Are Chickens Dinosaurs?

Composite picture: T. rex courtesy of the ever generous public domain - Emile the rooster courtesy of Emile the rooster

Here are some statements for your consideration:

•    “Tyrannosaurus rex was really just a big chicken.”
•    “Chickens are the closest living relative to Tyrannosaurus rex.”
•    “Chickens are directly descended from T. rex.”
•   "Chickens are dinosaurs"

Lately I’ve been running into declarations like these a lot, and I’ve got to say that I wasn’t buying most of them.  None of these statements, it seemed to me, had the ring of truth.  So, I decided it was time to get to the bottom of the dino/chicken thing and find out if there really is some sort of connection between dinosaurs and chickens and if so, what it is. And, after some research, here we go:

Where Did Chickens Come From? The Domestication of the Chicken

Consider this:  You’re an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, you want to let everybody know about your war exploits and plunder, and social media hasn’t been invented yet—what should you do?  Well, if you’re Thutmose III, the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, you inscribe all of your immodest assertions right onto one of the walls of the great Karnak temple for all people to see.   Fortunately for Thutmose III, inscribing information into stone has given it a bit more permanency than a blog entry or a Facebook post might have.  People have been looking at those inscriptions for over 3000 years, and the “Annals of Thutmose III” are still there on the ancient walls of the ruined Karnak temple in Luxor, Egypt for all to read. 

Winter Non-Chickens

Not all of our feathered friends are chickens.  We’ve got a collection of birdfeeders by our house that draw in birds both winter and summer.  Last spring I posted pictures of the spring migrators that stop by our feeders on their way north in a post I called "Spring Non-Chickens".  In this post I'm sharing some pictures of some of the year-round residents that show up at our feeders in the wintertime.  

Of course in the winter, we don't have the variety of bird species showing up for their sunflower seed or suet snacks that we see in the spring, but quantity perhaps makes up for diversity.  The feeders are busy from sunup to sundown, so we don't have to wait to be entertained - all we have to do is look out the window anytime we want!

Here are a few examples of what we see:

This is a female purple finch enjoying a sunflower seed.  We get both purple and gold finches in huge flocks in the winter.  The purple finch is, of course, really hard to tell from the house finch.  Is the bird in this picture really a purple finch or is it a house finch?  I'm going with purple, but I could be wrong!

Sexing Chickens: The Art, Science, and History of Hen vs. Rooster

A farmer wanted to be able to tell which of his baby chicks were boys and which were girls so he enlisted the aid of a scientist.  “Well!”  said the scientist, “It’s really quite easy!  You simply scatter some crickets in the coop.  The boy chicks will only eat boy crickets and the girl chicks will only eat girl crickets.”

“That’s great!”  said the farmer. “But how do you tell the boy crickets from the girl crickets?”

“Why are you asking me about crickets?” the scientist retorted.  “I’m a chicken expert!”

And for the bulk of history after the domestication of chickens, sexing baby chicks wasn’t too far from that mark.  The bad news is that baby chicks are pretty much small, cute, fluffy, and indistinguishable, with their boy and girl parts mostly inside their bodies and out of sight.  The good news is that for a long time, it really didn’t matter a whole lot.

I Don't Know Much About Art, But I Know What I Like - And I Like Chickens!

Fair Use: Photograph of Hahn/Cock in situ in Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - To discuss artwork and to illustrate the appearance of the work in its context in Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Last weekend I finally found time to make a pilgrimage to the cool new gimongo chicken sculpture that has been installed in the Twin Cities.  The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden has added sixteen new pieces as part of its recent multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion.  One of them, Hahn/Cock by German artist Katharina Fristch is a giant blue fiberglass rooster standing on a steel base – the base and rooster top out at 25 feet. 

Fristch likes to incorporate not-so-subtle ironic humor into her works, and she's best known for Rattenkönig/Rat King, a group of enormous black polyester rats, shown at the 1999 Venice Biennale.  This is her second edition of Hahn/Cock.  The original was on display in Trafalgar Square in London as part of the “Fourth Plinth” project.

Spring Non-Chickens

Chickens are not the only birds we feed here at the ranch.  We’ve got a collection of birdfeeders by our house to feed all of the feathered denizens of the woods around us as well as those who just stop by for a snack.  We serve sunflower seeds and suet and add sugar water and jelly to our summer menu.  Our arrangement with the birds is that we provide food for them and they provide entertainment for us.  Win-win, right?  Regularly glancing out the window to see who has stopped by for a snack is just part of life. 

When our kids were young, they learned all of the birds’ names—and not just the last names (e.g. Cardinal, Grosbeak) but also the first names (e.g. Carl and Carla Cardinal, Gary and Mary Grosbeak).  Of course, there were many cardinals and grosbeaks, but the males were all Carl and Gary and the females were all Carla and Mary—this system only presented a problem when multiples birds of the same species would show up at the feeder at the same time and then we could just say that Carl and Carla were entertaining guests.

Watching the birds at the feeder happens the year round, but it is especially fun in the spring as we wait for the first appearance of our migrators and the occasional glimpse of the birds that briefly stop by as they migrate through.  With the Fourth of July behind us, we’re moving out of the spring season—nests are built, eggs are hatched, and fledglings are getting ready to leave the nest.  On to summer!  Here are a handful of springtime bird pictures that I’ve taken over the last several years. 

Rose Breasted Grosbeaks are usually the first spring arrival at our feeders.  They winter in Central America and Northern South America and are ready to chow down on some sunflower seeds when they show up.

Chickens of the Woods Are Not Really Chickens

This happens a lot:  You're about to try some unusual food for the first time and the self-anointed expert slides up and knowingly announces "Oh - it tastes just like chicken."  Well this post is about one of those foods that tastes just like chicken. Hopefully, the Hipster Hens won’t find out. The food up for discussion in this case is the incredibly delicious sulphur shelf mushroom.  We’ve had a little rain and they’re popping up out in the woods like, well…like mushrooms—much to my gustatory delight. 

If you’ve never foraged for mushrooms before, this would be a good one for you to start with.  Unlike other mushrooms that hide under the leaf litter on the floor of the woods, these guys grow on stumps and trees.  And unlike other mushrooms that are camouflaged by their color, these little fungus dudes, with their orange and yellow coloring, can’t be missed.  It’s almost like they’re jumping up and down, waving their little mushroom arms, and yelling, “Here I am!  Here I am!  I want to be sautéed right now!”  Also, because it is so hard confuse this mushroom with another mushroom that might be less edible or even poisonous, mycologists include it in the list of the “foolproof four” that beginners can safely forage.  Exactly which four mushrooms are included in that list of four seems to differ depending on which mycologist you’re talking to, but everybody includes sulphur shelf mushrooms among the four on their list.  (The term “foolproof four” which so many mycologists bandy about was coined, as far as I can tell, by Clyde Christensen in his 1943 book Common Edible Mushrooms.  His list: morels, puffballs, sulphur shelf mushrooms, and shaggy manes.)  

How ‘Bout Them Apple Trees!

Hen fruit is not the only food we harvest here at the Hipster Hen Ranch!  We’ve also got apples!  A couple years after we moved from the city out here to the ranch, we decided that any good homestead needed apple trees and that for this homestead, the time had come.  So I picked up my Gurney’s catalogue and ordered four trees which Gurney’s then sent through the mail.  They could come through the mail because they were bare root trees.  “What are bare root trees?” you ask.  Well, when you go to a nursery and buy a tree, it will have a ball of soil around its roots.  Bare root trees have absolutely no soil around the roots—which is exactly why they name them “bare root trees”.  My name for bare root trees?  “Sticks.”   When they arrived and I tore open the box I immediately had deep misgivings.  I couldn’t imagine that these dead looking sticks would actually grow when I put them in the ground.  But that’s exactly what bare root trees do.  Nurseries grow baby trees for one to three years, then in the fall they’re dug up and all the soil is removed from the roots.  They’re stored over the winter with the roots kept moist in a cold environment, then they’re shipped to customers in the spring.  Obviously, bare root trees weigh a fraction of trees with a root ball, so they can be shipped and handled for a fraction of the cost.  Because they can be shipped at a reasonable cost, it allows you to shop for trees from a much broader geographic area and allows you access to tree varieties that you might not be able to find locally.  If you plant and maintain your trees properly, they’ll grow and prosper just as happily as a tree with a root ball.

Garlic Mustard: Invading Alien, Delicious Treat, or Both?

In the 1978 sci-fi doomsday flick, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" plant-like aliens take over San Francisco by sending out tendrils that attach to people and digest them while they sleep.  Later a large fruiting pod opens up and an exact replica of the digested human creepily steps out and sets about helping other "pod people" in their nefarious plot to take over the world.  The invading plant aliens basically take over by eating us.  It occurs  to me that the movie plot may have had a completely different outcome if we had eaten the aliens!  Don't be shocked by this.  The pod people looked like us, but they were plants! So eating them wouldn't be cannibalism - even vegetarians could participate! And for all we know those pods would be highly delicious.  Think snap peas, or okra, or peppers - all pods!

Defeating invading aliens by consuming them has been on my mind lately as I continue my ongoing battle with garlic mustard, an abominable invasive plant that happens to be as delicious as its name suggests.   Europeans have been eating this plant for a long time.  Archaeologists have found garlic mustard seeds in food residue in 6000 year old sites in Denmark and Germany.  Sometime in the 1860's somebody decided it would be a good idea to plant this culinary herb in their little garden plot in New York.  That person was no doubt horrified as the plant, freed of it's European insect and fungal control agents, grew rampantly out of control.  Garlic mustard is now considered a tenacious alien invasive species in North America and grows almost everywhere in the US and Canada (map).

Chickens at the White House

With the Presidential inauguration nearly upon us, we’re all focusing our attention on the White House as President Obama gets ready to move out and President-Elect Trump gets ready to move in.  So of course the question foremost in my mind is “What about chickens at the White House?”  A natural progression of thought, right?

Amazingly, there’s a dearth of information on the topic.  For instance, when I Google, “Chicken White House” I get a lot of results for the “White House Chicken” restaurant chain.  That’s followed by some fried chicken recipes by various former residents of the White House.  And then there are a few articles where the writer thinks that the White House is displaying cowardice.  Which brings up the question, “Why did ‘chicken’ come to mean the same thing as ‘coward’?”  The person who created that meaning for the word never met my brave little rooster, Emile!

Anyway, I challenged myself to uncover what I could regarding Presidential chickens, and was eventually able to uncover a pretty sizable trove of material about White House pets, but unfortunately, only a paltry bit of information about White House chickens.  But here goes.

Poop

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Critters

The Hipster Hen Ranch sits on nine acres near the St. Croix River, a pristine, protected river that forms a long section of the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The house, other buildings, gardens, and chicken runs take up maybe an acre, and the rest is pretty much mature oak forest.  One nice thing about living in the oak woods is the abundance of wildlife.  Last night when Bailey and I took our final trip outside before bed,  I listened to two great horned owls having an extended conversation.  We often hear or catch glimpses of owls, eagles, wild turkeys, hawks, deer, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, bears and gazillions of squirrels and rabbits.  There have even been occasional reports of cougars and bobcats. 

I truly appreciate being able to interact with all these wild critters, but there’s a downside.  Most of my neighbors and I choose to live in the country for the country lifestyle.  That usually includes growing big gardens and raising a few animals.  And that’s where our interaction with the local wild critters can become tricky.  Critters can be divided into three categories:  The carnivores, like the hawks, foxes, and coyotes have a pronounced appreciation for chickens—but not in the same way that you, my blog readers, appreciate chickens.  The herbivores, such as the deer and rabbits, have an insatiable fondness for my garden and apple trees.  And then there are the omnivores, best represented by the raccoons, who would be happy to have a few tomatoes from the garden for an appetizer before settling down to a fine chicken entrée. 

We all do our best to deal with this problem.  In the not-so-distant days past, the solution was to shoot every critter in sight.  When I was a kid, I learned that the birds I now call hawks were “chicken hawks”, that they existed to eat our chickens, and when you spotted one, you reached for your rifle.  Fortunately, most folks are a bit more enlightened now.  I realize that I have chosen to raise my vegetables and chickens in habitat that was occupied by wild animals long before I arrived.  So I share the space—one acre for me and my domestic plants and animals, and the other eight acres for the wild animals.  But I prefer not to share my chickens and tomatoes.  To protect my gardens from plant munchers, I keep them close to the house, spray copious amounts of repellent, and of course I have a ferocious 16-year-old Labrador Retriever.  And to protect the Hipster Hens from chicken munchers, I don’t ever allow them to free range.  When I’m home, they’re strolling around a half-acre chicken run, and when I’m gone, they’re in the hen pen with its wire roof, and perimeter of buried wire.  And of course there’s the ferocious 16-year-old Labrador Retriever. 

My system to protect against predators does seem to make a difference.  Last summer, a nearby neighbor lost an entire flock in one night to a weasel attack.  A friend who free-ranges her chickens had almost her entire flock picked off one hen at a time over the course of the summer by an unknown predator.  By the end of the summer she was down to two war-hardened and apparently very savvy old Barred Rock hens.  On the other hand, I've never lost a single chicken to predators (I’m knocking hard on my wooden desktop as I write this).  There has been one hawk attack that all the chickens escaped unscathed (more on that in a later post), and then there was the July 2015 raccoon incident.

Back in early June of last year, I saw a raccoon hanging around my backyard on several occasions.  The coon was quite interested in the bird feeder and quickly figured out how to shimmy up the pole, around the squirrel baffle and to the very top.  Then it was a simple matter of sitting on top and reaching down for one little raccoon handful of birdseed after the other—directly out of the tray.  I wasn’t particularly happy about the birdseed, but was even more concerned about the chickens.  While the chickens were pretty well protected in the hen pen, it would be an easy thing for a raccoon to scoot up a tree to get over the eight-foot-high chicken run fence.  The chickens are only in the run during daytime hours when I’m home, but this raccoon was not a bit shy and had no problem snuffling around the backyard in the daylight. 

The Raccoon

A Dog Story

It’s after midnight and I’m pulling into my garage.  It’s been a long day with lots of driving.  My sleeping daughter groggily stirs to wakefulness in the back seat.  She’s been at music camp for most of the week and this was the day that my wife and I drove there, attended a concert put on by the camp kids, then loaded our daughter and all of her stuff into the car and headed home.  My wife, daughter, and I all get out of the car and stretch.  While my wife helps my daughter unload her cello from the car, I fumble with my keys as I walk to the front door.  The house is dark—my son is apparently out for the evening since there’s no way a nineteen-year-old college student would be in bed at midnight.  I unlock the door and swing it open.  The two dogs run out of the dark house and cavort happily on the lawn.  There is something so wrong with this scene that my wife, my daughter and I stand and stare in gape-jawed disbelief.  We don’t own any dogs.  “Are we at the right house?” I query in disbelief.  “Um…do we have dogs now?”  “Are those dogs?” my daughter asks in confusion.

Yes, they are definitely dogs—two big dogs snuffling around our yard.  They look like labs—one is black and one is yellow.  They are both wearing collars with weird little boxes on top.  I go into the house and find a note from my son.  “Well, there’s not much we can do about this right now.” I tell my wife and daughter.  “These dogs are going to have to spend the night with us.  In the morning we’ll call Animal Control.”

Sweater Girls

This post is about chicken sweaters.  No, really!  But first I need to tell you about Emile the rooster. Bear with me.  We'll get there.

Back a few years ago, when Emile was a mere teenage cockerel, he got a bad case of sour crop.  He reached a point where he was all hunched up in a corner, staring into space and literally near death.  Happily, I was able to bring him back to good health and full recovery.  He became an amazingly docile and friendly little rooster after he recovered, maybe because of all the handling that was necessary when he was sick.  But I like to think that maybe he was just grateful.  

Anyway, over the last year he’s undergone a huge change in attitude.  He makes it clear whenever I go into the coop that it’s his coop, not mine, and that he’s in charge not me.  There have been a few instances where he’s taken me on—actually lunged at me feet-first with those long pointed spurs.  This usually happens when he feels I’m harassing his hens in some way, but sometimes it’s just because I maybe look at him wrong, or possibly only because he’s in a foul (um, fowl) mood.  Being attacked by an enraged rooster could be disconcerting if it weren’t for the fact that Emile is a bantam Cochin roo and the biggest thing about him is his ego.

When he goes on the attack, I usually respond by putting on a pair of gloves to avoid contact with those spurs, then I pick him up, pet him, and tell him that he just needs to think calm thoughts and concentrate on his breathing.  This really does seem to calm him, although for all I know he may just be icily plotting his revenge.

Around the Coop and Beyond

Fall is here.  The calendar tells me this.  And if I didn’t have a calendar, I could just step out the door.  The maple trees have peaked.  Their leaves are a solid red and yellow and are falling continuously like colorful snow.  And while the leaves are falling in the woods, the feathers are falling unabated in the coop as the fall molt I talked about in Tuesday’s post continues.
  

One of the projects I work on this time of year is my on-going battle with buckthorn, an invasive alien plant.  Buckthorn was first brought here from Europe in the mid-1800’s for use as a hedge plant.  Buckthorn makes a great hedge because of its long thorns, its ability to form an impenetrable barrier and its ability to grow prolifically almost anywhere.  It has become a terrible scourge because of its long thorns, its ability to form an impenetrable barrier and its ability to grow practically anywhere.  Once it becomes established, it outcompetes practically everything so no other plants grow and eventually you have a forest of buckthorn.  And it’s so thick and prickly that nothing can get through it—it isn’t even suitable for wildlife habitat.  You know the thick enchanted forest that grew around the castle in Sleeping Beauty?  I think that probably was buckthorn.

Here on the ranch, I’ve managed to keep buckthorn completely under control on part of the property.  There are other parts where it’s partially controlled—all the remaining plants are small, far apart, and periodically rooted out.  Then there are about three acres of wasteland—oak forest above with an under-story of solid buckthorn hell.  I’m in my second year of full retirement and during the last two falls I have laid siege to the wasteland.  It is a battle.  This is essentially a three-acre hedge—the buckthorn plants are spaced, for the most part, less than a foot apart.  And the big ones have grown way beyond hedge size—some are 25-30 feet high.  These are literally buckthorn trees!  There’s no way these monsters can be pulled by hand, but my trusty John Deere handles them.  So with tractor, brush cutter, chainsaw, and the sparing use of herbicide, I’m making progress.  And it’s not unpleasant work.  Eradicating invasive plants has the aura of important and meaningful work.  And it’s the sort of work where I can clearly see the progress I’ve made.  Plus it’s just pleasant to be in the woods this time of year.  Today there was a flock of hundreds if not thousands of migrating robins poking through the underbrush to keep me company while I worked.

It's hard to see the trees for the forest, but this is all buckthorn

My trusty John Deere sits in a cleared area of the buckthorn thicket -
This 25 ft. tall beauty is on the way to the brush pile

Another project that’s underway is the building of a new hen pen.  The chickens in the two coops take turns, every other day, going into the half-acre chicken run.  On the days that they’re not in the big chicken run, the 15 chickens in the big coop spend their outdoor time in the 450 square foot hen pen.  When the 9 chickens in the small coop aren’t in the big chicken run, the outdoor space they have to hang out in is the 16 square foot “chicken patio”.  That space was fine when it was just Snowball, Emily, and Angitou.  But then Courtney came along, and then her four surrogate Legbar babies grew to adulthood, and then Willow the buff Orpington was having interpersonal issues in the big coop and got moved to the small coop, and suddenly the outdoor space that was OK for three small chickens is embarrassingly inadequate for nine birds.  So I’ve finally got started on building them their own outdoor hen pen.  It’s going in along the side of the pole barn, and since it’s at the base of a steep hill, the first thing I had to do was excavate some dirt to make a level space.  Next I need to put up a retaining wall and haul in some class five gravel.  Only then can the fence go up.  The leaves are falling.  Will this project be done before the snow falls?  Stay tuned.

Some of the hens explore the trench that I've excavated along the side of the pole barn for the new hen pen.  They don't have a clue what I'm up to, but they certainly enjoy all that fresh dirt to scratch in!  The trench is filling with falling leaves.  Hopefully some progress will be made before it fills with falling snow.

On to the chicken news:  They are all healthy now, thank goodness!  But there have been a couple of weird traumas this past week.  On Wednesday, when I was cleaning the coop I noticed that some of the bedding under the roost was bloody.  Then when I looked carefully at the roost itself, I noticed a fair amount of blood smeared on the rungs of the roost—a disturbing situation to say the least.  With all the molting that's going on, I expected that the blood would be from bleeding pin feathers.  Pin feathers have a copious blood supply bringing nutrients to the forming feathers and they can become injured quite easily.  I gave the chickens a once over and didn't see damaged pin feathers or any other sort of injury.  They all seemed fine.   It took until bedtime for me to figure out that the blood was coming from a deep cut on the toe of Carmen Maranda the cuckoo Marans hen, and that it was still oozing blood.  On closer examination I saw that not only was there a deep cut on top of the back toe on her left foot, but that the toenail was completely cut off.  I decided to wait until morning before taking any action.  And in the morning a good solid scab had formed and it looked like it was on a positive track to healing.  And so far there’s no sign of infection.  Since chickens spend their lives scratching in the dirt, they’ve evolved a pretty robust immune system, and as Carmen demonstrated in this situation, often an injury or abrasion such as this doesn’t need any outside interference, but will do just fine if left alone.  The question that remains is how she got cut in the first place.  Some random piece of glass or other sharp object buried in the run?  It’s a half-acre run, but I’ll keep my eyes open.

Carmen Maranda the cuckoo Marans hen:  Wounded, but walking

The other bizarre chicken run situation happened yesterday.  The run is enclosed with a four-foot high wire fence topped by an additional four feet of netting.  On my way to the coop for my post-lunch check-in with the chickens (aka “the chick-in”) I saw the alarming sight of a chicken hanging from the fence.  It was Nicky the Cream Legbar pullet.  Somehow she must have flown right at the fence and gotten herself tangled up in the netting.  The netting had sagged a little under her weight, so she was being supported somewhat by the netting “pocket” that her body had formed—but mostly she was hanging by her leg.  I quickly grabbed her and the netting and set her free.  She is fine.  The netting, unfortunately, needed some splicing.  No chicken has ever done this before.  Was this a learning experience for Nicky?  Time will tell. 

Nicky the Cream Legbar pullet:  Sadder but Wiser??

CHICKEN KISSING MENTIONED HERE!!!

Emerging Infectious Diseases, a scientific journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published yet another scholarly article linking salmonella infections in humans with backyard chickens.  The October issue of this respected publication includes an article entitled “Outbreaks of Human Salmonella Infections Associated with Live Poultry, United States, 1990–2014.”  The epidemiology in this article is pristine and makes a clear connection between people infected with salmonella and their chickens.  But unhappily, there have been several unfortunate consequences of this and other similar CDC studies. 

First of all, the popular press has gotten it’s clutches on this news nugget and raced right for the catchy headline while ignoring the broader underlying message.  Thus we have Huffington Post, under the category of “weird news” shouting “Kissing Chickens Can Spread Salmonella”; while CNN proclaims, “CDC Report Crushes Your Chicken-Kissing Dreams”, and NPR coyly announces, “Chicken Owners Brood Over CDC Advice Not To Kiss, Cuddle Birds”, and Jezebel interjects, “Hey, Don’t Kiss Chickens.”  These headlines would lead one to believe that chicken kissing was the main focus of the study.  Kissing chickens was listed as a high risk behavior, but the percentage of people in the study who got salmonella after kissing chickens (13%) was a fraction of those who acquired salmonella after bringing chickens into their houses (46%).  But then the popular press obviously thinks chicken kissing is just plain weird while bringing a chicken into your house is hardly worth an eye-roll.

The second problem I have with these studies is that after the CDC has demonstrated a real problem, people getting Salmonella from their backyard chickens, it takes the next step and offers solutions.  I’m sure that CDC consulted with a broad range of individuals before proposing solutions, but did it actually talk to anybody in the backyard-chicken-keeping community?  From some of the suggested solutions I suspect that it didn’t.

And that lack of dialogue is creating the third problem:  There is a growing feeling among some in the backyard-chicken-keeping community that the CDC recommendations for safely keeping chickens is just another example of government intrusion into their lives.  One on-line comment:  “They don’t want the general public raising chickens!”  I’ve been waiting for someone to say, “They can have my chickens when they pry them from my cold, dead hands,” but thus far that has not popped up.

So what are the CDC recommendations?  Here they are directly from the CDC website—CDC’s recommendations are bolded, my comments are italicized:

1. Always wash your hands with soap and water right after touching live poultry or anything in the area where they live and roam.  I always wash my hands when I come into the house after having been in the chicken coop.  Do most chicken owners do this?  I’m going to guess, “Probably not.”  But speaking of washing your hands, many people have dogs and cats living right in their houses with them.  There’s probably a LOT of cat and dog petting going on all the time.  Cats and dogs, by the way, can carry about a gazillion diseases that are transmissible to humans.  The top five are hookworm, roundworms, toxoplasmosis, cryptosporidiosis, and Lyme disease, but the list goes on to include a whole host of other diseases that are rare but often fatal, including plague (aka Black Death).  So does CDC recommend that you wash your hands each and every time after interacting with your cat or dog?  Well, yes, actually.  Yes they do.  Does anybody do this?  I’m going to guess, “Probably not.”  And what about washing your hands after you’ve been in an area where cats and dogs “live and roam”?  Yeah, right.  Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here - I'm not unloading on cats and dogs--I've got several that live in my house, sleep in my bed, and walk on my face every day.  I'm just taking issue with the way CDC seems to be singling out one domestic animal.
2. Do not let live poultry inside the house, in bathrooms, or especially in areas where food or drink is prepared, served, or stored.  Here’s the deal.  Most backyard chicken keepers know that it is practically impossible NOT to bring chickens into their houses in certain circumstances.  Many folks start their flocks with baby chicks.  Babies need heat, protection from drafts, and a controlled environment that small backyard coops just can’t provide.  I would guess that pretty much everybody starts their babies in a box in the basement.  By the same token, sick or injured birds also need a controlled environment.  The most recent sick chicken to live in my basement was suffering from myiasis, also known as flystrike.  She had maggot infested wounds after flies laid eggs on her.  She needed a fly-free environment—my basement could provide that but my coop could not.
3. Don't let children younger than 5 years, adults older than 65, and people with weakened immune systems handle or touch chicks, ducklings, or other live poultry.  Is there good science behind this recommendation?  Absolutely.  Will everybody say, “Wow!  Look at this impressive science!  I’m gonna get right behind this good advice!”?  Abso-freakin-lutley not!  If you’ve got baby chicks you think your kids aren’t going to want to play with them?  Come on!  I reach the magical age of 65 next year.  The chances of me giving up my flock next year are slim to none - and slim just left town.  As useful advice, this one ranks up there with a bucket of warm spit.
4. If you collect eggs from the hens, thoroughly cook them.  Or if you buy them from a store.  Or get them from a neighbor, or whatever.  Or we could figure out a way to get control of this Salmonella problem and go back to the good old days of homemade mayo, eggnog, and Hollandaise. 
5. Don't eat or drink in the area where the birds live or roam.  Good advice.  And then I go back to the dog and cat thing in #1.
6. Avoid kissing your birds or snuggling them, then touching your mouth.  Good advice.  And then I go back to the cat and dog thing in #1.
7. Stay outdoors when cleaning any equipment or materials used to raise or care for live poultry, such as cages or feed or water containers.  I’ve got running water in my coop, so no prob.  Most people probably have a garden hose at the very least.  So this is doable.  Not bad -  there’s at least one bit of advice in this list that can be practically carried out.
8. Buy birds from hatcheries that participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Poultry Improvement Plan (USDA-NPIP) U.S. voluntary Salmonella Monitoring Program. This program is intended to reduce the incidence of Salmonella in baby poultry in the hatchery.  Yes.  Stop disease at the source.  If you can eliminate Salmonella from hatcheries and guarantee that all those babies people are bringing into their backyards are Salmonella-free, it would effectively eliminate the main source of Salmonella in backyard flocks.  But here’s the problem.  Hatcheries that participate in NPIP inspections are tested for the presence of a few diseases:  These include a few Mycoplasma diseases—bacterial diseases affecting poultry.  Then there are certain strains of avian influenza (low virulence bird flu).  Finally, there are tests for a few of the Salmonellas.  But certainly not all of the bajillion different Salmonellas that chickens can carry and pass on to you.  The other ones are not in the NPIP guidelines and thus they're not tested for.  So how valuable is this recommendation?  Remember the bucket of warm spit?  We’re kinda back to that.

CDC Advice on Poultry Keeping

Now I’m going to say something that I think is really important, so I’m going to bold it and italicize it for emphasis.  Because to me, this is the whole deal:  If we could eliminate Salmonella from backyard flocks, or better yet, ALL flocks, all the CDC recommendations would be moot.  And while testing for and eradicating Salmonella from each backyard flock would be expensive and logistically difficult, testing and eradication at the source—the hatcheries and distributors—would provide a huge running start to eliminating Salmonella.  And the mechanism for doing that, NPIP, is already in place—it just needs to be broader, stronger, and more enforceable.  I suspect that there are hatcheries and distributors out there that are not very keen on this approach and would apply all sorts of political pressure against any legislation that would suggest it.  So it’s a whole lot easier and cheaper for government agencies like CDC to make lists of recommendations.  And if you're the press, publishing articles against chicken kissing probably actually sells copy.  So there you go.

The chief author of the EID publication that set me off on this rant is Dr. Colin Basler, a veterinarian and public health researcher who has done all sorts of good work on a variety of zoonotic diseases.  I sent him an email after I read the article expressing many of the same issues that I brought up in this post.  I haven’t heard back, but it would be nice if I did.  I realize that Dr. Basler doesn’t run the CDC, nor does he have the ability to legislate public health policy.  But it would be nice to have somebody in a position of authority recognize that since backyard flocks are growing in popularity for a variety of reasons, all of them good, that the incidence of poultry associated Salmonellosis will also continue to rise.  And since “education” by issuing lists of mostly impractical suggestions is not a good strategy for solving the problem, maybe it is time to explore better solutions.

A Bird's Eye View of the Minnesota State Fair

Ah, the Minnesota State Fair—largest state fair in the country by daily attendance, and second only to Texas (which goes on twice as long, don’t you know) in total attendance!  The fair has been a thing since way back in 1854 when it was the Minnesota Territorial Fair, and has happened every year except 1861 and 1862 when both the Civil War and the Dakota War were in progress and again in 1945 and 1946 when we were dealing with World War Two and then a polio outbreak.  Minnesota has had all sorts of other hardships over the years—but except for those few occasions I mentioned, the fair has always gone on, right on schedule.

Fairchild--the Fair Mascot (Jonathunder)

My first Fair experience was in 1969 when I traveled “all the way up to the Cities” to show my prize winning pig.  It both memorable and eye-opening, for me, a teenage farm boy, to find myself in the middle of all the Fair craziness and in the middle of the big city to boot.  But I managed it for three days—sleeping in the FFA dorm at night, taking care of Toody the pig during the day, and otherwise spending a lot of quality time unloading all my summer job cash in the midway and filling up on lots of deep fried cheese curds.  I’ve been going to the fair ever since.  Not every year, mind you, but pretty much.

Last summer was the year that poultry farms across the country were devastated by avian influenza.  Millions of birds succumbed to this highly infectious pathogen.  The fair went on as usual, but there were no birds in the poultry barn—the Minnesota Board of Animal Health had banned all live poultry shows.  All the chicken folks showed up, nevertheless.  Instead of displaying their prize chickens in the Poultry Barn cages, they displayed pictures of their flocks!  Everybody made the best of a bad situation, and the show went on!

This year the chickens are back in all their glory.  Here are a few photos from my 2016 Minnesota State Fair experience.

A typical fair scene--this one is just east of the Grandstands

The Poultry Barn

A very impressive Minorca rooster

A beautiful buff laced bearded Polish hen

The crop art competition is one of my favorites every year.  The entire picture has to be made from plant seeds.  This picture of a hen uses the seeds of green peppers, poppies, brown flax, golden flax, millet, quinoa, red quinoa, amaranth, sesame, and wild rice, as well as lentils, green peas, yellow peas, and cream of wheat.

A detail from a display in the Horticulture Building

This acrylic on canvas painting hanging in the Fine Arts Building is by artist Sharon Anne Dolan and is entitled “Dorothy’s House”.  I like the colorful chickens quite a bit.

Another work from the Fine Arts Building.  This is an iPhone panorama by Janine A. Olmscheid entitled “Blue Ribbon Paper Poultry: 2015 Avian Flu Outbreak” depicting the cages containing pictures of chickens at last year’s fair.  Thus, this is my picture of a picture of some pictures.  Whew!