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Let's start over here. I'm not talking about certified organic. I'm talking about raising my own chickens organic for my own use. I'm talking about growing my own garden organic for my own use.
Nobody needs to come certify me to tell me that I'm organic or not. It's not that hard, really. Actually, the organic gardening is really not hard, either. I've been gardening without chemicals for about four years and find that my garden is much healthier than when I used chemical fertilizer and pesticide.
So, let's talk about raising our chickens naturally. Without chemicals. Without keeping them on scheduled dewormer. Without sevin dust. Without antibiotics. Hopefully, without GMO feeds.
I realize it's scary. It's hard to take the plunge. It's so much easier to cure them when their sick. Give them a shot, give them wormer, make them all better. Especially when you have 4-5 chickens and they are your pets. But, this is why I think this is a topic that can/should be discussed openly on BYC. It is so much easier to give them a fix for everything. But then they need a fix for everything.
I'm just guessing but I suspect the average age for a BYC member is relatively young, maybe 30ish? It's typical in this day and age to pop a pill for whatever ails yah. And, I'm speaking from experience. I work in one of the busiest Urgent Care systems in one of the largest growing metropolitan areas of the country. Let me tell you, young moms want those antibiotics and get well fast pills for their kiddos and they want them now!
So, our society is becoming an antibiotic resistant, pesticide resistant society. MRSA, have you heard of it? When I went to medical school we hadn't heard of it. Seriously! MRSA is a new problem caused by misuse, abuse of antibiotics.
We have the same problems in the farming industry. Example: I once bought four bottle calves from a dairy to put on my Jersey cow. Now, dairies, that's where we get our milk, that's what we put in our kid's bodies, right? Ok. So, these cute little, three day old calves were all deathly ill within hours of arriving at my farm. I sent in cultures of their stools and blood to the local vet school. They had not one but four infections! E.coli 157, and salmonella which were both resistant to every antibiotic tested. They also had rotavirus and coronavirus.
So, how did these sweet little baby calves come to be sick with drug resistant e.coli 157 and drug resistant salmonella at just a few days old? Because our commercial dairies give those cows antibiotics. So, not only are we getting too many antibiotics from our own doctors (seriously, I get pushed into writing antibiotics for viruses almost daily and my life would be miserable if I tried to fight that argument every single time). Maybe not while milking but sometime, somewhere those cows are getting a lot of drugs and it's getting into our food chain and into us. In Europe, antibiotics are not used for ear infections like they are here. Even here, the CDC doesnt recommend antibiotics for adults with strep throat but I cannot convince the patient to follow CDC's guidelines, at least not 90% of the patients, although I follow them for myself and my immediate family.
The case of these sick calves really made an impression on a second year medical student like myself way back when it happened. Since the antibiotics wouldn't work I put them on probiotics, fluids, just supportive care. Yogurt, acidophillus, fiber to slow down the diarrhea, electrolytes. And, believe it or not,those little calves survived, thrived, and became my fresh beef for the next several years.
So, what's all this have to do with chickens and people, you ask? Well, I don't know about you but I eat my eggs. I eat my chickens. I eat the vegetables that grow in my garden with the poop that comes out of my chickens bums. What this means is that every single chemical that goes into my chicken will in some way, shape or form potentially effect me and my family, not to mention my environment. ( the birds, bees, praying mantids, butterflies, ladybugs)
So, long story but what I'm trying to say is that what the medicines, food and pesticides that we give to our chickens may seem like a simple fix to a simple problem but could have very far reaching consequences. Consider, for instance, the next time you reach for the Baytril or penicillin for the sniffly chicken. Not to be an alarmist but you could be helping another superbug to form, similar to MRSA, E.Coli 157 or, now we also have a super c.difficile.
As a healthcare specialist, I'm exposed to more than my share of superbugs, unfortunately. I've been hospitalized with a "flesh-eating" bacteria which nearly killed me and I've also had an awful case of super resistant e.coli followed by a resistant c.difficile. They were all a chain reaction, having been exposed to one superbug, I needed multiple antibiotics, then got another bug and another and another. I was literally dealing with the crap for three years.
So, when I speak of being very cautious about using medications in my animals or chemicals of any kind, I have an intimate knowledge of what happens when that delicate biological balance falls apart.
In horses, we are seeing terrible resistance to dewormers of all kinds. What happens when none of them work? Nobody thought the daily dewormer would ever stop working but now there is resistance to Strongid C. Ivermectin, it was believed resistance to ivermectin wasn't possible because of the way it works but now there is terrible resistance to it.
Who remembers when the only horse dewormers that we had were the blue pellets that horses wouldn't eat and "tube worming" from the vets once a year? And, neither forms really worked all that well?
So, I've rambled on long enough. Let's keep the discussion about real life organic farming. No worries about government certification. That can be a discussin for another place. I doubt that many members of the BYC population is interested in becoming organic certified but many are interested in real-life organic practices.
Sorry if I'm preaching. I'm just really passionate about the topic.
