every chick deservers a mother
What do hens say about human love? That it takes forever? That they’re stuck with the same man over and over again? That there’s no variety?
Beauty is everywhere. When the chickens make their rounds, do they see beauty? When they walk over fallen cherry petals, do they just see good things to eat, or do they think it’s pretty? When they walk by moss covered rocks, do they just check to see if there is something to eat on the moss, or do they pause and enjoy the lush green?
I’ll never forget the day I ran into Madeleine taking a walk in the woods. She was the first hen I had who hatched and raised a clutch. A day or two after she was done rearing her brood, she was strolling down a path through the woods.
I watched her for some time. She seemed to be more than just looking for good things to eat. She seemed to be taking a much needed rest from having spent twenty four hours a day for over a month rearing nine chicks. It was like she was out enjoying being alone for the first time in a long time.
That was back in 2010. Madeleine is no longer living. But I’ll never forget her. Watching her care for her chicks convinced me that every chick deserves a mother.
Just so you realize that a man and his hoe® is about more than just mother raised chicken and eggs, here are some pictures of some crops which are growing now. What you see here are shallots, raspberries, plums in bloom, onion, garlic, and arugula. Though chickens do a thorough job clearing out pests, they can destroy vegetable beds in no time. Often, they aren’t going after the vegetables. They usually destroy vegetable beds by tearing them apart in their search for earthworms and bugs.
A terrific byproduct of vegetable and fruit production is mountains of compostable material. Every two to three months I start a new compost pile and keep adding to it until it is time to start another pile. Chickens are great compost workers, and every time I need to stir or break down and rebuild a compost pile, they swarm in to help. They can’t get enough of all the good worms and bugs they find in the pile. Their litter helps get the compost pile cooking, and when the pile is done, they do a great job breaking it down and spreading it over new vegetable beds.
The great thing about growing crops and raising chickens is that you see up close what nature is. It is always changing and constantly recycling everything. There is no waste in nature. Everything is something’s or somebody’s food. And while this frenetic activity is going on, there is so much beauty to see, it takes your breath away.
Queen Imelda cuts a regal pose as she spends part of the afternoon with Billy. Always calm and collected, she lays an impressive egg. Each chicken is unique. Each one has a distinct personality. Each one lays a slightly different egg. Each time they lay an egg it is slightly different.
When you see the Certified Humane label on a carton of eggs, you may think that the hens which laid those eggs are running around on grass like Queen Imelda. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Certified Humane only requires hens to have 1 to 1.5 square feet per hen when laying hens are kept in laying houses. The requirement varies depending on whether the laying house has layers, perches, and roosts or not. You’ll find their space requirements on page 7 of Humane Farm Animal Care Animal Care Standards 2014 Standards for Egg Laying Hens.
This means that in a 30 by 100 foot laying house, a farmer could keep from 2,000 to 3,000 hens and still meet the Certified Humane standards. What organizations like Certified Humane are trying to do is noble, but just because something has a label saying it was raised humanely, doesn’t mean that it meets your definition of what you consider to be humane treatment. Look behind the label and find out exactly what that means.
I asked Certified Humane whether they allowed de-beaking and this is what they emailed me:
De-beaking is prohibited by our program. Our laying hen standards allow beak trimming if it occurs before 10 days of age, and here is the reasoning behind that:
In flocks of cage-free laying hens larger than 120 birds, there is a tendency towards feather pecking and cannibalism. Feather pecking is a natural behavior for birds (actually the source of the term “pecking order”), whereas cannibalism occurs when the birds attack another bird until it is dead. Most of the food production flocks are much larger than 120 birds, unless they are being raised by a backyard farmer or hobbyist.
Beak trimming is performed on birds prior to 10 days of age. Our scientific committee developed this standard as a way to combat cannibalism in cage-free flocks while minimizing discomfort for the birds. There have been studies done which show that trimming just the tip of the beak at that age causes only momentary discomfort, with no long-term discomfort or ill effects. The birds are still able to use their beak in a full range of natural behaviors.
In other words, they allow egg laying hens to be kept in flocks of such size and density, that the hens may cannibalize each other. So, in order to prevent this, they allow chicks up to 10 days old to have their beaks trimmed. In my view, a more humane method would be to research what maximum flock size and minimum housing density is required to keep cannibalization from happening in the first place. Of course, this would result in more expensive eggs, and so to keep the farmers happy and the consumers appeased with being able to purchase inexpensive eggs with “humanely raised” labels, the less expensive method has been approved.
I understand why Certified Humane has gone this way. At the same time, I feel you have a right to know what it is you are buying when you purchase eggs with their label on them.
Billy, the rooster who along with Madeleine, started my education into mother-raised chicken. He’s five years old and no longer the top rooster. But he’s settled into a quiet spot in the backyard where he spends much of the day. Numerous hens come and visit him so he’s a long way from not enjoying life. This week he’s devouring the plumb blossoms as they drift off the plum tree. Not a bad life for an old rooster.
In her recent book, the soil will save us, Kristin Ohlson points out that agricultural practices, particularly plowing and tilling, release vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. Estimates are that heavily farmed areas have lost from 50 to 80 percent of the carbon in the soil with much of it going into the atmosphere.
“Altogether, the world’s soils have lost up to 80 billion tons of carbon. Not all of it heads skyward—erosion has washed some of it into our waterways—but even now, land misuse accounts for 30 percent of the carbon emissions entering the atmosphere.”
However, Ms. Ohlson writes that by changing agricultural practices to those that restore the ecology of soils, enough CO2 could be pulled from the atmosphere and stored in the soil to lower the CO2 levels in the atmosphere by at least 3 parts per million annually, maybe even much more.
The way this process works is that plants use photosynthesis to extract carbon dioxide out of the air and then use the carbon to build their leaves, their stems, and their roots. Plants also transfer some of this carbon through their roots to microorganisms in the soil. The microorganisms use this carbon to thrive, and in return, provide the plants with minerals the plants need. Through this exchange, carbon is pulled out of the atmosphere and stored in the ground. Other organisms, such as earthworms, also help store carbon in the soil by feeding on plants and depositing the carbon underground. According to Rattan Lal, Professor of Soil Science at Ohio State University, “An earthworm can drag a leaf down more than three feet into the soil.”
In her book, Ms. Ohlson describes numerous examples of farmers working with nature to restore the vitality of their soils without resorting to synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. In the process, they are discovering that their soils produce greater yields and remain productive under adverse conditions better than neighboring farms which rely on synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. At the same time, they are extracting vast quantities of carbon out of the atmosphere and creating carbon rich soils.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much research being conducted into changing agricultural practices to use the soil as a way to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The main reason is that there is little money to be made going this route. There are no expensive, complicated machines to create. There is a lot of research going into reducing society’s use of energy.
“However, none of these will actually reduce the legacy load of CO2 already in the atmosphere. There are schemes afloat for doing that, but they’re expensive—consider the EPA’s plan to capture and inject atmospheric carbon into deep wells at a cost of $600 to $800 per ton. Not as sexy to policy makers, but free of cost, is Mother Nature’s low-tech approach: photosynthesis and the buildup of carbon in the soil that naturally follows.”
It reminds me of the medical care I received eight years ago when I was having recurring ear infections. I went a number of times to a clinic and the doctor who saw me there gave me an antibiotic to use for several weeks. It was a new antibiotic cost nearly two hundred dollars per treatment. It would work for a while, but a month or two later the ear infection would come back, sending me back to the clinic.
When the expensive antibiotic failed to work, I gave up on the clinic and went to an ear doctor. After cleaning out my ear he prescribed a simple solution that surprised me. “All you need is to mix a solution of one part vinegar and one part rubbing alcohol. Put the solution in a dropper and squeeze a few drops in your ear. The vinegar will raise the PH in your ear so no bacteria can survive. And the rubbing alcohol will dry out your ear canal.” The solution, which cost next to nothing, worked far better than the expensive antibiotic some pharmaceutical company had developed at great expense. After using the vinegar and rubbing alcohol solution for a short time, my recurring ear infection went away for good.
The many examples Ms. Ohlson describes in her book sound promising, and give one a reason to hope that agriculture is on a path to greater sustainability. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released a report titled Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability which describes the rather dire impacts we are already seeing from Climate Change and what we can expect to face in the future. We must all work to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. At the same time, according to Kristin Ohlson, the scientists and farmers she discusses in her book, we can also reduce the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere by making sure the food we eat comes from farmers who practice methods which replenish the soil with carbon.
Sometimes the best laid plans don’t work. After building an incubation suite for the hen who went broody, I tried moving her into the suite Saturday night (March 29), but Sunday morning, she wanted out. She was determined to get back to her original brooding site.
Once she was on her original brooding site, I placed ten eggs for her to hatch. The due date is April 20, and we’ll see how she does. Through the process I did find out that this is one tough hen. She won’t have a problem keeping other hens from trying to use her nest while she broods. This hen can peck!
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Imelda is curious about the new chicks. The last few days, she’s spent a fair amount of time hanging out with the new mom and her chicks. Is she wanting to hatch eggs of her own? Does she think the chicks look good to eat? I don’t think so because she’s never shown any aggression toward the chicks. She just seems to enjoy hanging out with them.
Another Dominique hen has gone broody. Today I prepped an incubation suite for her. She’s been sitting on two wooden eggs for the last two days. Tonight, when it is dark, I’ll move her into the incubation suite and put 10 to 12 eggs under her. Hopefully, in three weeks, I’ll have another clutch of chicks. Moving broody hens is risky. Some will take to the new nest without a hitch. Others will want to go back to the nest where they were brooding.
This is the first time I’ve made an incubation suite. It will give the brooding hen, a safe, quiet place to sit for three weeks without being disturbed by the other hens. Besides having a dark, spacious nest inside the barn, she’ll also have a small yard to eat, poop, and stretch her wings.
Often, when hens are incubating a clutch of eggs, other hens will insist on laying eggs in the same nest. Some hens stand their ground and won’t budge an inch. However, all brooding hens leave their nest at least once a day to eat and poop. During the twenty to thirty minutes they are off the nest, other hens can hop on the nest to lay an egg. If they are still on the nest when the brooding hen returns, chaos often erupts.
Hopefully, the incubation suite will solve these problems, and give the brooding hen a carefree brooding experience. If she wants to go outside and enjoy a sunbath, I can slide open the side for her and close it while she is out, to keep her eggs undisturbed. Perhaps I should think about temporarily placing a RFID tag on her and wire a door so it would open and shut only for her.
Which brings me to my ultimate dream device: a tiny automated stamping device I could implant in a hen’s vent so that every time she lays an egg, the egg would get a timestamp which includes the hen’s name and GPS coordinates. The device would also have a super fast DNA decoder which would instantly determine which rooster fertilized the egg and stamp his name on the egg as well. Or if the egg was not fertilized, it would note that too. And of course, the device would send a text message with all of this information. Then I would instantly know when and where each hen laid an egg.
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This is a sure sign of spring, the first chicks of the year. They hatched yesterday, and this is their very first morning. These are the lucky ones. The tiny, nearly infinitesimal percentage of chicks born each year which develop in their eggs listening to their mother’s comforting heart beat, which hatch beneath their mother’s warm breasts, and grow up under her tender care.
According to the USDA, in January 2014, 717,153,000 chickens were slaughtered in the USA along, and in February 2014, the number was 675,901,000. None of those chickens had a mother. Neither do the tens of millions of hens which are raised each year by the egg laying business. When you buy my eggs, or my chicken, each one of them was hatched and raised by a caring mother.
Before you can take a freshly baked soufflé out of the oven you need to pour the soufflé batter into buttered ramekins and put them in the oven.
Before you can pour the soufflé batter into buttered ramekins, you need to finish mixing the soufflé batter.
Before you can finish mixing the soufflé batter, you need to add the sliced ham.
Before you can add the sliced ham to the soufflé batter, you need to finish mixing in the nettle leaves.
Before you can finish mixing in the nettle leaves, you need to add them to the soufflé batter.
Before you can add the nettle leaves to the soufflé batter, you need to mix in the grated cheese.
Before you mix in the grated cheese, you need to fold in the roux and egg yolk mix into the beaten egg whites
Before you can fold in the roux and egg yolk mix into the beaten egg whites, you need to gently fold in more of the beaten egg whites into the roux.
Before you can fold in more of the beaten egg whites into the roux, you need to add a small portion of the egg whites into the roux and egg yolk mix.
Before you can add a small portion of the egg whites into the roux and egg yolk mix, you need to beat the egg whites into a firm meringue.
Before you can beat the egg whites into a firm meringue, you need to butter two ramekins.
Before you butter two ramekins, it’s a good idea to grate some hard cheese.
Before you grate some hard cheese, slice some ham.
Before you slice some ham, cut the nettle leaves.
Before you cut the nettle leaves, finish making your rough and egg yolk mix.
Before you finish making your rough and egg yolk mix, take the rough off the stove and quickly beat in the egg yolks with some milk.
Before you take the rough off the stove and quickly beat in the egg yolks with some milk, cook the rough until it gathers into a soft ball.
Before you cook the rough until it gathers into a soft ball, brown the flour and butter together.
Before you brown the flour and butter together, melt some butter in a pan and add some flour.
Before you melt some butter in a pan and add some flour, wash the freshly picked nettles.
Before you wash the freshly picked nettles, you’ll need to go out into your garden and pick them. You don’t have nettles in your garden? That’s OK, you can use any fresh greens that you find in your garden. Oh, you don’t have a garden? You can’t just go outside and gather something fresh to eat? I guess you could run down to your local green grocer and ask if they have any produce that was picked with the last few hours. What? Your grocer doesn’t even have anything picked today? How is that possible? Surely there is a farm within a 30 to 60 minute drive from your green grocer. There’s no excuse not to have fresh produce picked at least that morning. Well, just do your best, and if your green grocer doesn’t have produce picked that day on their shelves, it’s time to find a new green grocer or find a nearby farmer who will see that you have produce picked that day.
Before you wash you go pick your fresh nettles or greens, break your eggs and separate the egg whites from the yolks.
Before you break and separate your eggs, select five eggs laid today. Five eggs will make two individual soufflés. If you have more people, figure between two and three eggs per person. Eggs work best at room temperature, so if your eggs are in the refrigerator, take them out and let them rest until they are at room temperature.
You don’t have eggs laid today? When were the eggs you have laid? What? You don’t know? Don’t tell me you purchased eggs which you didn’t know how old they were? Didn’t the farmer who sold you your eggs tell you when they were laid? Oh, you forgot to ask? Or did you say you bought your eggs from a supermarket? You can’t see a label on the carton saying how old they are? I wonder why that is? What are they trying to hide? Maybe it’s time to raise your egg standards. The next time you purchase eggs, ask the seller you’d like eggs laid that day. If they look at you like you’re nuts, take a deep breath. You’re not the crazy one. The seller who thinks it doesn’t matter how old eggs are to make a good soufflé is the crazy one.
Life is too short for ho-hum eggs. Find someone who will sell you fresh eggs from chickens that spend all day outdoors enjoying the fresh air, sunshine, and exercise.