To bring my non-American readers (I know there are many of you) up to speed: the last few weeks has seen a MASSIVE egg recall for salmonella contamination. Last I heard the recall affected half a billion eggs.

I have learned a lot about eggs since I started keeping chickens.

1. The United States has one of the worst food safety records in the developed world.

^ Just as a thumbnail overview, here is the rate of food-borne illnesses for 1996-1998:

United States: 26,000 cases per 100,000 citizens.
France: 1,210 per 100,000

I don’t understand how you can look at those numbers and not get outraged.

2. There is a vaccine for salmonella which was approved for use in poultry in the United States by the USDA in 1998.

The UK cut their rate of food-borne illness in HALF, and practically eradicated salmonella in eggs by instituting a voluntary vaccination campaign. The eggs from vaccinated chickens earned a red lion stamp. Eggs with those stamps could command a higher price.

3. The guy who ran this colossally huge battery hen operation found it cheaper to pay the fines than to fix the problems. He had been paying the fines for years.

How you can run such a filthy, disgusting operation and still be the nation’s single largest egg producer is an excellent example of why #1 is true.

4. With very few exceptions, eggs at the grocery store come from battery hens. That’s just how eggs are made, here in the US. With cruelty.

The only exception is eggs labeled “Certified Humane.” This includes Wilcox and – in Washington – Steibr Farm eggs. Not sure about other brands.

5. Eggs are naturally sterile. There are several overlapping biological mechanisms which keep eggs bacteria-free. (If it weren’t that way, we wouldn’t have chickens in the world left to lay them.)

You have to screw things up pretty badly for the contents of an egg to be infected with a pathogen.

In fact, trustworthy eggs don’t even need to be refrigerated. A surprising number of chicken owners store their eggs on the kitchen counter. I only keep mine in the fridge because my counter space is limited.

6. It doesn’t have to be this way. We deserve safe food. It is possible to sell us safe food – other countries do it all the time! But in order to fix the problem, we first have to admit that it exists.

7. Eggs don’t come out of the same hole as the poop. Without going into too much detail: there’s a flap.

Tags: egg advocacy bok bok bok, food safety, My Peeps

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Ethel is limping much less. In fact, you would have to be some kind of crazy obsessive chicken owner in order to notice the limp at this point.

I still notice the limp.

But it’s getting better, and I’m sure it will be gone soon.

(Sorry for the crappy cameraphone picture. I forgot to take my digital camera down with me, and I just couldn’t be bothered to make a second trip.)

In other chicken-related news, I was shocked to see Martha (the other Buff Orpington) drinking from that crazy-ass waterer! No one else seems to be drinking from it at this point. It’s like Martha’s private water fountain.

I also learned about an interesting thing this week. Bleaching is the phenomenon whereby the hen’s body robs itself of yellow pigment in the process of laying eggs.

I thought I was crazy for thinking that the legs of Harriet, my Rhode Island Red, had gotten more pale over the summer. I thought it was just the way the sunlight washes colors out. But no, they really were a more vibrant yellow last winter.

It made me feel a little bad about the whole thing. But they color right back up over the winter months when they stop laying. It’s not fatal or anything.

Tags: My Peeps

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For the moment I decided to hang the hanging feeder from a cross-beam with a spare dog leash. With a knot tied in it, to bring it up to the right height.

SO classy.

Last week I noticed that Ethel was limping pretty badly. Her lame foot was also totally filthy. And so it is that I found myself in a position of having to give a chicken a foot bath.

“Why are you looking at me like that? You’re planning something, aren’t you?”

This is the kind of thing that makes me glad that A) I deliberately chose breeds described as “calm” and “friendly,” and B) I spent a lot of time handling them as chicks. Flipping a chicken upside down, washing its foot, and giving it a close examination can be unpleasant for all involved.

… But Ethel was mostly just curious.

Poor dear. You can see the others have been pecking the back of her head. (It’s not bloody – it’s just that her comb flesh is flushed.) And down there on the belly you can see where she’s plucked out her feathers when she goes broody.

Ethel is kind of a mess. I will not be entering her in the county fair any time soon.

“Dear Ethel,

Please do not peck me in the boob.

Sincerely,

– Erika”

Anyway I didn’t find anything obviously amiss. (And she didn’t peck me – in the boob or anywhere else.) Maybe she just pulled a hamstring or something.

Tags: My Peeps

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I finally decided it was time to step it up a notch, and buy the chickens a grown-up feeder they couldn’t knock over, and a waterer they couldn’t crap in. Because they do that; crap in their water dish.

I’ve kept rodents as pets that never crapped in their water dish. A four week old puppy may be one of the world’s most useless (if adorable) creatures, but it won’t crap in the water dish. Chickens though? Oh yeah. Totally. Like once a week.

So I got really excited and placed my order. And it turns out that the feeder isn’t as big as I thought it was, and also it doesn’t have the grate that stops the chickens from flicking out their feed. And it’s a hanging feeder, which is great, but now I can’t figure out where to hang it or how that will work exactly.

The waterer is sound in principle. Except that I thought it would hold a 2liter bottle, but it barely holds a 1liter bottle. My four chickens drink half a gallon of water per day. How many of these things am I supposed to dangle around the outside of the chicken tractor in order to meet that demand? I don’t know. I’m too tired to do math.

Also, the chickens completely ignored it. Quelle surprise, as we said in the 80s.

Tags: My Peeps

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Today’s project is to make yogurt, which has to sit for 12-24 hours at between 90 and 110 degrees.

Outside, I have 2 broody chickens. (Martha and Ethel, the Buff Orpingtons.)

A “broody” chicken is one who’s decided it would be nice to sit on a clutch of eggs and stare into space for a month or so.

DOESN’T IT SEEM LIKE THOSE TWO THINGS MATCH UP?

I’m telling you, whoever invents the Broody Hen Yogurt Incubator is poised to make a fortune.

Or maybe I just need to get out of the house more.

Tags: Incubation of Various Substances, My Peeps

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