A Short History of Organic Eggs

You’re in the egg aisle at the supermarket and want to get eggs from hens that are treated humanely. So, you grab the eggs with the green and white USDA Organic label and put them in your cart. Organic must be good, right? But what does it even mean in terms of how the hens are treated? Perhaps not very much.

Coop - A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting by Michael Perry - A Review

Author, humorist, and radio-show host Michael Perry tells us the story of his first year in an old house on a Wisconsin acreage with his new wife and daughter.  It is a tale of lurching forward with pigs and chickens and gardening and hay-making and wood splitting and don’t forget building a chicken coop, and of course a home birth—all while maintaining a full-time career.  And other impracticalities.  Nonfiction.  Really. 

A Carton of Eggs: Part 3 - Wild Harvest Cage Free Large Brown Eggs

This is part three of a series about the information printed on egg cartons.  I’ve found you can learn from all that carton information once you figure out what it's actually saying.  And sometimes you can learn a whole lot by what it doesn’t say.   Wild Harvest is a brand aimed at consumers who prefer natural and organic products. These are consumers who expect that the producers of the food products they buy are adhering to strong and consistent animal welfare standards. Are these consumers getting what they think they’re getting when they buy Wild Harvest eggs?

Sour Crop and Flystrike: The Little Red Hen Gets Well

This is the saga of how one tenacious little red hen at death's door fought her way back to the land of the living.  It is also the tale of my search for the needle of truth about a confusing chicken disease and its treatment in the haystack of conflicting information on the internet. Sometimes, in order to do the right thing for your sick chicken, you have to sift through a lot of hay, then grit your teeth and hope you’re grabbing the needle.