in that they have the same properties in all directions.
    According to the researchers:

    In many creatures’ eyes, visual cells are evenly distributed in an obvious pattern such as the familiar hexagonal compact eyes of insects. In many creatures, the different types of cones are laid out so that they are not near cones of the same type. At first glance, however, the chicken eye appears to have a scattershot of cones distributed in no particular order.

    Joseph Corbo, an associate professor of pathology and immunology, and genetics at Washington University in St. Louis, approached Salvatore Torquato, a chemistry professor at Princeton, whose group studies the geometry and dynamics of densely packed objects. Professor Torquato came to the conclusion that:

    “Because the cones [in a chicken’s retina] are of different sizes it’s not easy for the system to go into a crystal or ordered state,” Torquato said. “The system is frustrated from finding what might be the optimal solution, which would be the typical ordered arrangement. While the pattern must be disordered, it must also be as uniform as possible. Thus, disordered hyperuniformity is an excellent solution.”

    For a more detailed explanation, read In the eye of a chicken, a new state of matter comes into view at News at Princeton.