Young pullets

The pullets I acquired at the Ventura Poultry Show are growing up! They are about two months old now, a Welsummer, an Ancona and a Blue Laced Red Wyandotte.

They quickly learned to peck corn from the hook where I hang it on the fence. They are getting along with the other girls well. They're a little intimidated by them, which is as it should be. But no pecking or aggression of any kind among them.

They all like to take their dirt baths together. That must be the best place.

I'm especially happy to have an Ancona. Anconas are a Mediterranean breed that shares the background of the Leghorns. In Europe, both breeds are known as Italian. They take their name from the Italian city from which they were imported to England in the mid-nineteenth century. Like the Leghorns, they are excellent egg layers with little broody instinct.

They have yellow skin and lay white eggs. Single and Rose Comb varieties with black and white mottled feathers are recognized by the APA and the ABA. Blue, Brown and Red Mottled varieties have been raised by fanciers.

Cecil Sheppard of Berea, Ohio, president of the International Ancona Club, wrote about the breed in a book, A Little Journey Among Anconas, in 1922. He pointed out that his strain of Anconas was mentioned in advertisements in 17 of the 67 ads published in the American Poultry Journal at that time.

This Ancona is living up to the breed reputation of being somewhat flighty, but she's not at all empty-headed. It's more as if she is following a different drummer. She's bold and curious, doesn't hesitate to venture out on her own. 

Selling farm-fresh eggs

Sarah Mahran, <sarah.s.mahran@gmail.com>, posted a question on Comfood about what's required to sell eggs:. Anyone got any help for her? This is a great way to people to get started with small-scale production.

Hi everyone,

I'm a student that's interested in exploring ways to bring local eggs into
grocery stores and supermarkets. I know that there are both USDA & state
regulations surrounding the sale of eggs, and I've spent the past few days
reading about grading, washing, sorting, etc.

1) I'm still unclear as to whether unwashed eggs (i.e. eggs that haven't
gone through the formal process of being washed w/ water @ 90 degrees,
sprayed with sanitizer, etc., but are dry cleaned/wiped, etc) could be sold
legally if they are labeled and documented properly (one USDA document I
read made it sound like such eggs could be labeled as unclassified).

2) The more I'm looking through regulations, the more I feel like it could
potentially be feasible for an organization to obtain grant funding in
order to create a facility that could wash, sanitize, grade & candle eggs
according to regulations so that they could be sold to stores. Does anyone
have any sense of the obstacles that one would face in going through this
process or how arduous it would be?

*Any *information would be greatly appreciated. I'm also happy to pass
along information that I've found to others. Asides from USDA and state
regulations, I've found ATTRA's guide on Small-Scale Egg Handling very
helpful.

Thanks so much.

Sarah

Egyptian Fayoumis

                                                                                    Photo credit Cyndy M. Carroll, Syrynx Farm

The Fayoumi Chicken, known in its native Egypt as the Bigawi, traces its history back 3,600 years, to around 1550 BC. Its development was shaped by long periods of isolation, changing direction when new birds arrived with traders and conquering heroes. The Fayoumi in the 21st century is a unique living treasure.

It emerged at the crossroads of the flourishing civilizations of India, Sri Lanka, Africa and the Near East and reflects those ancient cultures. Its progenitors sailed on trade ships and were carried overland with armies and caravans. On its journey through history, it developed its distinctive identity in consecutive stages, from one significant point in history and location in geography to the next.

 

Egyptian traders sailed forth loaded with millet and sesame to trade for the incense, spices, essential oils and resins they used religiously to mummify the dead. Punt, on the Horn of Africa, had coffee, myrrh and frankincense, India had cumin, turmeric, black pepper and citrus. Sri Lanka had cinnamon and ginger. Indonesia had cloves. Everything worth anything eventually ended up in Egypt and it arrived through trade carried from every corner of the ancient world.

Trading ships came from India to the shores of Punt, what is now northern Somalia, where trading partners made the deal and subsequently carried the goods north to Egypt via Yemen and Oman. The Bigawi fowl came along with domestic cattle, precious metals such as gold, silver, bronze and electrum, a naturally-occurring gold and silver alloy, and gems such as emeralds, amethyst, malachite and turquoise.

The Indian Sub-Continent and Sri Lanka in relation to Northeast Africa: The Horn of Africa, Punt, and Egypt; the Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian Peninsula

The chickens that came with the earliest traders were valued as ceremonial birds, rather than for their economic value as food. Their ancestors were Red Junglefowl, with influences from the other wild junglefowl species: Grey, Sri Lanka and Green Forktail. Each species is adapted to different environmental conditions, and passes its unique traits on to its offspring. In Canaan, present day Israel, the Hebrews bred progenitors of the Asil, which had arrived from India, into an egg-laying wonder. This domesticated chicken is one of the Fayoumi’s ancestors. Pharaoh Thutmose III, Queen Hatshepsut’s younger brother and co-regent, brought them to Egypt after the battle of Tel Megiddo in 1479 BC.

Thutmose III would have brought them to Fayoum’s great temple complexes of the Amen cult, where they were kept as exotic curiosities rather than domestic fowl. Egyptians already had plenty of geese, quail ducks and guineafowl. They ranged free in sacred gardens and building complexes. The ancient Egyptians must have been fond of the Canaanite fowl to allow them to free range in such an important monument of Egyptian culture.

Climate was working against the Fayoum, as its water table began to drop. The Fayoum basin had been a lush agricultural area where coriander, artichokes, Egyptian garlic, Egyptian tree onion, leeks, radishes, lettuce, watermelon and kamut wheat were developed. Drought took its toll on crops and population.

About 70 years after the Battle of Tel Megiddo, scores of dazzling male Sri Lanka Junglefowl arrived along with a major tribute of cinnamon from Sri Lanka during the reign of Thutmose’s great grandson, King Amenhotep III. In Ancient Egypt, failure for the river to rise was seen as a failure of the God-Kings themselves. The birds’ arrival was a blessing, because their multi-syllabic crow sounded to the Egyptians like the mantra river priests chanted, pleading for the river rise:
Haaypi Haaypi! Herhut! Heqet! Herhut! Heqet!
Hail to thee, O Nile! Who manifests thyself over this land, and comes to give life to Egypt!
Herhut! Heqet! Herhut! Heqet!
Come and prosper!
Come and prosper!
Herhut! Heqet! Herhut! Heqet!
O Nile, come and prosper!
O you who make human beings to live through His flocks and His flocks through His orchards!
Herhut! Heqet! Herhut! Heqet!
Come and prosper, come,
O Nile, come and prosper!
Haaypi! Haaypi Hotep! Haaypi Hotep!

Even this tribute failed to restore the water table. As the desert steadily encroached, most of the people left Fayoum. The fowl, hardy birds, hung on and adapted to flourish in the marshes amongst the reeds. They foraged in the thorn forest and took shelter in the dense palm forests surrounding the evaporating lake bed.  For the next thousand years, this population bred on its own in isolation from other influences.

Drought stalks the Fayoum

But the weather was not on Thutmose’s side. The drought that had begun a century before continued to dry up the Fayoum basin. The water table dropped, leaving stagnant pools of water that allowed insect-borne diseases such as malaria, bilharzia and river blindness to add to the region’s misery. Surface water became more saline. Even the religious temples would have had a rough time of it.  By Thutmose III’s time during the 18th Dynasty, Itjtawy was already largely in ruin. After Thutmose III's death, the center of Egyptian government and politics moved to Karnak and the Delta. Many of the temples within Fayoum fell into further disrepair.

Hundreds of generations of chickens would have hatched among this very limited population, probably never more than a few thousand.

The Sri Lanka Junglefowl roosters added genetic diversity to what must have been a rather inbred population. The result was a uniquely skewed founder base. The addition of so many roosters would have unbalanced the equilibrium between the sexes for a few generations. Survivability and capacity to fight were probably significant for the first few years but ultimately the flock would have found its balance again. Male Sri Lanka Junglefowl defend their nests and enjoy extended relationships with offspring. Females often have up to three suitor/providers, who hold guard over the nest site and take over the chores of nurturing eight- to twelve-week old chicks while she hatches another clutch. Under this social organization, called facultative polyandry or serial monogamy, hens can raise three to five clutches a year. They may breed year round, which has been observed in captivity in bantam chickens, many old breeds of which are also derived of Sri Lanka Junglefowl sires in their deepest antiquity.

Males may have responded by forming cooperative guilds rather than competing aggressively. It could also lead to the marked precocity, early sexual maturity, of Fayoumis. Roosters start to crow as early as five weeks old and pullets begin to lay at around four and a half months. Today, when Fayoumi flocks have a surplus of roosters, two or more per hen, the entire group gets along amicably. Of course teenage roosters don’t learn to cooperate until later in their life.

Nature reclaims the Fayoum

The Fayoum remained basically deserted, save for a few temples and larger fishing villages. Farmers continued to cultivate the area, but Fayoum’s population was a fraction of what it was during its ascendance. The Fayoumi chickens naturalized in their environment. They were as isolated as they would have been if they were marooned on an island. They took their Junglefowl heritage and returned to the wild.

Sri Lanka Junglefowl are native to the semi-arid coastal mountain habitat, not the rain forest.
That heritage served the feral Fayoumis well, helping them succeed at forging for insects and other invertebrates in the marshes along the lake and river. It may be that the considerable influence of Sri Lanka Junglefowl in the genetic pedigree of the Egyptian Fayoumi is what rescued its progenitors from extinction. Like that wild species, the hybrids had to find food where there was very little to be found and compete with native wildlife all the while avoiding formidable predation. Their saving grace may have been their ability to capture flies in mid-air and being able to nest amongst the crowns of old palm trees . One still sees them in the more remote reaches of the Fayoum wading along canals and irrigation ditches, apparently living almost entirely on flies.

Fayoumis find ways to survive

The Fayoumi had a long walk along the road of survival before it came into its own. Predation must have taken many.  Every movement of these noisy foreign intruders was most assuredly watched by native predators. Birds, both adults and chicks, whose plumage contrasted with the background of bright white and burned grey of shore and hillock, ochre and red of sand would have been vulnerable. Camouflage plumage would prevail in survivors, making them less obvious as they made their way across the ever-growing banks of lakes and canals. They would have needed camouflage even at night, when the moon shines so bright as to make the light-reflective desert as clear as day.  

Survive they did, through a thousand years, until the Greco-Roman period, when Herodotus visited Egypt and noted in passing that wild fowl lived in the marshes. By that time, they were completely wild and served no practical purpose to humankind.  Greek and Roman invaders brought with them their own domestic chickens, recent descendants of the Canaanite hens so deep in the Fayoumi’s ancestry. These tame domestic birds came to live amongst newly bustling settlements along the banks of the lakes of Fayoum as the Greeks once again transformed the basin into a lush region of vast natural resource wealth.

This may well have invited the attentions of a few wild Bigawi fowl, which came to frequent towns and villages, interbreeding freely with their humanized cousins. The modern day Fayoumi Chicken available from hatcheries is generally a descendant of this ancient composite. It has been refined by successive generations of poultry scientists in modern day Egypt, Turkey and Italy.

Fayoumis today

Fayoumis are not recognized for exhibition by American poultry associations.  They are small birds, roosters weighing around 4.5 pounds and hens around 3.5 pounds. Their plumage is similar to Silver Campines and Friesans, which are both descendants of the original Fayoumi. As a rule Fayoumis have silver-white heads on black and white barred bodies, but may vary considerably. They have diminutive single combs and lay small off-white eggs, with a grey or lavender tint. They are reputed to have some natural resistance to diseases such as Avian Influenza, West Nile, Malaria and Choryza.

Modern Egyptian Fayoumi chickens separate into three breeds worth describing:

The Bigawi is differentiated from the Modern Fayoumi by size, colour and temperament. The Bigawi is a bit smaller and battier than the Fayoumi. Females are a rich chestnut brown with bold black transverse barring. Males are difficult to discern from Modern Fayoumi, though they tend to be darker in the wings with darker and longer tails. Both Bigawi and Modern Fayoumi should have dark facial skin and an unusual crow that is distinguishable from any other breed of rooster. In Kassala and Port Sudan in Eastern Sudan, one sees Bigawi fowl that are pewter in colour. They are camouflaged against the dark soil there. Their combs are very like those of the Sicilian Buttercup, another breed with African roots. Many Bigawi roosters are white with grey barring appearing only on the breast or undertail. They are a land race and as such there is some diversity amongst them.

The Shakshuk Fayoumi is the common strain of unimproved Fayoumi that one sees in villages throughout the Fayoum and in the cemetery of Old Cairo. They are brightly colored with vivid yellow legs and ginger hued feathers.

The Dandarawi is a recent dual purpose utility composite created in an agricultural university in Assiut. It was bred by crossing Fayoumis with old African breeds like the Malagasy and European breeds such as the Braekel.

City of the Dead and Mokkatum

In Mokkatum, high in the hills above Cairo, live the Zabbaleen, a minority religious community of Coptic Christians who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors for the past 70 to 80 years. A Bigawi Shashuk Modern Fayoumi and Dandarawi composite known as the Mokkatum Fowl scavenges with them in the mountains of refuse. This is an important livestock species to the Zabbaleen, as eggs are a significant part of their daily nutrition.

In the City of the Dead, a four-mile cemetery running the length of Cairo, people make their homes with their ancestors. Established during the first Arab conquest of 642 AD, the cemetery is the site for monuments and shrines to the dead. The poor, fleeing rural poverty, settle there. They share it with flocks of local chickens.

They are unique in appearance, and the locals respect them. They may take eggs that they find, but otherwise leave the birds unmolested. One hopes that Cairene backyard poultry lovers will conserve a few flocks before the chickens are mongrelized with the commercial utility breeds that have become common in Cairo, so that we may continue to follow these birds into the future.

Thanks to Kermit Blackwood for his substantial contribution to this brochure.

Research projects at Iowa State University are exploring their natural immunity to disease, where they maintain breeding flocks but do not sell to the public.

Turkey history

This post comes from an article I wrote for Early American Life. If you are considering raising turkeys this year, you'll want to know the interesting history these uniquely American birds have:

Tracking the Traditional Turkey

Feeding time at the zoo brought hundreds of turkeys to the predators’ enclosures, where they met their fate at the claws of cat and talons of bird. In Montezuma’s early-sixteenth-century personal menagerie, domestic turkeys were the food of choice.

Human members of Montezuma’s court likewise favored the bird, although more delicately prepared. They called it huexolotl, probably a name imitative of the turkey’s gobbling. They also deified it as Chalchiuhtotolin, the Jeweled Bird that presided over ritual self-mortification. This illustration, form Sabine Eiche's book, Presenting the Turkey: The Fabulous Story of a Flamboyant and Flavorful Bird, shows  Chalchiuhtotolin, the Jeweled Turkey from the Codex Borbonicus. The Codex is dated to around 1507, prior to the Spanish Conquest of 1518-1521, although some scholars date it later.

            Tomas de Torquemada recorded that Montezuma’s account books showed 8,000 turkeys consumed by the palace household, which was a military establishment, at one marketing.

Turkeys were likely one of the first American critters Columbus and his men saw when they landed on the Caribbean islands, probably on his fourth voyage in 1502. The explorers brought them back to Europe at the mandate of the king. In a letter of 1511, Ferdinand of Spain ordered his chief-treasurer in the West Indies to send five males and five females on every ship sailing home to Spain, presumably for breeding.

            At that time, the Spanish called the American bird pabo. Exactly how the bird, scientifically designated Meleagris gallopavo in the eighteenth century, acquired its common name remains clouded. Sabine Eiche, in her 2004 book Presenting the Turkey: The Fabulous Story of a Flamboyant and Flavourful Bird, translates Gonzalo Fernando d’Oviedo’s 1525 summary of the natural history of the West Indies, where he includes turkeys in the Peacock section. “Although their tails are not as large or as beautiful as those of Spanish peacocks, the rest of their plumage is most beautiful,” he wrote. “The flesh of these peacocks is very good, and incomparably better and more tender than that of the peacocks of Spain.”

            These domesticated turkeys would have been somewhat different from the endemic wild turkeys, although they are the same species. A second wild species, the ocellated turkey Agriocharis ocellata, is native to the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America, but the two interbreed freely. Some modern authorities suggest that the two should be considered species of a single genus. More than one farmer tells of a turkey tom that came to visit his hens and stayed. An infusion of wild blood is usually advantageous in small barnyard flocks.

EARLY AMERICAN EXPORT

North American turkeys arrived in England sometime after 1520. The guinea fowl, an African fowl, already claimed the appellation “turkey,” and Englishmen called both species turkeys for a time. Their obvious differences, however, required separate names. “Turkey” might have been a general term for foreign goods: the English used Turkey as a vague geographical term associated with Central Asia and Tartary. Some believe that English trade with the Eastern Mediterranean, called Turkish at that time, conferred its name to the exotic bird.

            William Strickland of Boynton-on-the-Wolds, Yorkshire, is sometimes credited with bringing the turkey to England in 1524, a result of a voyage with Sebastian Cabot. Although historical documentation is lacking, Strickland was honored with a grant of arms with the turkey cock as crest in 1550.

            Europeans may have seen turkeys much earlier. St. Peter’s Cathedral at Schlesing, Norway, has a frieze with eight medallions depicting American turkeys below a mural believed to have been painted around 1280. If turkeys were in Norway at that early date, they didn’t catch on as they did later.

            By 1541 the name was established and the bird became a delicacy among Englishmen and mainland Europeans. In Spain, Cervantes included turkey as emblematic of exalted personages in Don Quixote (1605). In England, turkey remained in the top three or four most expensive fowls until late in the seventeenth century, competing with swan, crane, and stork. The French called the bird coq d’Inde, rooster of India. It appeared as an item of upper-class feasts in Francois Rabelais’s second edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel, dated 1542. (Since it was not in the original 1534 edition, it must have acquired cachet at noble tables at that time.) At sixteenth-century Italian banquets, the carver, trinciante, provided part of the evening’s entertainment. Vincenzo Cervio published a book on the subject in 1581, Il trinciante, describing the art of carving everything from meat to fruit.

BACK TO AMERICA         

So, Pilgrims would have been familiar with this most American fowl when they arrived in 1620. (Domesticated English turkeys were sent to Jamestown to supply the Virginia colony as early as 1584.) Plimouth Plantation welcomed the bird, as recorded by William Bradford some years after the December 11, 1621, feast that later became celebrated as Thanksgiving. “And besides water foul, ther was a great store of wild Turkies, of which they took many,” he wrote.

            A pamphlet for the proposed colony of New Albion, dated 1616, touts “millions of Elkes, Stags, Deer, Turkeys, Fowl [and] Fish.” In 1629, Francis Higginson of Massachusetts Bay wrote to friends in England that he was shooting “fat, sweet and fleshy” turkeys and hen-sized ruffed grouse, which he called partridges, in the woods. For “a great part of the winter” the colonists had “eaten nothing but roast meat of divers fowls which they have killed.”

            The abundance of game astonished the colonists, who believed that they might have found Eden. The Bible, after all, told that Adam and Eve had been driven out of the Garden, which might still exist on Earth. In 1498, Columbus believed he had discovered the Gihon, one of the four rivers leading out of Eden, when he sailed into the Orinoco River in South America.