It would be my pleasure. Address is in my profile.
No, beating the crap out of Peter Griffin, actually.
I was in Turkey today, in North Carolina. Population 267, median annual income $19.107.
See all its facts at http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex=19710
Why are some chicken eggs white, and some brown?
Thanks very much. The link answered pretty much any questions I’ve had about the process.
I have a high tolerance for blood and gore, but there’s something about the description of caponizing a bird that just made me queasy. Not the surgical aspect, but the disregard for any pain or suffering on the part of the animals. I have no problem with slaughter, as long as it’s conducted quickly and with a minimum of distress on the part of the animal.
Some chickens lay white, some brown. It is not a diet thing despite what many people say. If you really want to know, it is based on earlobe color. Dark earlobes give brown eggs.
Some types of chickens lay more colorful eggs, as a novelty more than anything else.
And yet, nobody believes me.
They should, you have it right.
Some breeds of chickens lay brown eggs because they have a pigment-making gland in the same area where the shell gets put on the egg.
If a chicken has white earlobes like this brown leghorn hen, she’ll more than likely lay white eggs.
If her earlobe is colored, like this rhode island red she’ll more than likely lay brown eggs.
I say “more than likely” because there’s always the chance that she’s a cross between to breeds, or a mutant.
The only coloration that is diet dependent is the color of the yolk.
Those are earlobes? Wow, learn something new everyday.
Yeah, that’s what creeps out a lot of people.
Now, I don’t know for certain if this is the technique still in use. Capons aren’t kept by many folks anymore, so it’s hard to find someone who both knows a lot about it and is also willing to share. Lots of farm practices are perfectly reasonable and humane to the animals, but look strange to the lay public. Farrowing crates in pig production are a classic example. Producers have learned to be cautious about how much they broadcast about what they do.
This comes to bite them in the ass, though, because then the wrong people are able to convince the public to believe a pack of lies about modern animal production practices.
</soap box>
Yeah, that little hole right behind their eye is their eardrum.
It’s easier to see on this naked rooster. The white spot is his earlobe and the hole right above that is his ear.
Sometimes it’s covered by feathers. .
Do you eat your patients?
ETF - Around here folks keep guinea fowl to eat the ticks off the ground.
When I bought my house before the present one, the former owners left a bunch of chickens they kept promising to pick up. At least 12-15. Of course, I had to care for them until they finally got them. It wasn’t hard, but since I dont’ eat eggs and I could never kill a pet (and anything I feed becomes a pet) it seemed pretty pointless to have some of my own.
StG
Any experience with vulturine guinea fowl? That’s my dream-bird.
Of course with all the chickens and peacocks that stray in my yard from a neighbour’s place, I am getting my bird-fix. I had a HUGE rooster stalk me for a week (not in an evil way, he just wanted me to come outside so I could keep him company) until his nightly crowing drove my SO over the edge. Poor guy.
The peacocks just strut their stuff under my bedroom window in the evenings.
This neighbour also had the regular guinea fowl but they just never learned that they can’t take on the road vehicles…
[QUOTE=Pullet]
Are these them? (scroll down to the bottom, under hybrids) Just from guessing, I’d say that these are probably created by natural servicing for the purpose of Just Because. That’s the method and rational behind lots of the crosses. They are really pretty!
That’s them! Every time I see one I long for more space so I can have some Just Because.
As for the button quail, all I can say is that although I have yet to keep chickens, I can’t imagine anything less maternal, or less likely to survive in the wild, than a domestic button quail. If fading memory serves, they do not make nests, or use nests provided for them. They lay their eggs wherever they fall out of their butts. They do not care for their eggs, and in fact make essentially no effort not to step on them. Adults would attack chicks viciously if any are put in their pens. Males would frequently attack females. They were spooky, and prone to shooting upward about six feet in the air, until either (a) their wings gave out, or (b) they smashed into something, at which point they’d crash unceremoniously to the ground. The offspring of some bloodlines frequently suffered from tendon problems. Even the adults were too small for humans to eat, so they were purely ornamental unless you had some reptiles handy. They were, in short, some of the most useless birds I’ve ever come across. And yet, I loved them, and would have another flock in a heartbeat if I had the space.
I will say the fully self-sufficient, bumblebee sized hatchlings were some of the cutest things I’ve ever encountered in the domestic animal kingdom, so perhaps that accounts for the continued willingness of people like me to raise them.
Anyway, I would be interested to hear whether anyone has managed to cure some of their less than stellar habits, whether through selective breeding or reintroduction of wild birds into breeding programs.
By the time I see them, they are usually either sick or dead, so it’s not a good idea to eat them.
Poultry medicine is a numbers game. When you have so many animals, a few are going to die. When you can’t prevent a disease, the hope is to catch it early enough to avoid major losses.
Every now and then, we do a practice session for students that involves handling live birds. After the session, the birds can’t go back to the farm we got them from. The farmers don’t want to risk the birds bringing a disease back with them and infecting the thousands they have there. And because there aren’t a lot of people looking to acquire new birds, there isn’t anywhere for the birds to go. So we have to humanely euthanize them. Those birds would be perfectly safe to eat, but I haven’t taken any home yet. It’s a lot of work to clean a carcass, even one as small as a chicken.
What does ETF mean?
No, I hadn’t seen those before. They are beautiful! I wonder if they would sell better in the specialty meat markets here. I’m still trying to understand the dynamics of that whole system. It’s so heavily tied to cultures that I am not so familiar with.
To confirm for a previous poster: Peacocks are damned loud, right?
ETF==EddyTeddyFreddy
StG==StGermain
What’s life like for a chicken on a typical chicken farm? Do you feel that the birds are humanely treated? What’s your opinion on the “free range” chicken products that have been popping up lately?
thanks :smack:
OK, that’s it. I’m moving. Anybody know a nice farm away from easily annoyed neighbors where I can raise my button quail, hybrid pheasants, and those amazing vulturine (and crested) guinea fowl Just Because?!
I’ve heard that commercial chicken breeders discard the male chicks, since most of their customers only want female chicks. What would happen if you kept all the chicks, resulting in a group that was 50% male. Would the roosters fight each other until only one was left, having driven off or killed the competition?
Are fertilized eggs visibly different (internally) from unfertilized eggs if they aren’t incubated?
Is there a noticeable difference in taste or quality between old breeds that grow slowly and modern breeds developed for quick growth on a factory farm?