Poultry Raising
Today In the United States, Commercial poultry operations are selling more then 35 Billion Lbs of chicken and some 90 Billion Eggs each year. Approximately 5 Billion Lbs of chicken is exported, but the rest is consumed in the united states. The US Department of Agriculture values the broiler industry at $45 Billion.
Broilers are Raised in all-in/all-out barns, slaughtered at thirteen weeks of age or younger. They are housed in buildings that can take up to 4o thousand birds.
Interest In Heritage Breed Poultry
Interest In Heritage Breeds of live stock of all kinds, Including poultry has increased as the 21st century begins Concern for the origin and conditions of food this translates into the next step: growing your own.
Even those who recoil from butchering their own chickens feel comfortable eating the eggs of birds they know and Love.
Establishing your Own Flock puts you in the spectrum of poultry breeders as others have before you, you will inevitably make your mark on your birds, as they will on you.
Whatever your reasons are whether its eat their eggs or become a merchant selling meat and Eggs at your local farmers market, you are an important link in a long relationship between humans and Chickens.
Domestication likely began when an early human decided it was easier to weave a cage and put some baby birds in it then try to catch them or search for their nests.
India’s red jungle fowl, from which modern chickens are descended, are quick on the ground, cleaver about hiding their nests, and lite enough to fly. Knocking them out of trees with a sling shot must have been taken exacting skills and a sharp eye.
Keeping these chickens would have provided these early humans the opportunity to watch them. Watching a pen of chickens is as memorizing as gazing into a camp fire. The phrase “Pecking Order” comes from chickens social organization, and watching their inter-chicken jockeying is an entertaining past time.
Like many birds, chickens naturally form flocks with a strong social hierarchy. Hens develop alliances and loyalties, and social life is rarely with out incident. An extra worm to a low ranking hen can start off a squabble or improve her ranking. Life is never static in the chicken Yard.
In our own chicken yard, a certain unassertive hen that was last at every thing, one day, discovered a large juicy cricket for her self. She snatched it up in an unaccustomed manner of self assertion and took off, with half a dozen hens in hot pursuit. They where outraged that she would presume to usurp this tasty delight for her self.
Unwilling to release her prize cricket, she flapped and ran until she had sufficient leeway behind a bush to gobble her treat in hasty triumph. After seeing her outwit her colleagues, I felt that perhaps her place at the bottom of the pecking order was not with out its comforts.
