Archives for Keeping chickens category
Posted on May 14, 2009 under Keeping chickens, chicken ark |
Britons are buying record numbers of Free Range, Barn and Organic Eggs. Research shows shoppers bought 2.04billion of them last year, up from 1.64billion in 2002 (Article from the Daily Mail - 09/08/2006).
With increasing media attention on battery chickens since then, most of the large supermarkets have moved to barn and free range eggs. Waitrose only sell barn and free range. Of course, if you’re keeping chickens at home, either letting them free range or keeping them in a chicken ark that you move around, then you have free range eggs.
if you keep your hens in hen houses with a run, your hens are not ranging free but if you look at the definition below they would count as free range. They may be organic too, if you provide organic food. The important thing about home grown eggs is that you control the conditions you keep your chickens in.
The Benefits of Eating Eggs
Eggs are low in calories and could actually protect against heart disease, breast cancer and eye problems and even help you to lose weight. Eggs are actually good for you. They are rich in nutrients, one egg provides 13 essential nutrients, all in the yolk (egg whites contain albumen, an important source of protein, and no fat). You should keep eggs in the fridge in their box and eat them by the use-by date.
We now know the benefits of eating eggs but does the welfare of the chickens matter?
Eggs are produced in 3 types of production systems.
1) Laying Cage System. Laying cages are the most common method of commercial egg production in the UK - representing around 66% of eggs produced in 2004.
Typically a laying cage system consists of a series of at least three tiers of cages. The cages have sloping mesh floors so that the eggs roll forward out of the reach of the birds to await collection. Droppings pass through the mesh floors onto boards, belts, the floors of the house or into a pit to await removal.
2) Barn system. Around 7% of eggs sold in the UK are produced in the barn system. In the barn system the hen house has a series of perches and feeders at different levels. In the deep litter system the birds are kept in hen houses in which all the floor area should be solid with a litter of straw, wood shavings, sand or turf.
3) Free range system. The free range system accounts for around 27% of eggs produced in the UK. And the Welfare of Laying Hens Directive stipulate that for eggs to be termed free range, hens must have continuous daytime access to runs which are mainly covered with vegetation and with a maximum stocking density of 2,500 birds per hectare. The demand for free-range eggs is also growing by 10 per cent a year. Somerfield will be the first supermarket in the country to switch to selling French free-range eggs. Tesco is also understood to be lining up suppliers on the Continent if it is not able to guarantee supplies at home due to this rising demand.
Technorati Tags: chicken ark, free range eggs, organic eggs
Posted on May 11, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
From time to time, we’ll feature some good hen videos. There’s increasing interest in breeds of chickens, particularly as so many pure breeds are in dangeer, form all the cross breeding.
This video shows a fock in Scotland with an interesting flock of rare chickens.
Some of our mixed flock of Scots Greys and ISA Browns doing the chicken shuffle on our croft in Aberdeenshire, NE Scotland. The Scots Grey is an endangered breed with around 200 breeding hens left.
Duration : 0:1:30
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Technorati Tags: Aberdeenshire, Brown, chicken, Endangered chicken breeds, Grey
Posted on Apr 27, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
This shows a number of chickens in a large hen house. If you have issues with pecking order a simple chicken ark can be used to isolate the chickens that are causing the problem.
These can easily be be made from chicken ark plans
Duration : 0:3:4
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Technorati Tags: chicken ark, chicken ark plans, pecking order
Posted on Apr 26, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
The revival of backyard urban chicken-keeping, as practiced by some residents of Metro Atlanta. Some even have goats. This story was featured on “This is Atlanta with Alicia Steele,” a Telly Award-winning and Emmy-nominated magazine show on PBA, Atlanta’s PBS Station. View more from “This is Atlanta” at http://www.pba.org/atlanta.
The chicken ark featured is the ‘Eglu’ a plastic high-tech coop. It works extremely well, but is expensive.
Try this for more on making a simple chicken ark from plans.
Duration : 0:9:26
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Posted on Apr 21, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
Avian influenza affects chickens and the poultry industry, recombined with the human influenza viruses form a totally new influenza virus to which people do not have protection that spreads in the population and that causes serious illness and death in humans. Bird Flu is an infectious disease of birds that can also affect people. It can present mild or severe forms of illness. The only subtype that can cause severe illness to people is Influenza A /H5N1 virus, initially it affects chickens, ducks and other birds by the process of mutation they can become highly pathogenic. If the bird flu virus recombines with a human flu virus and mutate it may become possible the transmission from human to human as happened in Asia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia Thailand, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Eygpt, China, and Iraq where people died. Bird flu affected Australia in 1997 but, was eradicated.
Water birds are supposed to carry the avian influenza type A virus inside their intestines and to distribute it in the environment through bird faeces.
Infection determines many symptoms in wild and domesticated birds from mild illnesses to highly contagious and severe epidemics. Among them a decline in activity and in egg production, facial swelling and bluish-violet colored combs and wattles, diarrhea, hemorrhages, paralysis, sudden deaths. Signes and symptoms of bird flu in humans are similar to other influenza viruses: sore throat and cough, fever, muscle weakness and/or pain with complications such as: severe viral pneumonia, respiratory distress syndrome, multi- organ failure, eye infections, pneumonia, inflammation of the brain and heart. Health experts have made research into tests and vaccines, and rigorous quarantine practices. Spanish flu was the worst influenza pandemic and occurred in 1918â19. There have been adopted governmental federal plans Australian Action Plan for Pandemic Influenza, to prevent an outbreak among poultry farms. Treatments of bird flu are antiviral drugs, Relenza and Tamiflu, but some of these drugs are expensive and supplies are limited. To prevent recombination of avian with the human influenza virus: is recommended a vaccine used against circulating strains in humans to those exposed to bird flu. A vaccine against bird flu is in development.
Suggestions for people travelling to affected countries:
Wash eggs thoroughly before breaking and wash your hands thoroughly after handling eggs. Donât go to farms or market places. Wash hands, utensils thoroughly after handling raw poultry. Cook poultry at high temperatures.
You may get help from: a doctor, Avian Influenza Hotline, Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Communicable Diseases Section.
Remember: Although bird flu is spread between birds it affects humans through bird faeces and discharges.
If you seem to get flu symptoms see immediately a doctor and explain him how exposed you have been to avian influenza.
For more information about bird flu or even about bird flu treatment please review this page http://www.bird-flu-info-center.com/bird-flu-treatment.htm
Groshan Fabiola
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/avian-influenza-prevention-and-treatments-113864.html
Posted on Apr 11, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
Keeping Chickens helps children to take reponsibility for caring and cleaning, and ensures they understand much more about where our food comes from. An old shed makes a reasonable chicken coop - but these chickens may be vulnerable to predators if they are left unattended.
Even in the daytime, foxes and racoons can strike, so a moveable chicken ark run can be a good solutiion.
Duration : 0:9:43
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Posted on Apr 03, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
Sarah Gilbert: How keeping chickens will save your life
Duration : 0:5:1
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Posted on Apr 01, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
In an experiment with Chicks by an Italian university, researchers have found what chicken keepers already knew - chickens are surprisingly intelligent. It isn’t about us counting chickens - chicken themselves can count!
See the BBC video here
Baby birds can do arithmetic, say researchers in Italy.
Scientists from the universities of Padova and Trento demonstrated chicks’ ability to add and subtract objects as they were moved behind two screens.
Counting chickens
In each of the mini maths tests, a chick watched from a clear-fronted holding box while one of the researchers slowly moved the balls behind the screens - three behind one screen and two behind the other.
The front door of the box was then opened, releasing the chick into the tiny arena, so it could walk around and select a screen to look behind.
They chose correctly - adding up the numbers based on groups of objects they couldn’t see at that moment.
“The chicks still approached the larger of the two groups first, even though they had to rely on memory to work out which screen to choose,” said Professor Lucia Regolin of the University of Padova.
Technorati Tags: chickens, Chicks, hatching chickens
Posted on Apr 01, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
By Harwood E Woodpecker
The way we live our lives on a daily basis is changing rapidly. The way we approach certain things in life is different to approach we may have taken 10 - 15 years ago because of the way we are educated by the television media and news paper media towards certain issues. One such issue is the way we eat and what we eat. In years gone by we would eat a fast food meal for convenience without giving a second thought as to what it might have been doing to our body, it was simply treated as fuel to get us through the day until it was time for our next meal. But in recent years there has been a concerted effort in the media and by health organisations to move us away from fast food and towards a more healthy way of eating, which can only be good news for us. The other thing that has changed over the past few years is the way we buy our food. More and more of us are now shopping in large faceless supermarkets because they are convenient and because they are cheaper than local stores. But there is an extra price to pay for cheaper food and that is generally in the quality of the produce or how that food was reared. So what is the real price of cheap food and what can we do about it?
In simple economic terms the more you produce of something the cheaper it gets to produce, it is called economy of scale and it is true about every form of production whether it be glass production, plastic production or the production of a chicken for your dinner table. The production of the chicken is what affects you and I most of all, we have all heard and read about battery produced chicken and other forms of meat and we all take the choice of whether we buy the cheap meat that is produced for a price or whether we purchase a free range chicken that is reared humanely and sold for a higher price. But there is another alternative open to you, why not rear your own chicken and have a truly free range bird that will produce both eggs and a meat for you.
More and more people are trying their hand at keeping their own chickens for these very same reasons, you can be 100 per cent sure that the animals have had a totally free life and that they have been reared in a natural way and even been fed on totally organic produce. Chickens take up very little space in your garden and can live side by side with other pets as long as they are kept secure.
Keeping chickens is a great educational experience for adults and children alike, seeing the birds grow up, learning about their characteristics as well as learning about the value of food and meat when it comes to the time that you have to slaughter the animal. Chickens can be a great way to help you with organic gardening as their manure can be used as an organic fertilizer on plants and vegetables that can then in turn be fed to the chickens.
Depending what you want from your chickens should depend on what breed of bird that you go for, certain birds produce better meat than others and certain chickens are better at laying eggs. Organic gardening is becoming more and more popular each year and with the improved education that we have regarding what we eat, where it comes from and how it is produced maybe the time is right for more of us to have a go.
Organic gardening is not hard work and rearing chickens in a safe, humane and organic way is both educational and therapeutic so why not give it a go this year.
For more info on [http://www.organic-baby-toys.com/Organic/Organic/Organic_gardening/]organic gardening and [http://www.organic-baby-toys.com/Organic/Organic/Organic_compost/]organic compost please visit our site - http://www.organic-baby-toys.com
Please feel free to republish this article provided a working hyperlink remains to our site
Harwood E Woodpecker.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Harwood_E_Woodpecker http://EzineArticles.com/?Reasons-For-Trying-Organic-Gardening—Dont-Be-A-Chicken&id=1181141
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Posted on Mar 27, 2009 under Keeping chickens |
Here is my chicken coop in fort collins colorado.
Duration : 0:1:48
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Technorati Tags: chicken coop, Homestead, Permaculture, urban