(http://www.afn.org/~poultry) May 2001

In This Issue: Picnic News Did You Know? New York Chicken, part 2 Map To Picnic

NEXT MEETING: 8:00 PM SHARP Friday, May 25 at the Pavilion in the garden behind the Mounts Building located at 531 N. Military Trail, West Palm Beach - directly across from Palm Beach International Airport approximately 1/4 mile north of Southern Blvd.

News From The Annual Picnic

by Lee Salmon, President

Greetings Poultry Fanciers,

Since there really isn't any business to discuss at this time, we shall have a short report on the picnic and the Sweet Corn Festival.

The picnic was great as always. Thank you all for joining us and making it a fun day. The food was OH, SO GOOD. We missed those of you who could not be there with us. It was very windy and our only problem was some stuff blowing around. The picnic is something we can all enjoy and look forward to.

On to the Corn Festival !!! This event surprised me by being much more fun than I thought it would be. Actually, it was a lot of fun. It was a chance to dress up like Caroline Ingles of Walnut Grove. Although it looked like rain all day, there were many people who showed up.

Our own, the Belvins, Kim, Peggy and Kent, were on hand to make some awesome burgers and great dogs. There was a huge tractor trailer full of sweet corn, which was sold at bargain prices and unbelievably fresh. All the stores were open and a tittle band played in the gazebo. There was a clogger, clogging and a corn-eating contest. The kids could jump rope and roll barrel stays just like in the old days. The Farm Bureau was also there with a huge variety of vegetables for sale.

We were back by our poultry pen with some rare birds and to answer questions. Dr. and Sue Bogani donated some Rhode Island Reds and Barred rocks for our Antique poultry pen.

We needed to replace some birds that were looking pretty bad. We want to thank Sue and the Dr. for the donation. These birds were part of Richard Greggs original flock. Mike is taking them out. See you all soon, have a good month.

[Picnic photos next month!]

"We Are Crowing For YOU!"

	The Chicken:	It Came. It Clucked. It Conquered (Part 2)
	By William Grimes, © 2001 New York Times Company As printed in the New York Times, March 21, 2001

One morning, I looked out the window and saw four cats lined up at their food bowls and, right in the middle, eating with gusto, the chicken. Occasionally, it would push a cat aside to get a better position. Dry cat food from Costco suited it just fine.

The cats, for their part, regarded the chicken warily. To the extent that it was a bird, it was prey. But big prey. From time to time, they would stalk, press their bodies to the ground, swish their tails and give every sign of going for the kill. Then they would register the chicken's size and become gripped by second thoughts. A face-saving, half-hearted lunge would follow.

The two sides have reached parity. Sometimes I'll look out back and see a cat chasing the chicken. Ten minutes later, I'll see the chicken chasing a cat. When the chicken gets too pushy around the food, Bruiser or Crusher might swat it on the side of the head. I like to think they have reached the plane of mutual respect. Perhaps affection.

One day, I saw the chicken writhing in what seemed like a death agony. Four cats encircled it, motionless, their faces a study in mingled horror and concern. This was it, I decided. The chicken was suffering from a terminal degenerative nerve disease. I couldn't bear to watch. Half an hour later, it was fine. It had been taking a dust bath.

The chicken showed real character the night that terror descended from the sky. It had already proved itself indifferent to bitter cold and heavy snow. But then it displayed bravery. A police helicopter, searchlight blazing, descended over my backyard, searching house to house for something or someone. I never did find out what or who.

But the helicopter hovered, and the downdraft from the blades set our pine tree swaying, turned over a wooden bench, flipped the cat igloo upside down and smashed heavy ceramic cat bowls. The chicken sleeps in the pine tree. I couldn't begin to imagine what was going through its tiny mind.

The next morning, amid wreckage out of "Apocalypse Now," the chicken reappeared, brimful of vim and vigor. I looked at it with new respect. It looked at me the way it always does, with a grudgingly tolerant expression. In the bird's-eye view of things, I am the useful idiot who brings food.

Actually, it took awhile to sort out the food. It was nice to know that the chicken could eat anything, but cat food didn't seem right. The bird expert at one PetCo recommended wild-bird seed. The expert at another branch said, "We have birdseed for specific kinds of bird, but because the chicken is not a specific bird, we don't have any specific food." That stopped me cold. It's specifically a chicken, I wanted to say. I ended up buying a bag of parrot food. Finally, I did what any mature, thinking adult male would do in a crisis. I called my mother.

It was the right call. Mom flew into action. She drove to the local feed store in La Porte, Texas, and picked up a 25-pound bag of Cargill Scratch Grains, a blend of milo, corn and oats. She began shipping the grain in installments. The chicken, although still keen on cat food, seemed to appreciate the chicken feed, and I certainly preferred seeing it eat grain, especially after the grisly evening when I set out a treat for the catsleftover shreds of chicken from a stockpotand saw the chicken happily join in.

It seems to like variety and resists direction. My impression, from farmers in movies, was that chickens come running when you scatter the feed. This one runs when the cat food hits the bowls, but it looks on chicken feed as a between-meals snack. In any case, it prefers to wander throughout the day, digging here, pecking there and only occasionally stumbling on clusters of feed. In restaurant terms, the chicken prefers a grazing menu, or the tapas approach.

Our care paid off. One morning, Nancy spied a round object on the patio. An egg. Her eye followed the probable path of the egg and saw a cozy nest at the base of the pine tree. In the nest were four more eggs. They were small, with a color somewhere between ecru and beige, but this was it, the blessed event. Along with the herbs, the tomatoes and the zucchini, we could look forward to an endless supply of fresh eggs.

But how did they taste? We decided to put our eggs to the test against two top-rated organic free-range eggs, Horizon Organic, produced by Glenwood Farms in Jeterville, Va., and Knoll Krest Farm in Clinton Corners, N.Y.

Horizon (motto: "A Clean-Living Chicken Makes Real Good Eggs!") uses no antibiotics, pesticides or hormones, and its chickens live in "a healthy cage-free, free-roaming environment."

Knoll Krest, similarly, boasts that its chickens are fed natural ingredients without antibiotics or hormones, and that, further, the eggs are hand-gathered from "free running" hens. Does this mean that the Knoll Krest chickens are more energetic than Horizon's? When does roaming accelerate into running? In any case, my eggs certainly qualified as organic, and my chicken both roams and runs.

I ate the eggs in hard-boiled form and fried in a little butter. The Horizon eggs, dark brown and preciously packaged in a tricky double-layer clear-plastic carton, had a café au lait shell and a pale yellow yolk. The Knoll Krest eggs were white and varying shades of brown, from pale beige to mahogany with speckles. Both were enormous compared with mine, which had a thick shell and a bright, large yellow-orange yolk, which took up nearly three-quarters of the egg.

Horizon came in third. Some of the yolks had slightly metallic flavors, with a hint of fish. Knoll Krest was very good, with a richer, cleaner-tasting yolk. But the chicken, I have to report, carried the day. The gradations of egg flavor are very subtle, which means that freshness can easily tilt the balance. And when it comes to freshness, well, the competition was over before it began. Horizon and Knoll Krest yolks turned slightly dry and mealy with cooking, while my yolks stayed fluffy and moist. The whites had not a hint of rubberiness. No contest.

And now that production is in full swing, I can count on five or six eggs a week, although there have been factory rejects. One egg was quail size. Another had a strange squiggle on top, like soft ice cream. But on balance, the chicken has been a consistent, high-quality producer.

It says something about New York that no one in the neighborhood seems to think it's odd to have a chicken in the backyard. People have noticed. But they don't pay much attention. After all, it could be a snarling, frothing pit bull. In the scheme of things, a chicken blends in. And it certainly settles one age-old question. It's the chicken that came first. Then came the egg.

"We Are Crowing For YOU!"

Sebright bantams are among the most eye-catching birds in the world of poultry in both their varieties. The Silver Sebright is a white bird with black lacing on all its feathers. The Gold has the black lacing on a base color of golden brown. The 26 ounce rooster outweighs the hen by 4 ounces. The birds carry a rose comb and the males must be hen-feathered, as are some Campines. The Sebright is one of the true bantams. That means there is no standard (large) version of the breed. The breed was developed by Sir John Sebright early in the 1800s and has the distinction of being the only breed of chicken named for an individual.

There is little information pertaining to the status of poultry prior to the middle of the last century. However, there is evidence that all of our domestic poultry, with the exception of the turkey, was brought from the old world by Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. In the 1840's and 1850's poultry began to be imported on a regular basis and, after a century of random and local breeding, regular breeds were developed, refined and shown. Also during this same time, the first breed societies were organized and in 1873 the American Poultry Association was formed. In 1874, the APA adopted the first American Standard of Perfection, a book that served as a guide for poultry breeders. Illustrations in this book helped to mark the standards and develop consistency in breeding. As interest grew in promoting and showing these refined breeds of bird, so did the interest in poultry as a profitable farm crop. The national value of poultry was estimated at more than $25 million in 1875.  

"We Are Crowing For YOU!"

Newsletter Editor Mike Schmidt

Webmaster Dennis Hawkins

© Copyright 2001 Palm Beach County Poultry Fanciers Association All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.

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