The Egg-Cellent Guide to Chicken Breeds
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‘Margo’ extols the virtues of chickens at the South of England Show
Tom and Barbara would have been proud of ‘Margo’ aka Penelope Keith who has turned to the ‘Good Life’ to own her own flock of chickens.
Penelope was in Mid Sussex yesterday (Thursday) when she opened the 2013 South of England Show at Ardingly.
During a brief speech she extolled the virtues of chickens and urged everyone to own them, and if they were not able to, to buy free range, British eggs.
Penelope played Margo Leadbetter, one of the nation’s favourite TV characters in the 1970s sitcom ‘The Good Life’, Her fellow characters,
Tom and Barbara Good, played by the late Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal, turned their suburban garden into a smallholding where they grew all their own food and kept chickens and pigs, much to the simmering disquiet of posh neighbour, Margo, and her husband, Jerry.
Penelope is the 2012/13 president of the South of England Agricultural Society and opened this year’s premier agricultural show on the first of its three days.
The opening ceremony was conducted outside the new World of Poultry exhibition, which is key to the society’s 2013 theme of ‘Poultry’
A Chicken Poll
An All-Clucking Version of Fun.’s “Some Nights”
I saw this an had to post it. Jimmy Fallon heads this great cast as four chickens do an all-clucking version of Fun‘s “Some Nights,” featuring Amy Poehler and Michael Buble.
Lesson 777 – Gaining Ground by Forrest Pritchard – interview
This is a great blog by Wendy Thomas about the ethical chicken farmer Forrest Pritchard and his new book Gaining Ground.
Hey folks, there’s a new farming/organic living book out that is generating a lot of buzz. Written by Forrest Pritchard (and with a foreword by Joel Salatin) Gaining Ground is the true story of how a young man chose to take on the task of literally saving the family farm by turning it into an ethical and profitable way to make a living.
It’s a great story filled with ups and downs, humor and life lessons. In short, it’s the kind of book that makes you feel good after reading it. That’s the kind of story that I love most to read.
You can tell me about an adventure and I might read your book, but tell me how that adventure changed you and what you learned as a result and chances are, your book will make it to my reading list. Gaining Ground falls in the latter category, it…
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The Muppets: Classical Chicken
And now a little something to put a smile on your face!
Cage free, free range and pastured – what does it really mean?
You think you know what ‘cage free’ is right? Probably even the term, ‘free range‘? But do you know what they really mean and why a new term, ‘pastured’ is coming into prominence? This brilliant little film from PBS will reveal all.
”THE STORY OF THE EGG”
Running Time: 6:00
[featuring David Evans, Alexis Koefoed, Nancy Gleason]
produced by Laura Howard-Gayeton
directed and written by Douglas Gayeton
edited and animated by Pier Giorgio Provenzano
Can learning the meaning of a single term actually help change the food system? David Evans and Alexis Koefoed think so. These poultry farmers explain the real story behind such terms as “cage free, “free range” and “pasture raised” so that consumers can make informed decisions when they go to their local supermarket.
FEATURING
David Evans
A third generation farmer in West Marin, David raises pastured poultry and grassfed beef for customers across the entire San Francisco Bay Area.
Marin Sun Farms
“Pasture Management”
Inverness, CA
Alexis Koefoed
Soul Food Farm
“Pasture Raised vs. Cage Free”
Vacaville, CA
And what is the THE LEXICON OF SUSTAINABILITY™?
It’s a multiplatform project based on a simple premise: people can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability. Filmmaker/photographer Douglas Gayeton and producer Laura Howard-Gayeton have crisscrossed the United States to learn this new language of sustainability from its foremost practitioners. Their unusual “crowd-sourcing” approach allows the public to suggest ideas and even host shows of the work. These methods have helped transform their grassroots project into an international organization with volunteers across the globe.
Please take a look: http://www.lexiconofsustainability.com/
Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens
When choosing an animal symbol for philosophy, the one which immediately comes to mind is the Owl of Minerva, which as Hegel tells us, only flies at dusk. But consider what that means: by the time the owl comes to understand what is going on, the moment has already passed. What kind of a symbol is that for a discipline which prides itself on its prescience and relevance?
Therefore I propose another bird to be our symbol – one which, unlike the owl, comes to life with the break of day. I’m speaking, of course, about the chicken: a regal creature who crows for joy as the sun arises, and who struts about majestically rather than furtively skulking about in the dark constantly asking ‘who?’ Instead, the chicken makes bold assertions: cockle-doodle-DO. This is pragmatism in action. The owl asks – the chicken does.
Indeed, the chicken has had a long and illustrious connection with the history of philosophy. After all, Socrates’ dying words in The Phaedo were “I owe a cock to Asclepius.” Diogenes the Cynic famously compared Plato’s definition of a human (‘a featherless biped’) to a plucked chicken (see my ‘Food for Thought’ in issue 65 for details). Tradition tells us that Francis Bacon, ever the experimental philosopher, sought to demonstrate the possibilities of food preservation by packing a chicken with ice, thereby catching pneumonia and dying shortly after. Immanuel Kant, while working on his masterpiece The Critique of Pure Reason, was driven to distraction by the constant crowing of a rooster, and fled his apartment to escape from the noise.
If he had only listened to that wise old bird he might have solved a few antinomies. For the chicken has played a very useful role in understanding philosophical conundra. Consider Bertrand Russell’s famous paradox of induction:
“Experience has shown us that, hitherto, the frequent repetition of some uniform succession or coexistence has been a cause of our expecting the same succession or coexistence on the next occasion… The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.”
‘On Induction’, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)
Prof Russell’s chicken, at least, has learned a valuable lesson. And as William Poundstone reminds us in his book Prisoner’s Dilemma, Russell had a second chicken analogy in his repertoire, that of the game (popularized in the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause) whereby two cars drive directly toward one another and the one which swerves is deemed to be ‘the chicken’:
“Bertrand Russell saw in chicken a metaphor for the nuclear stalemate. His 1959 book, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, not only describes the game but offers mordant comments on those who play the geopolitical version of it… Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War (1960) credits Russell as the source of the chicken analogy.” (Prisoner’s Dilemma pps 197-198)
So, far from being a victim of strangulation, Prof Russell’s chicken now emerges as a symbol to save us all from nuclear destruction. What could be more endearing?
In ethical theory, in addition to the work on ‘speciesism’ done by Peter Singer, whose depictions of chickens in their modern-day industrialized coops in Animal Liberation is the stuff of nightmares, there is the noted ‘Coolidge Effect’, often utilized in discussions of whether humans are naturally monogamous. As the story goes, President Calvin Coolidge and his wife were visiting a farm one day and were given separate tours. When Mrs Coolidge saw the lone rooster, and asked if he was sufficient for all the many hens, the farmer replied that he serviced them several times a day. “Really?” Mrs Coolidge said. “Please tell that to Mr Coolidge.” Upon hearing it, the President asked “Same hen each time?” “No,” the farmer admitted, “a different one each time.” “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.” As the great philosopher 
Howlin’ Wolf once sang, “Little Red Rooster’s on the prowl.” Apparently Calvin Coolidge understood.
There are a host of other poultry paradoxes with which we are all familiar, and which still drive us to distraction. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Is chicken soup really good for the soul? Which weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of chicken feathers? And, most famously, the granddaddy of all conundra: why did the chicken cross the road? This perennial stumper has led to countless ingenious answers, many attributed to philosophical greats. For instance:
Plato: For the greater good.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Epicurus: For fun.
Marcus Aurelius: He had no choice but to do so.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What chicken? What road?
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Karl Marx: It was an economic inevitability.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken freely chose to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of ‘crossing’ was encoded into the objects ‘chicken’ and ‘road’, and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
(For a plethora of other possibilities, see eserver.org/philosophy/chicken.txt)
An entire history of philosophy could be taught using nothing but chicken-crossing-road examples. What other creature has so inspired us? Not Machiavelli’s fox or lion; not Schopenhauer’s poodle; not Schrödinger’s cat; and certainly not Buridan’s ass. It is the chicken which continues to provoke discussion and deep thoughts. Let us therefore spurn the night-dwelling owl, and put the yard bird in its place. In the immortal words (if not the exact meaning) of Henry David Thoreau: “Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry.” Ask not for whom the cock crows – it crows for thee!
© Dr Timothy J. Madigan 2008
Source: http://philosophynow.org/issues/68/Aint_Nobody_Here_But_Us_Chickens
Dinochicken
Take a look at this picture and tell what you see? A chicken, yes. But what else? When I first looked at it I saw a dinosaur! Which got me thinking about all the myths that have circulated the internet about the origins of chickens. Time for some sleuthing!
And with a little tenacity, I think I’ve found what could be the basis for the chicken Tyrannosaurus Rex myths. I came across this article from the National Geographic Website, which refers to some research by the Harvard Medical School.
Ancient collagen—the main protein component of bone—has been extracted from the remains of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex,according to two new reports.
The new studies provide strong support for the hotly debated claims that organic material previously extracted from the T. rex’s leg bone is original dinosaur soft tissue that somehow escaped fossilization.
Now, for the first time, scientists have obtained partial protein sequences from the soft tissue remains.
“The sequences are clearly from T. rex,” said John Asara of HarvardMedicalSchool in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led one of the studies.
In addition, both studies found similarities between the dino sample and the bone collagen of chickens, providing molecular support for the hypothesis that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs.
Until now the dino-bird connection has been entirely based on physical similarities in fossils’ body structures (related: “Earliest Bird Had Feet Like Dinosaur, Fossil Shows”[December 1, 2005]).
In a related study, a team led by Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University conducted tests that also revealed the presence of collagen in the T. rex remains.
In one experiment, antibodies that normally react in the presence of chicken collagen reacted strongly to the dinosaur protein, suggesting a similar molecular identity.
Multiple Tests
For the protein sequencing study, Asara’s team isolated seven fragmentary chains of amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—from the T. rex specimen.
The results are by far the oldest such data ever recovered. Previously, the earliest protein sequence data came from a 300,000-year-old mammoth specimen.
Asara’s team extracted the amino acids using a highly refined version of the analytical technique known as mass spectrometry.
Dinochicken
Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070412-dino-tissues.html
Flaxseed-Fed Chickens Shed Light On Ovarian Cancer
In the race to find answers about ovarian cancer, researchers now have something to cluck about. For five years, University of Illinois researchers have been using the chicken as a model to study this deadly disease and have recently discovered that a diet enriched with flaxseed decreases severity of ovarian cancer and increases survival in hens.
Flaxseed is the richest plant source of alpha-linolenic acid, one type of omega-3 fatty acid. Several studies have already shown that flaxseed inhibits the formation of colon, breast, skin and lung tumors.
For these reasons, it was logical to study how omega-3 fatty acids affect ovarian cancer as there continues to be no effective treatment at this time, said Janice Bahr, a professor emerita in the U of I Department of Animal Sciences and one of the nation’s leading poultry researchers.
According to Bahr, 25,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year and 15,000 die. The incidences of death in other cancers have dropped recently, but ovarian cancer death rates have remained the same.
“The chicken is the only animal that spontaneously develops ovarian cancer on the surface of the ovaries like humans,” Bahr said. “In this study, we evaluated how a flaxseed-enriched diet affected 2-year-old laying hens (hens that have ovulated as many times as a woman entering menopause).”
The results showed that hens fed a flaxseed-enriched diet for one year experienced a significant reduction in late-stage ovarian tumors.
“Most women diagnosed with ovarian cancer have a very poor prognosis because they are not diagnosed until stage 3 or 4 when the cancer has metastasized and spread to other parts of the body,” Bahr said.
Hens fed the control diet had significantly more late-stage tumors that presented with fluid and metastases as compared to the hens fed a flaxseed diet. Though hens fed the flaxseed diet did not have a decreased incidence of ovarian cancer, they did experience fewer late-stage tumors and higher survival rates.
“In hens fed flaxseed, we found that more tumors were confined to the ovary and they had less metastatic spread,” she said. “This is an important finding as the metastases that accompany late-stage ovarian cancer are the main cause of death from this disease. If the cancer is found at an early stage, when the tumor is still confined to the ovary, women have a much better prognosis and more treatment options.”
In addition, researchers found that hens fed the flaxseed diet had better weight control which is important because obesity increases cancer risk. Both diets had equal caloric content, however the flaxseed-fed hens weighed less at six months than the control-fed hens. But at 12 months, the flaxseed-fed hens were the same weight and the control-fed hens had loss significant weight, which was indicative of their failing health. Ultimately, the flaxseed-enriched diet helped the birds maintain a healthy weight and resulted in less sickness and death.
“Through this research, we have proven that flaxseed supplementation for one year is able to reduce the severity of ovarian cancer in hens,” she said. “These findings may provide the basis for a clinical trial that evaluates the efficacy of flaxseed as a chemosuppressant of ovarian cancer in women.”
The cause of ovarian cancer remains unknown, but one of the most prevalent theories is the “incessant ovulation hypothesis,” proposed by MF Fathalla in 1971. He suggests that inflammation associated with continuous ovulation leaves ovarian surface epithelial cells susceptible to malignant transformation. The observation that egg-laying domestic hens frequently develop ovarian cancer supports this hypothesis.
Bahr believes this hypothesis is valid and is currently in the middle of a four-year study to determine if long-term dietary intervention with flaxseed will reduce the incidence of ovarian cancer development. The hens started the flaxseed-supplemented diet at 22 weeks of age, as soon as they commenced egg laying and before damage from ovulation had accumulated.
This research was published in Gynecologic Oncology and funded by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Grant, an American Institute for Cancer Research Grant, and an NIH Training Grant.
Researchers included principal investigator Dale Buchanan Hales of Southern Illinois University. Co-principal investigators include Janice Bahr of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Kristine Ansenberger and Cassandra Richards of the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Yan Zhuge, Judith Luborsky and Animesh Barua of Rush University Medical Center.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100504124740.htm
Research paper source: Kristine Ansenberger, Cassandra Richards, Yan Zhuge, Animesh Barua, Janice M. Bahr, Judith L. Luborsky, Dale Buchanan Hales. Decreased severity of ovarian cancer and increased survival in hens fed a flaxseed-enriched diet for 1 year. Gynecologic Oncology, 2010; 117 (2): 341 DOI: 10.1016/j.ygyno.2010.01.021
The Natural Poultry Farming Guide 