I am reading John Salatin's book, You Can Farm. ALthough I am enjoying the book, the author brought up something that just sounds too gross to be true. According to him the FDA has said that it is all right to feed chicken manure to cows. If this is true no wonder people suffer from ecoli outbreaks. All I can say is yuck. I realize that factory farms were not good places for animals and is part of the reason why I want to raise my own chickens. But feeding cows chicken manure? That sounds insane. PLease someone tell me that Salatin is mistaken.
Yes. This is true as weird as it sounds it is suppose to be good for cattle. I can tell you that we don't feed it to our cows but if the cows break into the chicken area they go straight for the manure pile. YUK.
I've heard it suggested that one of the reasons Mad Cow is so hard to contain is that feed producers use parts of slaughtered cows plus their own urine and manure in making the feed for cows. Now THAT is insane. H.
Yes it is VERY true. They not only feed chicken manure but they can feed the wood shavings that the chickens planted their manure in. They are also allowed to feed waste chewing gum products - little foil wrappers and papper included. You can find alot of gov't info online about feed lots and what is allowed to be fed to cows, pigs etc. Let me go find you a link from the archives. For now here ios one from Mother Earth news. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sust...-You-Need-to-Know-About-the-Beef-You-Eat.aspx Here is a link to another discussion on the forum a while back https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=30741
You should read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. You won't believe what we do to our animals in the industrialized food system!
Much of Pollan's research was done through Joel Salatin. It is a very good book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Personally, I don't make it far reading Salatin's works. Some of his opinions are a little weird and I can't handle the constant biblical references.
Quote:I agree, Salatin is a bit quirky, and I could do w/o the references as well. But, I really respect what he's doing and how he's helped other farmers realize there is another way of farming. Where Salatin helps the farmers, Pollan helps us "consumers" (hate that word).