Chickens are not vegetarians. Chickens are omnivores. They eat bugs and snakes and worms and grass and weeds. I have a small flock of chickens (around 40). When the sun comes up, I let them out of their hen houses and they wander about our farm (they mostly keep to just 2 or 3 acres closest to our house of the 80 available)eating bugs (especially ticks, chiggers, other nasty things)and green stuff.
At night, they all go back into their hen houses and I close the doors to keep them safe from Owls, coyotes, and wildcats.
They lay wonderful eggs, and several times a day, I go outside to collect the eggs. I sell them at the farmer’s market, maybe just a couple of dozen a week, the rest I use to make custard ice creams, creme brulee, breads, egg noodles, etc.
You always want to examine your eggs carefully to be sure there are no cracks in the shells - candling (holding them up to a very bright light) is the best way to do that. If there are no cracks, and you clean the egg, you should not have any problem with salmonella. Most of the food-borne illnesses occur because of poor preparation, not how the critters are raised.
But mostly, chickens are not vegetarians. No birds are vegetarians.
[‘RICAN HILLBILLY WISDOM ALERT]
We have a saying back home to describe the state that you feel-in, when you feel that you are in the wrong place, and not welcomed:
“Me siento como cucaracha en baile de gallina”
“I feel like a cockoroach at a chickens’ dance”
[/’RICAN HILLBILLY WISDOM ALERT]
I like your sentence: “No birds are vegetarians.”
Of course not, they are modern day relatives of dinosaurs, most likely T-Rex’s bloodthirsty little brothers and sisters.
When I was a kid, I can remember the chickens going after a very large scorpion without any hesitation whatsoever. I was on the swingset on the farm out near Edwards AFB (appx 1955) and out of the desert came the largest scorpion I ever seen, dude had to have been about 4” long. Scared the P out of me alright, but one squawk from one chicken, and they were all over that poor scorpion in a hurry.
BBB
Was someone saying they were?
I love chickens. I just don’t like chicken poop.
And if I were your neighbor, I’d buy all my eggs from you.
ha, I don’t think chickens are smart enough to tell the difference. It’s food-will eat. My mate and I used to overturn rocks and watch them go nuts as the bugs crawled off.
No animals are vegetarians, even apes & chimps & panda bears eat bugs off the vegetation that they consume.
BTW, have I mentioned lately how jealous I am of you? Happy for you, of course, but jealous!
Sure is nice to enjoy farming vicariously. Your life has obviously become much more elemental and interesting since you left the high-tech world.
I have three young pullets, and in the 2 weeks since I bought them they have scratched the floor of their pen down to bare dirt. I’ve been collecting great handsful of grass from my (unsprayed, and therefore organic) lawn, and they eat up every blade (in addition to free-choice layer-developer crumbles). They’ve also discovered they like slugs, so when the weather is nice, we let them out in the back yard to go slug-hunting. If we had ants, they would eat those too.
I just “sic’d” a young woman on you who is Misty’s best friend, Melissa Lynch. Her and her boyfriend Travis have a bid into buy a house out in the country (in Jefferson county I think) and she has a green thumb and desire to raise chickens for eggs etc. So I told her she’d like your blog…at least the farm stuff parts!
Meanwhile, I am SO glad you weren’t hit by the big winds last weekend! Whew!