Jest Another Day in Pear-A-Dice - Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm in Alberta

[Akrnaf2]

Tara

Don't get wrong I DO PREFER THE HERITAGE BREED 10,000 MORE THE INDUSTRIALIZED HYBRID.

BUT I don't love the "morality package " the come in.

First I really don't like (I didn't choose worse words ) the word "humanely" because it suppose to represent, compassion and mercy, but the opposite is the truth! The biggest atrocities ih history (the Holicost, " Shoa", Gingis Chan, Stalin regime ect, ect) have been made by Humans and not Animals!


Second the ACT of domestication itself is not merciful OR "HUMAEIN " taking a bird that lay 30 eggs annually and make it lay 180 or 200 a year is cruelty, or making an animal lactate all year long is cruel also.

Don't get me going on supposed "HUMANE" being good...some cases, the homosapien can be more than kind, caring and admirable...and then again...not so much... 

Like the original reason for chickens...blood sports...yeh, wonderful, pit animals in situations where their acting badly is encouraged and make money off of their misery...jolly!  :/

Today's domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is mainly descended from the wild red junglefowl of Asia, with some additional input from grey junglefowl. Domestication is believed to have taken place between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago, and what are thought to be fossilized chicken bones have been found in northeastern China dated to around 5,400 BC. Archaeologists believe domestication was originally for the purpose of cockfighting, the male bird being a doughty fighter. By 4,000 years ago, chickens seem to have reached the Indus Valley and 250 years later, they arrived in Egypt. They were still used for fighting and were regarded as symbols of fertility. The Romans used them in divination, and the Egyptians made a breakthrough when they learned the difficult technique of artificial incubation. Since then, the keeping of chickens has spread around the world for the production of food with the domestic fowl being a valuable source of both eggs and meat.

Keep in mind, the human was a hunter/gatherer, not too good at it either...now we are like a plague upon the Earth...thinking the world is only for our use...HA!

We as a species, went from stumbling about finding things to eat or animals to slay...to where we gathered and kept some of our seeds back for spring planting (them women, wanting a nest lined with feathers and provisions!) and have taken wild beasts and domesticated them.

Given our success (too much in my opinion, too many of us now...why we need to figure out how to feed all of us...in test tubes and petri dishes...soy bean and other concoctions!), I would have rather we toned it back a bit.  We as always, seem never to know when enough is good and to stop.  Domestication has gone WAY over the top...

I get that a wild Red Junglefowl would hate confinement...would not take to domestication well.  And with under thirty eggs (likened to my Black Swans, eh!) per year and that skinny body...the RJF would not be a choice to keep.  And there we humans are, we domesticated a bird to become our chicken, duck, goose, turkeys, pheasants...for meat and eggs and so they would thrive and be kept from being eaten by other predators.  Our captive prey became domestic to be harvested at will and as our personal amusements.

And at the point of the heritage chickens...I figure we should have come to a full STOP.  Not kept at it to where we need to debeak them, keep them in areas the size of one sheet of paper and less...      

http://www.fiapo.org/newsandevents/wired-cages-in-poultry-farms-killing-hens-in-india-shows-survey/:
24 Feb 2017 - Wired cages in poultry farms killing hens in India, shows survey

 
Each cage has a 67-sq inch space, which is less than a single sheet of paper measuring 94 sq inches.

A survey of 20 poultry farms on the outskirts of Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra, Hyderabad and Haryana by between August and December 2016 revealed confining hens in such cages not only leads to a number of deaths, but also leaves them bleeding, with sores, cracked and deformed feet owing to the wired floor of the cages. Some of them were also found to be missing feathers and suffering from abrasions and skin irritations.

In 2012, the AWBI issued an advisory and recommended the Union environment ministry adopt the draft Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (egg laying hen) Rules and phase out battery cages for egg-laying hens by January 2017. Section 11 (1) (e) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 prohibits confining birds in battery cages. However, the policy has not been adopted yet.

“We found four to eight hens crammed in a cage which was no bigger than two A4 sheets of papers. Urine and faeces of overcrowded cages stacked on the top falls on the birds in cages below,” said Amruta Ubale, executive director, Animal Equality. “Even in 2017, there is no sign of phasing out these illegal battery cages. All countries in the European Union (EU) have banned the cages. But India is yet to make a policy decision on it.”

I get why we domesticated livestock and poultry...

Humans needed to raise their own food and given the alternative of us running wild in nature areas chasing WILD beasts and birds...bow and arrow with loin cloth anyone??? 

I far, far rather we bred our food, our meat sources and eggs, diary and such...for animals that could thrive and be happy in our domesticated environments.  Wild turkeys, my Mandarin ducks...even the Sheldducks...they are not going to enjoy intensive quarters...these ones get larger pens and we don't bother them past providing what they need to live in our confined spaces.  I cannot imagine it would be nice for a heritage chicken or turkey to be kept by us if they were not bred for captivity.  The heritage versions, they thrive and we enjoy them and they enjoy being kept by us.  Good good!

The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin.

Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 20,000 BC. From around 9,500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, followed by sheep between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan around 8,500 BC. Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7,000 BC. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 5,000 BC. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 8,000 and 5,000 BC, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. Bananas were cultivated and hybridized in the same period in Papua New Guinea. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was domesticated to maize by 4,000 BC. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3,000 BC.

We need to administer some "act of domestication" if we are to keep chickens and turkeys period.  The wild versions, would be as miserable and potentially MORE miserable if we did not tame the beasts down a bit.  

Given a choice...domestication to the "heritage" and "primitive" (like my Jacob sheep are...a primitive sheep breed!) state in the situation that I keep them in...that is better than me out chasing wild things in the wilderness to stuff in my pie hole...my thoughts, eh. 

I am not going to stop eating meat and eggs, so I prefer to keep creatures that can be kept happy and healthy to enjoy a reasonably good existence until I decide to consume them I guess.  Wicked me, the human protein seeker! 

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

Tara you HAVE to read this book!

you can find it in English too
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind
He said that the plant an animal we have domesticated actually. ......... Domesticated US!! We became stationary house inhabitants and
Given up ouer nomadic way of life BECAUSE the plant domestication!
And in an Evolutionary point of view the CHICKEN , CORN, WHEAT and other hit the jackpot by using us, with all ouer technology ect as their gene dispersers! With almost 20 billion chickens around the world they certainly did!

 

[CanuckBock]

Tara you HAVE to read this book!


you can find it in English too
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind
He said that the plant an animal we have domesticated actually. ......... Domesticated US!! We became stationary house inhabitants and
Given up ouer nomadic way of life BECAUSE the plant domestication!
And in an Evolutionary point of view the CHICKEN , CORN, WHEAT and other hit the jackpot by using us, with all ouer technology ect as their gene dispersers! With almost 20 billion chickens around the world they certainly did!

Yes, looks like a very interesting read...lots I already think about.

I do get that we humans have been wadded up and modified to serve our food...hunter/gatherers had to adapt and work to eat...so why would us being adapted to grow crops and do animal husbandry surprise us that the predator and his prey has not been modified--both of us! You can call it domesticated because yes, we are able to set up cities because we have spare food, resources like solid housing to withstand seasons...not wandering around from CAVE to cave...not migrating following the herds like bison...or harvesting influxes like when the salmon or Ooligans are spawning. We could modify and control our food...once we got that done, we did not need to meander around because we had no FUD.

:

You do have to question, what living being changed the most when humans took up agriculture? I mean ants farm aphids for honey dew...we are not the supreme being for keeping other living entities for what we can harvest off them...

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Termites and ants use fungus...farming...

One of my all time favourites of Larson..."he's been domesticated, I tell you!"

The upright ears, the drooley tongue...the glazed over eyes. Yup...wolfy's life as he once knew it...is over...

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I read that the above book was inspired by Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1997 By Jared Diamond (1998 the book won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel:
The book's title is a reference to the means by which farm-based societies conquered populations of other areas and maintained dominance, despite sometimes being vastly outnumbered – superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns); Eurasian diseases weakened and reduced local populations, who had no immunity, making it easier to maintain control over them (germs); and durable means of transport (steel) enabled imperialism.

Diamond argues geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics which favored early development of stable agricultural societies ultimately led to immunity to diseases endemic in agricultural animals and the development of powerful, organized states capable of dominating others.

What I enjoy is that GERMS are one of the factors why some people seemed to dominate others...like we were doing germ warfare, eh. LOL...the Hudson's Bay blanket with small pox in it...eek!

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
29 Sep 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/hea...rgies-in-children-but-cats-increase-them.html:

Best thing for your offspring, your precious progeny...one fellow I recall saying, on the way home from the hospital after giving birth...pick up a puppy, maybe TWO puppies...magnificent advice...not just germs and dust and dirt from owning dogs...teaches empathy, responsibility, compassion, responsibility...

The heritage breeds of chickens...long outdoor life...slow growing...to me all things that represent why the heritage chickens and turkeys ARE superior to these fragile factory farmed monstrosities...you sneeze and the barn is fulla heart attacks...feet up DEAD birds...

And because I went searching for my fav Far Side..."he's been domesticated..." Here's a few other laughs...and I mean, I laugh UNCONTROLLABLY at his works...so if I was AT WORK, I'd be EVER SO BUSTED...because I cannot stop the gut busting...

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The FUD one...

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The LATE one...

And there he is...late for dinner...and she's mad... I love how he's marked No. 8 like there were only eight problem wildlife and only eight bears this has EVER happened to (maybe a start to the new year...colour coded number eight and they change the COLOUR every season??) ...I worked at a Conservation Office and know they did this to problem bears...so she is truly alright being mad AT HIM...as he was likely caught up to NO GOOD anyway. The dart in the ARSE...then I lose it totally...stop me looking...oh no, here I go again...

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June 15 2015 - male Bluebird...​

And because my Pear-A-Dice thread is all about the PURSUIT OF IT...

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The "Chicken of DEPRESSION?" Come on, that is hilarious...

May the Chicken of Depression, NEVER fly up your nose...

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Quick update on the pursuit of dog crates for Babe, the new crew cab...

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Rick and I bought two new crates...pretty tight squeeze inside the cab, so Rick may shorten one crate by one bar width...or not.

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How much room in each crate...obviously enough for one dog girl...

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Because we could squeeze TWO in one...

Can you imagine carting them around, two in one crate...NOT!!!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Akrnaf2]

Tara
Cows and other Ruminants farms bacteria and protozoa!
https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Ruminant_Digestion.html
City pigeon = feral domesticated pigeon Columba livia are flying Rats!
And the situation that some organisems spred with human settlements is called "Synanthrope organisms"
Syn= together (syndrome ="walks together" in Greek)
Anthropus = man, human

 

[CanuckBock]

Tara
Cows and other Ruminants farms bacteria and protozoa!
https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Ruminant_Digestion.html
City pigeon = feral domesticated pigeon Columba livia are flying Rats!
And the situation that some organisems spred with human settlements is called "Synanthrope organisms"
Syn= together (syndrome ="walks together" in Greek)
Anthropus = man, human

One of the many reasons...if anything gets antibiotics, I make sure and see they get some yoghurt to eat. I can tell you that when I had to give Haley a shot after assisting her, way back in 2003, to lamb out her triplets. I knew she loved the strawberry flavoured yoghurt best. She would meet me at the gate, already licking her sheep lips..."Ah yes, I love that strawberry...more please!"

April 28 2013 - Haley​

Such a sweet sheep...Lilac Jacob with a permanent SMILE on her face.

July 19 2013 - Her last few days on this Earth
she adored dandelions, so we picked her a pile​

She was one of the original Jacob sheep from the Winnipeg Zoo...back in the days when zoos also would put on displays of FARM animals. Not quite sure if she came from the zoo or was born from the zoo, but she is a direct descendant from that.

The first sheep I owned that lambed for me...I miss her dearly!
We still have one of her triplets, Nascor is her 2003 daughter​

I give yoghurt mixed in starter (and sometimes hard boiled egg yolk) to the birds too. I may be wrong to believe it, but I figure a bit of good bugs (bacteria) helps give the birds a good start. None seem to come to harm for it.

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Calling pigeons, flying rats reminds me of a story my sister told me. She is right at home in the city (I am the country mouse, she is the city mouse)...world traveler, been on tour with a volleyball group to New Zealand, Hawaii, Fiji, Australian. She loves travelling and even lived for a time in Las Vegas.

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I thrive in the country, she thrives in the city. She travels in white outfits (I'd not even make it to the front door wearing white, dog paws, hair, some sorta stain of unknown quality!), she is an opera singer (my father loves operas and she was in the lead female role for Rigoletto last I heard), very musical as she plays instruments by ear (piano, saxophone, guitar, etc.), she sings in the church choir, actress, model (yes, she has a six pack stomach...we laugh, she is like 2% body fat and I got the rest of the 98%...bwa ha ha!), fitness trainer, social light that loves entertaining, she drives a Beamer and I love to be driven round in Rick's vintage trucks...so virtually polar opposites. We respect that we love other things.

Anyway, she was telling me about these people in Stanley Park (she lives right down town Vancouver...right in the middle of the city) that sit on the park benches to feed what they think are squirrels, nope, not squirrels...RATS...the rats in the park are so tame and take advantage of people...the older persons on the park benches have these rats that come right up and take feed from their hands! Even my sister was in shock because the people don't seem to differentiate between vermin and park residents...

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Lots of wild animals seem to thrive near or with humans...the deer here live in the subdivision up from us. Some so forward as to walk on to their porches and eat apples from the kid's hands. I am not overly fond of deer, simply because we seem to have FAR too many. The one owner of a quarter sold crop rights to a person that grew peas...could not harvest them, so yup, about 20 deer every evening & at dawn, running across the highway to eat peas. Not a natural diet at all.

Sep 12 2014​

This is the bear that was lured to eat a huge amount of bird seed put out by the neighbour's--4x8 sheet of plywood covered in seed...poor cub was chased by the other neighbours, right into where our sheep reside...making nuisance animals out of the wildlife.

He moved on with my encouragement, but makes me angry when we get them too use to humans!​

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Hmmm...a most busy day unfolds...anyone wanna guess what or where we are going this evening?

Here's a clue...need this...

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So baking this, this morning... cut it, cool it, pack it up...take along...

Other odds and sods I have overlooked...

The Mandarin drake, has shed off his sail feathers...that would be fine, if the hen that had laid the eggs had chose a time where they did not freeze and split.

Feb 23, 2017​

I see she is laying eggs AGAIN...a new clutch. Has me pondering...the usual methodical method of the Mandies is the females lay eggs, the male adds his contributions to ensure the eggs are fertilized and then he sheds his winter feathers while the hen or hens incubate the eggs. Technically, in the wild (for wild they be), he would not be needed and by shedding his feathers, he neither fertilizes any eggs AND he may hide out when his flight feathers shed off and he cannot FLY away from danger.

Hmmm...this round, the drake is shedding feathers sooner than the hen has finished laying a second clutch of eggs. Hmmm...may not get mandarin babes this year and I am wiser now as to why.

Food...way way behind (a big butt?) on foodie photos...oh well, this will torture Scott if he is a wee bit hungry but here is the flood gates opened...let the FEASTING (of the eyes?) begin...

Feb 28 2017 - spaghetti​

Last night, cheater spaghetti...basically beef burger, onion, celery, spices and cream with can of cream of mushroom soup. That kinda sticks to your guts carbohydrate spaghetti time meal! I knew I would be busy today and leftovers in this are most welcome! I have Foamy's second vial of Vitamin K to pickup this afternoon at the local village clinic...bus to deliver as we go to the funeral tomorrow and not driving till Monday.

Rick's business, Grader Rick Ltd., has officially began as of today. I just talked to him and the grader he was hired to operate was blown up by the other grader operator...soooo...it was to be fixed but looks like Rick will not be using that particular one. No matter, what does matter is that we are ready, set and GO with the new business! Long time coming it seems, working at it since around about's November trying to get all ducks in a row and well, guess we are good to GO...happy dancing...YAH!

Far too serious this other talk, so back to the foods...glorious FOOD!

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Feb 27, 2017 - preparation of and presentation of...
Honey Garlic chicken wings...was great!​

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Feb 26 - pork ribs cooked in crock pot and then dried up and baked in oven with BQ sauce
Rice, peas and carrots and num!


Feb 25​

Cripers...this was like $27 for some wedgies and six pieces of chicken...blah...first time we tried it, had to eat something as we were out and about, but Mary Brown's was a fail in our books...plus the notation of DIVE IN! was rather rude on their packaging...sorta like some ads I see on TV where they hype up the "I WANT THAT!" and I find that rude also...no matter, it was tried, it was not worth it and good enough...

Feb 24 Burgers and rice
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Was shopping, restocking the larder, packaging up beef burger bought in bulk and left over some to do up four burgers for us to have something decent to eat before we called it a day.

Feb 22 - pork ribs, sauerkraut, corn (Rick came home from work bearing gifts...lovely corn on the cob!) and masher potatoes​

Feb 15, t-bone steak, nibblets corn and store bought potato and bacon perogies
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Feb 14, Valentines Day, eh...makings for spicy meat balls


Meatballs server on our home grown boiled potatoes


Feb 13, 2017 - Love how all the colours still make me giggle!​

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And of course, an h'orderve of shrimps to start off Valentines meal


Added some frozen peas to this, was nice addition​

Feb 13, those grouse are still coming by...I go off for my afternoon bus run and Rick tells me out of the woods (the spruce tree protection), come waddling the WILD chickens...four of them. Sometimes two together, sometimes three and then the fourth shows up by itself...that lone one could be the Momma of the others? All I know is that in the deep of winter, waiting on spring...the sight to see these wild thangs coming in for some free loading feed...makes both Rick and I happy.

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Fat wild chickens...always welcomed...

Eating the buds off the Mountain Ash trees we planted here​

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[scottcaddy]

Yes, I am hungry again.
Hope that Rick's grader is fixed right for him.
Thanks for the update!
Scott

 

[drumstick diva]

Tara when do you have to get the entries in for the April dog shows???

 

[CanuckBock]

I can "tickle" either dog...unless I get greeted with TEETH...
Note the dog hair...condiments abound, Em is shedding!!
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The heater vents are right there...not like we need them but there if required. Girls were great and I am very pleased to be able to cart them along with us. Makes my trips so much more fun and tires the girls out. We arrive home, all tried and happy to be home.

Came home and made up a big salad...man alive, sure missing the home cooking.

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Quote:

Hmm, yet another step towards the DARK SIDE...be that this sentence hints that we get to look forward to commercial animal husbandry turning towards where the producers in factory farms (the hens, the commercial hen breeds) do not make or even hatch the eggs for their own progeny. Surrogates that have the DNA information implanted in them and THEY produce the offspring for others? I can't somehow get my happy happy around this concept. I am suspicious this is us humans yet again going down a very wrong pathway?

What's that phrase, "just because you can, does not mean we should!"

How close it this to cloning?

I have seen what happens to sheep used to provide embryos that other sheep then are implanted with to carry. The "donor" is supposedly this wonderful sheep you want more progeny from than they are able to carry themselves...so you give them chemicals and then flush out a bunch of eggs. The donor sheep gets all screwed up by being flushed of her eggs (likely to the point where she will never conceive or lamb naturally herself, keeping in mind, she is far too VALUABLE to risk breeding, caring and raising her own lambs???) and the ones used to receive or be recipients of those eggs, they too get messed up but since "they" are not as valuable (in whomever the owner of them's mind) as the eggs implanted into them, they are kinda a cast off to this whole project.

Does in not rub our feathers backwards to hear of research where the factory farmed birds don't or won't even carry the eggs to make more of themselves? That the ability to lay viable and hatchable eggs is being shuffled off to other birds? The article talks about "saving rare breeds" but in my mindset, it goes back to Dr. Carefoot's wise words of wisdom in regards to SAVING RARE CHICKENS...if the darn things can't replicate more of themselves (respectable copies are viable chickens), then maybe perhaps those RARE BREEDS do deserve to expire and go EXTINCT!

I personally will do the hard long fight to save breeds I enjoy BUT I also reach a point where I have to give my head a shake, talk to myself (a most hilarious observation as I not only talk to myself, I answer myself too...at length!

)...but if the rare birds I want to keep going or even just animals I have won't easily replicate...you do have to ponder, if they are not easy keepers of "I" personally struggle and use up too many resources to keep the lines going, then maybe I personally should not keep making more...too tender, too difficult, maybe the powers that be have stepped in and because I can't succeed with the line, maybe I should focus on some other more deserving line perhaps?

This whole idea that we don't have to let the commercial birds lay the eggs to make more of themselves frightens me. There are morals and ethics that point to human choices. Will there come a day and it is here now to a point, where the MASTER RACE (die Herrenrasse) will not risk its own self to have more progeny live on...that us humans will be made to carry THE BEST versions of humans...what a joke.

How, can, a, race, not replicate itself and be superior? The very basic essence of survival, to me at least, is the ability to do all the necessary things so our seed lives onwards. I get when you can't have a child of your own and you can have someone else carry it to term and all that jazz...and we have people RAISE our children for us...from babysitters, daycare to nannies...but after some contemplation, is that article not doing similar things in chickens?

Creative Poultry Breeding by Dr. Clive Carefoot, 1985, Page 192:
To the creative breeder the present is a stepping stone to a greater future; the past is now immaterial. It is the desire to obtain chicks from his best birds, to see these chicks develop and to select a new set of breeding stock with which to repeat the process, which provides the motivation of a poultry breeder. To the top few breeders of exhibition stock breeding is not a hobby, it is an obsession.

See? Am I wrong in thinking that even with our artificial incubation methods...we are debunking what Nature meant her many species to be doing...the natural progression of propagation...that by setting far more eggs than a hen mother could hatch and raise herself...the human methods of selection ARE making more of the same...limiting the diversity that would be healthier to have here on Mother Earth? I too, will artificially select, breed and hatch FAR more of a kind of bird that in the natural scheme would never have all her eggs incubated...so I too am guilty of skewing what is naturally possible.

Now with humans able to pretty much sterilize (the hens can't put their OWN DNA in their eggs) female chickens and then insert genetic material from ONE hen into any number of other females to be enslaven into laying HER EGGS for her...yikes!

Truly reaching an age where clone like chickens ARE the reality. Not 365 eggs in a year but any number of chickens made to those eggs...uniformity, identical in that they came from one mother...yeh, I see issues in that having one female make unlimited offspring means that ONE disease that she is weak to and will succumb to...YIKES...whole poultry barns of her progeny could die...hold on...aren't we already there?

That whole commercial farms are losing their stocks to one outbreak with no survivors...or at least us humans are killing them like in the hoof and mouth outbreak of 2001...where that epizootic had us cull by killing? Good grief!

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I remember this outbreak in 2001 because they wiped out entire herds and flocks...what people usually don't get...is the "hefted" intelligence of those stocks...Hefted...it meant all those eons of learned knowledge were lost...that you cannot extinguish whole races of animals and think you can just reseed these places, the geographical locations are unique...with any old seed and even think they will succeed like the generations that grew there and ADAPTED and passed that information on to the next generation.


http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hefted:
So to add to the let's let other chickens make the eggs and lay them...think of this as to how people would like to be sterilized and then made to bear offspring for a superior race of humans...bwa ha ha...not happy?


The hefted aspect too makes me think...how much is genetic and how much is how we are raised...how much information do we beings carrying within us, that even as an orphan that is raised by others...how much is ours from our lineage? Chicks are hatched without parents to teach them and yet, chickens seem to grow up in isolation with a language, a knowledge and a self that is very much chicken and they can easily slide into flocks of other chickens where they seem to have the same vocal language, same same same and yet...were hatched with this knowledge, already INSIDE them.

Hefted in HUMANS:
How quaint...how profound...how beautiful! Our sense of belonging...even if we are REMOVED...we KNOW! Basically our sense of SELF...shared by man and beasts!

Creative Poultry Breeding by Dr. Clive Carefoot, 1985, Page 192:
Sometimes I do ponder...rare and endangered...is this not sometimes a good reason to let them go if keeping them is so much EXTRA effort? Is extinction in some aspects not just things playing out as they should--pretty morbid! I guess it depends on the reasons for the rarity... Sometimes all the efforts we use up trying to save something could have saved huge numbers of another kind. One more important than many? I doubt I will ever get the right answer but an interesting thing to ponder...like a rolling ring, no beginning, and no end. Sense of self because if you asked me..."Do you want to live?" Well we all know that answer..."Am I worth it?" That answer would be completely subjective!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low

Think pink...thinking what a great colour...thinking pink...Pink Shirt day...February 22th here in Canada. May 4th by the United Nations...Feb 28/29 for others.

http://pinkshirtday.ca/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Bullying_Day:
This was a Canadian ORIGINAL,,,but that said...the term "America" for me, stands for both South & North AMERICA...jest so yah know, eh.

John Mellencamp – Pink Houses:
Little pink houses...for you and me!

Off to get a load of firewood to top up the boxes in the Man Porch...and take the camera along...clicks of the girls playing are overdue. Makes my heart sing happy.

Later...

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Course we had to start off playing...

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Can't work if the dogs have not played...first. Dogs first is the rowf rooles!

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Love Lacy's head profile in this shot...looks alot like...

Heeler heeling!​

The ACD weather vane profile I did back in 2000 or so.

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Even when "I" work...the dogs play...Emmy inviting Lacy to play.

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Sled in place to fill up.

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Happy girls...

Inspection of the firewood is required...


Won't be planting any time soon in this veg garden....​

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And the woodbox in the Man Porch...now overfloweth...

Happy FlyDAY, eh!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada