Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ted to finding and incorporating methods to raise poultry on as much of their own
produced food as they can. She is constantly researching and experimenting with
home-raised food diets for their chickens.
The couple have also taken on the challenge of breed preservation and perpetu-
ation. They have studied how to build appropriate shelters for their climate and incor-
porate many natural methods in raising poultry. They raise their poultry for multiple
purposes — eggs, meat, and breeding to sell to others, not only to preserve our valu-
able genetic resources but also to disperse them to new locations.
Although Mike and Annalisa are not into poultry exhibition, they thoroughly
demonstrate the other topics of this topic, from housing construction to foraging to
raising the majority of their own feed. They have successfully raised chicks from pur-
chased day-olds, hatched their own eggs in incubators, and hatched them under hens.
They are skilled at home butchering, having learned from experience and practice.
They use young stock for baking or frying and old hens for soup stock and specialty
dishes.
Future plans are to expand to other types of poultry, perhaps a few ducks for more
insect control in their gardens and under fruit trees. Their year-round growing sea-
son provides habitat for multiple insects that ducks could help control naturally. This
would also add some new food items to the table. A turkey or two may also be in the
future as this modern family strives to produce more of their own food and make the
connection to their food supply from start to finish.
Knowing where, when, and how food is produced is becoming more and more im-
portant for many twenty-first-century consumers. How better to do that than to raise
the majority of your own fruits and vegetables, as well as the food for your poultry
that provide you with fresh eggs and meat?
While the large-scale producer may consider my non-climate-controlled facilities,
where birds are allowed to roam on the ground and on pasture, inappropriate, I will
always believe that it's inappropriate to jam-pack thousands of cages with debeaked,
dewinged birds raised to produce as much and as quickly as possible.
All of us must begin to demand that food production be less concerned with produ-
cing the most birds and eggs at the cheapest possible cost, and more focused on humane
and environmentally sustainable practices. We have just one planet and we must do our
best to maintain and sustain it. Raising a few members of the poultry population in your
backyard can provide you with more healthful meat and eggs for your table, fertilizer
for your yard and garden, and a more natural life for domesticated animals, all with min-
imal, if any, damage to the environment.
