Rolfe
Adult human female
Thursday, I have to cover for someone at a VI centre where I don't normally work. I show up about half an hour late, to see a farmer offloading a couple of dead hens. I swear a bit because I hate hens, and where I normally work we usually manage to offload them because DEFRA has some real hen experts nearby.
I smile sweetly and invite him to tell me all about it. These are commercial laying hens, from a large group. 4,000 hens altogether, and there are (or rather were) 2,000 in this group alone. That is quite a lot of chookies.
He tells me that the hens are laying very well indeed, but they are in poor condition, and unexpectedly large numbers have died in the previous two weeks. He shows me the statistics, and the number of deaths would give Hugh F-W heart failure. This is Stalag Hen sort of mortality rates.
I request fuller and better information, and am told that in fact the poor condition is "just the feathers". Body condition is OK. "Well, they're like dairy cows I suppose, they're producing at an elite rate so they're lean." There is some mention that the hens are pecking each other.
Then (proudly): "They're organic and free range."
Great.
I work my way on down the list of questions. Have the hens been receiving any medication? I surmise that the answer will be no, if they're organic. Oh, but yes, they get a homoeopathic medication.
I write down, "NO". I then remark, "that doesn't count, there's nothing in homoeopathic medicines." I don't know if he took that in or not. I offer my best service to find out what's killing his bloody hens, and say bye-bye.
Then a colleague phones with some question about one of yesterday's cases back at the ranch. I tell her I'm stuck with some hens. I then mention the "organic" bit. She remarks, "well, that'll be easy, they'll have something really obvious." Because, frankly, organic animals almost always have something obvious. Something other animals get routine preventative treatment for, which is forbidden under these monstrous "organic" rules.
Finally (it was a busy day) I get round to looking at the hens. Oh my freaking sainted aunt! They've got some wing feathers, but that's about it. Otherwise, they're virtually bald. What feathers they have are plastered with mud. I've never seen such gruesome specimens in my life, not even the rejects from battery cages. They're not emaciated, I agree, but they're pretty thin.
I start looking for skin parasites, but find nothing. The skin is relatively normal, just with broken feather shafts sticking out all over. But the real sick-making thing is that the vents have been pecked at so that the abdominal cavities have been entered in both birds. Closer inspection reveals that most of the intestines are missing - the birds have been disembowelled. Oviducts have also been sliced open.
Even closer inspection reveals feathers in the gizzards of the dead birds. The injuries are typical cannibalism.
This is a really horrible consequence of very very bad environment in poultry farming. It brings a whole new dimension to the term "pecking order". The birds attack each other, pull each other's feathers out, and eventually peck each other round the vent severely enough to kill.
I repeat, the cause is managemental. It is bad environment. It is really bad environment.
These birds were "organic free range". They were producing eggs. People are buying these eggs, imagining happy chickies contentedly pecking round an idyllic farmyard somewhere. And that being organic means they don't get treated with nasty evil chemicals.
No. No chemicals. Just homoeopathy. And although I haven't seen the environment, I know enough to be absolutely certain that it's appalling. It takes quite a bit to stress hens to the point where they kill each other like that. And they don't much like mud either, and there was a lot of that.
But never mind. They're free range! That means there are no cage partitions to protect them from their sisters when the stress drives them to attack each other. And they're organic! So they get nice kind gentle homoeopathic medication, and nothing else.
Well, this one can be somebody else's problem. But it's not a disease problem, it's an animal welfare problem. Caused by dreadful environmental conditions, in a management system that is marketed as high welfare. 4,000 hens, remember? Well, if enough knit-your-own-sandals yummie mummies insist on buying organic, then you need big units, stands to reason.
OK, the homoeopathy was probably the least of the problems here. It's just that in veterinary circles, homoeopathy seems to go hand in hand with lots of other ideological baggage, the organic bat-crap craze[iness] being a prime example.
OK, shutting up now. Probably being indiscreet. But sometimes I just think, if these innocents who declare that they're buying organic on animal welfare grounds, or because it's the best thing for precious little Phyllida's health, could see what their produce is actually coming from, they might think twice.
Rolfe.
I smile sweetly and invite him to tell me all about it. These are commercial laying hens, from a large group. 4,000 hens altogether, and there are (or rather were) 2,000 in this group alone. That is quite a lot of chookies.
He tells me that the hens are laying very well indeed, but they are in poor condition, and unexpectedly large numbers have died in the previous two weeks. He shows me the statistics, and the number of deaths would give Hugh F-W heart failure. This is Stalag Hen sort of mortality rates.
I request fuller and better information, and am told that in fact the poor condition is "just the feathers". Body condition is OK. "Well, they're like dairy cows I suppose, they're producing at an elite rate so they're lean." There is some mention that the hens are pecking each other.
Then (proudly): "They're organic and free range."
Great.
I work my way on down the list of questions. Have the hens been receiving any medication? I surmise that the answer will be no, if they're organic. Oh, but yes, they get a homoeopathic medication.
I write down, "NO". I then remark, "that doesn't count, there's nothing in homoeopathic medicines." I don't know if he took that in or not. I offer my best service to find out what's killing his bloody hens, and say bye-bye.
Then a colleague phones with some question about one of yesterday's cases back at the ranch. I tell her I'm stuck with some hens. I then mention the "organic" bit. She remarks, "well, that'll be easy, they'll have something really obvious." Because, frankly, organic animals almost always have something obvious. Something other animals get routine preventative treatment for, which is forbidden under these monstrous "organic" rules.
Finally (it was a busy day) I get round to looking at the hens. Oh my freaking sainted aunt! They've got some wing feathers, but that's about it. Otherwise, they're virtually bald. What feathers they have are plastered with mud. I've never seen such gruesome specimens in my life, not even the rejects from battery cages. They're not emaciated, I agree, but they're pretty thin.
I start looking for skin parasites, but find nothing. The skin is relatively normal, just with broken feather shafts sticking out all over. But the real sick-making thing is that the vents have been pecked at so that the abdominal cavities have been entered in both birds. Closer inspection reveals that most of the intestines are missing - the birds have been disembowelled. Oviducts have also been sliced open.
Even closer inspection reveals feathers in the gizzards of the dead birds. The injuries are typical cannibalism.
This is a really horrible consequence of very very bad environment in poultry farming. It brings a whole new dimension to the term "pecking order". The birds attack each other, pull each other's feathers out, and eventually peck each other round the vent severely enough to kill.
I repeat, the cause is managemental. It is bad environment. It is really bad environment.
These birds were "organic free range". They were producing eggs. People are buying these eggs, imagining happy chickies contentedly pecking round an idyllic farmyard somewhere. And that being organic means they don't get treated with nasty evil chemicals.
No. No chemicals. Just homoeopathy. And although I haven't seen the environment, I know enough to be absolutely certain that it's appalling. It takes quite a bit to stress hens to the point where they kill each other like that. And they don't much like mud either, and there was a lot of that.
But never mind. They're free range! That means there are no cage partitions to protect them from their sisters when the stress drives them to attack each other. And they're organic! So they get nice kind gentle homoeopathic medication, and nothing else.
Well, this one can be somebody else's problem. But it's not a disease problem, it's an animal welfare problem. Caused by dreadful environmental conditions, in a management system that is marketed as high welfare. 4,000 hens, remember? Well, if enough knit-your-own-sandals yummie mummies insist on buying organic, then you need big units, stands to reason.
OK, the homoeopathy was probably the least of the problems here. It's just that in veterinary circles, homoeopathy seems to go hand in hand with lots of other ideological baggage, the organic bat-crap craze[iness] being a prime example.
OK, shutting up now. Probably being indiscreet. But sometimes I just think, if these innocents who declare that they're buying organic on animal welfare grounds, or because it's the best thing for precious little Phyllida's health, could see what their produce is actually coming from, they might think twice.
Rolfe.
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