The CDC has issued a warning about a salmonella outbreak coming from Mt. Healthy Hatchery. This is the same hatchery that salmonella outbreaks were traced back to in 2012 and 2013. There are many strains of salmonella. The ones coming out of Mt. Healthy sicken humans. This time, no one died, although of the 126 reported cases, 35% ended up in the hospital. It’s serious. It’s also a problem that’s hard to fix at the source. Most of the huge mail-order hatcheries don’t actually raise all of the chicks that they sell. They are distributors for smaller producers. That’s how a company like My Pet Chicken can offer so many rare breeds. They either get in hatching eggs, or they get in the chicks and then ship them out again. With eggs and breeding stock being sourced from multiple farms, it’s just about impossible to eliminate all risk. Mt. Healthy seems to have more trouble than other suppliers at controlling salmonella. Given a choice, I’d use another hatchery when stocking my flock.

It’s essential to recognize that as fluffy and adorable as day-old chicks are, that they can carry bacteria. But, chicks aren’t lethal fuzzy balls. Salmonella is transmitted to humans via the chick’s manure. All you have to do to protect yourself is to:
1. Keep the brooder somewhere other than your house! Chicks kick up dust. You don’t want bacteria-laced film coating your kitchen surfaces.
2. Do NOT kiss your chicks.
3. After handling the chicks, wash your hands.
4. Dispose of manure properly. The germs die off in fresh air and sunshine. You can compost the waste in a far corner of your yard (in a container that your dogs won’t roll in!) You can bag it and throw it out.

I’ve been hearing from worried owners of chicks purchased from Mt. Healthy. (Mt. Healthy supplies many feed stores with chicks; you should always ask which hatchery the birds came from.) There’s been a lot of misinformation going around. People are being told that once infected, always infected. That you’ll never be able to integrate the Mt. Healthy chicks in with your flock. That the best thing to do is to either permanently quarantine the Mt. Healthy birds, or to cull (kill) them. Some people have been advised to cull their entire flock, since they were all exposed, and to start over! I wanted to know if there was any science behind this advice. I called the USDA. I called my state Department of Agriculture. I talked to the poultry expert, to the state epidemiologist and to the state employee who goes farm to farm, testing flocks for communicable diseases. I read the literature.

It really comes down to commonsense.

All animals carry bacteria, viruses and parasites. Good management keeps the load down so that there is minimal health risk to both the animals and their owners. Because industrial agriculture models don’t have good management – animals are crowded, stressed, and fed poorly – bacterial load can quickly escalate. One sick animal means that everyone becomes ill. These farmers use an “all in, all out” model, which is when all of the animals arrive together, are kept for a short time, and then harvested. The empty barns are disinfected, and a new flock moves in. Not only is this impossible to do in a backyard set-up, it’s unnecessary.

Most birds are carriers of one disease or another. They don’t show any symptoms, but they harbor pathogens. When stressed, they still don’t look sick, but they do shed germs. That’s why you can purchase what looks like the healthiest hen at a poultry show, bring her home, and within days, all of your other chickens become ill. If you quarantine the newcomer for about a week, hopefully she will settle in, stop shedding the germs, and she can be added safely to the flock. On the other side of things, your birds, over time, have been exposed to countless pathogens, and these germs lay in wait in the surroundings. Slowly acclimatizing new stock, including chicks, to their surroundings helps them to develop immunity.

The reason that our flocks remain healthy despite harboring all sorts of germs and creepy-crawlies is because, with good management, we can keep the load down. We do this by removing manure, sweeping away dust and cobwebs, and providing housing with ventilation Good food boosts immunity. Of utmost importance is fresh air and sunshine, which kills pathogens. Even if your chicks came with bacteria in their guts, their load will dissipate. It won’t cause a problem for them, for your older hens, or for you (although, always wash your hands after taking care of your flock!)

If I had purchased Mt. Healthy chicks, I would keep their brooder scrupulously clean. I’d wash my hands each time after handling them. As soon as possible, I would get them outside onto ground that the rest of my flock doesn’t free-range on. I’d let them grow to be big and healthy. And then I’d integrate them into my flock.

On Saturday, a lovely, kind and enthusiastic group of new chicken keepers gathered around my porch table to learn about flock care. The one question that had them all leaning forward and listening closely? What do I do with a dead chicken? This topic comes up at every one of my workshops, and for good reason.

In this modern world, death is rarely dealt with in a hands-on, immediate way. People, of course, are prepared for internment by funeral homes, and what goes on there we don’t see or think about. Our dear dogs and cats are taken to the vet to be euthanized, are cremated, and the ashes are sent back to us in containers. Farmers know differently. Animals die from illness, injury, predators and old age. Animals are harvested and slaughtered; some parts are used, and some are hidden deep under compost piles or put into barrels and carted away.

The backyard chicken keeper is betwixt and between these two worlds. When it’s time to end a hen’s life (and if you keep chickens, this is part of the experience), I believe it’s best to do a neck break, or use an ax. If done properly these two methods are quicker and less stressful for the bird than a trip to the animal hospital. Avian vets, trained on exotics like parrots, rarely know how to euthanize chickens. I heard from one woman, whose hen had a broken leg. She took it to the vet who said it needed to be put down, but that, because “hens have no veins,” he’d have to anesthetize the bird, and then inject a lethal chemical into the intestinal tract. This would all take almost two hours. And cost $135. I’ve heard from other people whose veterinarians charge about $35 to euthanize a hen, which is worth it to them as they could never bring themselves to do the deed at home. I understand that. It is never easy to take a life, even when the animal is suffering and needs our help to pass on.

Sometimes a hen simply dies. There’s a body. What do you do?

We have enough land here to bury our chickens. Snowball, the hen that posed for my book Tillie Lays an Egg, has a special place under the peach tree, along with Candy, the late great Empress Bunny of the Barnyard.

Others are buried in the meadow, or in the woods. It’s work to bury a hen. The hole has to be deep enough so that dogs and other animals don’t dig up the body. It’s especially hard work here on our rocky New England parcel. Some urban towns don’t allow burial in the backyard. These laws harken back to the days when people raised food on small lots, and it was unsanitary to have the decomposing bodies near to houses and wells.

We’ve lost chickens in the winter when there was no way that we could bury a hen, what with the snow cover and frozen ground. I confess that I have carefully double-bagged the body and put the hen in the trash. The physical reality is that that’s not much different than throwing out the carcass of a rotisserie chicken. Emotionally, however, it takes some getting used to.

This discussion might make you uneasy or queasy, but I am not sorry for bringing it up. You can’t keep animals without thinking about what happens at the end. I’m a big believer in thinking things through and planning for contingencies, and so every time that I’m asked, What do you do with a dead chicken? I am actually heartened. I know that the person who is asking that question will care about their hens, not only during the halcyon days when the eggs are appearing in the nesting boxes, but also when their birds are at the end of their lives and hard decisions have to be made.

Whatever you decide, burial, or putting the body in the trash, what matters is the life that led up to that moment. With chickens, it’s not about longevity, it’s about quality. Today, while I garden, my hens will be allowed out. They’ll be enjoying that meadow.

After yesterday’s post about how quickly hens age, I thought that a bucolic scene would provide a nice counterpoint. When people decide to get chickens, this is what is imagined: a beautiful hen on a green lawn.

Isn’t Pearl lovely? Doesn’t simply looking at a scene like this slow your breath and lower your blood pressure? Keeping chickens is not all about the eggs.

Here are the Ladies, having an afternoon stroll.

Deep sigh. There. Feeling calm?

Once you get chickens, you might decide that an even larger domestic farm animal would add to the bliss in your backyard. Here’s a grazing goat.

Ah… nice. Right?

WAIT. EXCUSE ME. I have to RUN! The other goat is in the flowers.

Serene they are not. Have you read those studies that show that challenging mental activities help to keep Alzheimher’s at bay? I think that goat keeping qualifies.

I call the flock of hens that you see on the BarnCam the Gems, because they are named after rocks (Etheldred honors a pioneering female geologist.) They arrived in a cardboard box, through the mail, from Meyer Hatchery in April of 2011.

The fuzzy chick phase lasts but a short couple of weeks.

By late summer of 2011, the Gems were laying. They’ve now gone through two molts.

The Gems still look good.

Pearl is in all of her fluffy cochin glory.

Despite losing her tail to feather picking, and having a rough-looking rump, Jasper continues to be friendly, alert and active. (All of you with feather picking in your flock, take heart! Sometimes the hen just doesn’t care.)

Amber continues to be the perfect Buff Orpington. She has all of their good traits, but she never goes broody.

The Gems continue to lay eggs.

Despite their outward glossy and healthy appearance, the Gems are old.

It’s hard to accept that the normal-looking hens in your flock are old, but by the age of three they are. Don’t believe all of the backyard chicken boosterism that claims that you’ll have hens living and laying for a decade. A rare bird might, but most won’t. At three, laying hens are past their prime. It’s true that many of your hens will keep laying, albeit at a reduced rate. But, it’s not just that the hen is producing fewer eggs, it’s also that they have difficulty constructing sturdy shells and laying without issues. It takes a lot for a chicken to metabolize nutrients from feed and turn it into eggs. By their third laying season, their nutritional tracts aren’t up to the job. Sometimes, internal organs are tumorous. Sometimes, they’ve just not as efficient at digestion.

Early this springtime, there were days when I collected ten eggs from this group of eleven birds. But, lately, that number has halved. It’s not just the rate of laying that has slowed. Egg laying has become problematic for some of the girls. Egg shells are thinner. Some are so fragile that they break, and then the hens eat them. Once in awhile an egg is laid that is as soft as a water balloon. These sorts of glitches lead to bigger problems. The chickens strain to lay rubbery eggs. An egg might break inside of the hen. Eggs might back up in the tract and they become impacted, or the hen will become an internal layer. I’ve seen all of these problems, and I’ve confirmed them by doing necropsies after death.

If I was a “real” farmer, this flock would be gone. The shells would be too thin to pack in cartons without cracking. The margin for making a profit would disappear. But, I’m not a farmer. I have hens in my backyard that I’ve gotten to know. I can afford to keep them around. Because I know what’s going on with the Gems, I can do a few things to make egg laying easier for them.

An optimal diet for the older hen is essential. They need chicken grit – yes, you have to spend $10 on a bag of rocks. Without grit of the right size and type, they can’t grind food up in their gizzards. They need oyster shell, offered free choice. (I use a rabbit food dispenser.) Most importantly, they can no longer eat anything and turn around and make eggs. They can no longer be given all of your kitchen scraps. No more bread and pasta. No empty calories. Forgo the scratch corn, too. They should fill up on pellets before being given healthy treats such as greens and watermelon. However, finding goodies by free-ranging on your lawn and garden is still a good thing.

I’m now treating my healthy-looking Gems as the old girls that they are. Careful management will allow them to lay eggs as sturdy as they can make them. Some hens will sail through the next few years. I hope that most of them do. But, I expect that I’ll see difficulties in the months to come. This is as much a part of chicken keeping as is being smitten by those day-old chicks. This is not depressing. Being realistic about your animals’ lives allows you to enjoy them for who and what they are and to care for them appropriately. Meanwhile, it’s a beautiful day and I need to get into the garden. The hens are ready to help with the bug control and turf turning, and I look forward to their company.