In the Coop & Around the World - April 26, 2020

In case you are confused by the above picture, I will confirm that it indeed is not a chicken, and is , in fact, a dog. It’s Toby the Lab, Guardian of the Hipster Hens, who hasn’t made an appearance here for a while. Toby is demonstrating a sign of spring that’s dear to his heart. Toby’s loves sticks. Every time he goes outside, he inevitably winds up scouting the woods around the house for a good stick. In Toby’s mind, the good sticks are the big sticks. Small sticks are not worth the time it would take to pick them up in your mouth. A superior stick is one that’s so long that it bangs on the trees on either side of you as you gallop out of the woods with it in your mouth. Perfect sticks are the ones with so much heft that you have to do a little dragging to get them out of the woods.

All of these good sticks eventually wind up on the lawn, which at times looks like a brush pile. Every time I mow I have to toss all those sticks out into the woods. Which is fine with Toby since it gives him an opportunity to carry them back again.

Anyway, when winter comes, the sticks all disappear under a blanket of snow. While it’s possible to dig through the snow in the winter, the search can be a bit fruitless. So hail the melting of the snow, and spring! When a young dog’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of sticks.

Archaeology

Speaking of digging for things, the Hipster Hens were so excited when the ground finally thawed that they set right to work digging the world’s deepest hole right outside the coop door. It’s getting deep enough that they’re going to have to bring in mules pretty soon to pack the dirt out. I had a little talk with them about the possibility of them digging until they reached China. I think my little lecture may have made an impression on them, and perhaps they were even inspired. What happened next though, was pretty amazing. Yesterday, as I was walking past “Hipster Hen Canyon,” I noticed something sticking out of the dirt waaay down at the bottom. I reached down and pried out a perfect bowl. It was dirty and a little stained but there was not so much as a crack or a chip. The hens were ecstatic! They really had found china! I didn’t disappoint them by telling them that, in fact, they’d merely found Melmac.

Brooding

“I know you’re fond of brooding.”
― Deborah Hewitt, The Nightjar

My Silkie hens go broody a lot. It doesn’t take much to set them off—a change of season, the sight of a few eggs in a nest, days of the week beginning with a “T”, or an “S”, or an “M”, “W”, or “F”, breathing…There are four hens and it seems like one or another of them is living in the broody crate all of the time. Yesterday, Marilyn Henroe, Petula Cluck, and Vivian Lay all went broody simultaneously. That’s never happened before. There are three nest boxes for the four hens, which should be plenty. But yesterday, Dorothy Laymore had to lay her egg on the coop floor because the other three broody girls were hogging all the available space. Today, all three broodies have changed their address to the broody crate and Dot had three choices for her daily egg laying. Hopefully, one or two of the broody hens will be out of the crate before Dot goes broody.

Three Broody Silkies: Clucksie, Marilyn, & Vi

COVID-19 and Chicken in Love

On February 4, I published an interview I did with the Italian photographers Moreno Monti and Matteo Tranchellini about their beautiful and inspiring new book of chicken photographs, “Chicken in Love” which they were self-publishing with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. On February 18, Moreno and Matteo happily announced that the Kickstarter campaign had reached its end and they had actually raised 150% of their goal. Less than a month later, on March 9 there was disheartening news. They regretfully stated that due to the spread of COVID-19 they were finding it incredibly difficult to continue with the production of the book. They’re located in Milan, in northern Italy; one of hardest hit areas in Europe and one of the first parts of the world to suffer from this pandemic outside of China. Last week, the message was a bit more upbeat: “Things seem to be getting better and we are starting to see an end to this quarantine.” Nevertheless, while they’re doing their best, they still can’t say when they’ll be shipping books. They ended last week’s missive with statement, “Stay safe, we’ll get through this.” I was glad to hear from them and glad to know that they are safe. And they’re right—we’ll get through this!

Big Ag is Broken

A story from last week’s Star-Tribune: Kerry Mergen is a contract egg farmer in Minnesota. A contract egg farmer owns the facilities and provides the labor and know-how, but signs a contract with a large agricultural firm that provides the chickens and the feed. This sort of arrangement is typical for most of the eggs produced in this country these days. It frees the farmer from market risks and guarantees him a set price for all eggs he produces while the contracting company does the marketing and maintains ownership of the hens.

Kerry Mergen’s contract was with Daybreak Foods of Lake Mills, Wisconsin. Last week employees of Daybreak came to the Mergen farm and pumped gas into the chicken barn until all of the chickens were dead—all 61,000 of them. Then they loaded the dead chickens into semi trucks and hauled them to a facility where they’ll be turned into dog food. These were perfectly productive hens and nowhere near the end of their productive lives, not even by the standards set by the factory farm system. The problem was that all of the eggs these hens produced were destined for a Cargill, Inc. factory that turned them into “fluid eggs” and sold them to the foodservice industry. And the foodservice demand for fluid eggs was way down because of the pandemic. So, while you may have noticed the price of eggs at the grocery store is up, and perhaps the shelves are even empty, these hens were not laying eggs destined for the grocery store, thus were deemed unnecessary and were sent to an early death, leaving Mr. Mergen without an income.

And at the same time, all across America, milk is being dumped, hogs are being shot and pushed into pits, and lettuce, tomatoes and other vegetables are being plowed under. While some people go hungry.

Does this system make sense to you? You don’t have to support it! Buy from local small farmers. Support CSA’s. Shop at stores that support small producers and “middle ag!”

There’s nothing good to say about this pandemic, but we’re learning a whole lot about the deficiencies in our healthcare system and our preparedness for a public health emergency. And we’re also learning about the problems with our food supply and big ag. Here’s hoping that once we find our way through this mess we take note of what we’ve learned and fix this broken system!