Thursday, January 31, 2013

Feathered Friends...or not

From World Poultry January 2013A Royal Veterinary College study has found that hens reared in commercial conditions do not form friendships and are not particular about who they spend time with.  Full ArticleThe research published by Applied Animal Behaviour Science and funded by BBSRC, was carried out to discover if the welfare of chickens could be improved by taking advantage of 'friendships'. ************************************************************************************
Inseparable Cousins....yeah, really, cousins.

Sparky's Reaction: Do they truly have no desire to form relationships?  This is quite contrary to research done on birds in the past and goes against everything I've ever seen.  If it's true and not a research flaw,  what do we do with the knowledge that with selective breeding we are capable of eliminating social structure?  

PS I'm sure I'm taking this way beyond the researchers intentions...at least I hope so but, isn't there something a little slimy in thinking about how to take advantage of friendships in terms of food production.  Like, the birds with the most friends taste better?  Is the next step to genetically isolate and replicate popularity.  Eew.     

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

This is me - circa 2013

My old phone was so complicated
I couldn't even take a picture and
smile at the same time.
Hello, I'm Alison.  I live in Lawrence, Kansas with 2 children, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 cockatiels, 2 miniature ponies, and an undisclosed number of chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, turkeys, and peacocks.

I manage the animals on a shoe string budget (made of used shoe laces), a thimble-full of practical knowledge, and an only slightly larger bit of common sense. A power drill and a box of band-aids are pretty important as well. (Ok ok! There've been A LOT of boxes of band-aids but we've only had to go to the emergency room once, *cough*, or twice.)

We first got chickens in 2007 and it's been a rather long haul to today.  What started as a wrong turn down a dead end aisle at the feed store morphed into a full blown lifestyle commitment to....well, I'm really not sure what.  All I know is that I'm ready, 24/7, dead of the night, high noon, or the crack of dawn, in the rain, sleet, snow, wind, and heat wave, hole in my rubber boots, drenched in a raincoat, glasses fogged, a tad bit of frost bite, a nasty sunburn or two, head to toe in wet stink with feathers carefully tucked in my dusty smelling hair, ready. I'm there and ready to deal with whatever birdy issues need to be dealt with - and there's ALWAYS something that needs to be dealt with....

I've grown up a lot in the last 6 years.  Become more pragmatic, more aware of my limitations,  more accepting of myself and less hesitant to acknowledge my needs. I think I have more faith in the world to survive without Herculean efforts on my part and sometimes, if the wind is blowing just right, I am entirely at peace with the fact that I will never know everything there is to know.  I find comfort in respecting the capabilities of unknown, unseen strangers and trust that they're  doing things that make my life better and I don't even need to know how or why.  I can do these things because of what I've learned from chickens.

Enjoy.