The Twelve Chickens of Christmas Song

This is probably one of my most crazy ideas to date. The premise being to gather together as many of our flock(s) as possible to fulfil the criteria for this variation on the old carol: The Twelve Days of Christmas. See film below.

Left is an illustration from the first appearance of the original song in print in the rather reprovingly entitled children's book: Mirth without Mischief published in 1780. A free downloadable copy of this text can be found at the Internet Archive (link at the end of this post).

The song's popularity came to the fore much later in 1909 with lyrics and melody by the English composer Frederic Austin.

In my head it was quite easy to work out how to choose the different individuals for the film.  All these birds live together in the forest garden but as they are attached to different coops and trees, each with their attendant dominant birds and when it came to collecting them up, I realised how easily this could turn into a Christmas recipe for disaster. 

So, here are the basic ingredients:

12 Crazy Chick Chicks - ...and they were because chicks expect to be paid to perform but a potential food fight would have spoiled the aesthetic.

11 Fiery Frizzles - ironically they were actually the best behaved

10 Blue Hens and Cockerels - some alpha hens and cockerels in this group but again on their best behaviour - which is why it is always best to film this sort of project at night and postprandially.

9 Playful Polish - rather damp because I had been emptying and bagging up my compost bin and they'd been having a great time hunting for invertebrates and so I had to wash all crests.

8 Cuddly Cochins - actually the worst behaved, it took several takes to get them calm. 'Bouboule' the black Frizzled Cochin is four months shy of his tenth Birthday and he likes his own space, sharing it even for a few seconds with anyone (even his own grandchildren) is not his idea of fun.

7 Colourful Quailees - impeccable as always

6 Daffy Ducklings - of fond memory from my most viewed film 

5 Golden Hens - Chickles (bottom  left on the screen) was just spoiling for a fight and as these are all Sebright crosses this is not surprising.

4 Festive Fantails - one of our favourite fantail pictures that Andy originally entitled 'My Dad's bigger than your Dad' and which one year we sent out as a Christmas card.

3 French Hens - as they were all hatched in Normandie, I guess all my hens could be called that but these three have some of the chic-est plumage.

2 Little Sweethearts - aka Mischief Makers and...

A Silkie in a Pear Tree - our re-homed Silke, photoed in our pear tree - even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have filmed him in a bare Winter pear tree because he'd been in the compost heap too and it would have taken more than a damp cloth to get him prepped for filming!

In between the filming of each segment, we had to take everyone back to their roosting places, albeit in coop or tree branch, and therefore this whole shoot took quite a while and we finished just before 4 am. It was such fun though and the chicks did get their payment post filming with a wrap party.

Hope you enjoyed the film and if you did, then think about going onto YouTube or Odysee or Bitchute (links below) and giving it a thumbs up. 

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube, Odysee  or BitChute Channel or even supporting us on Patreon or

It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from sunny Normandie! 

Sue

 

© 2021 Sue Cross

    

Forest Garden Poultry - Organic Feed for Free, Forage - An Overview Part 1

If you are setting up a forest garden and intending to run your poultry through it, then you are probably going to be short of certain wild 'pasture-type' elements in their diet. I've already looked at bringing in grass, not only as a great source of nutrient and essential dietary fibre but also, as an additional resource, the uneaten greenery aids in the creation of the forest floor layer. This will in turn engender a suitable environment for invertebrates and foster the emergence of weed seeds.

On small farms raising poultry was often the preserve of the farmer's wife and 'egg money' went directly to fund the household budget. There was very little cost involved in keeping fowls as they were on what could be classed as a hen 'paleo' diet with table scraps, vegetables and some soaked or sprouted grains fed as the additional feed. With a small flock and a relatively large acreage, this feed was often only used as an enticement to get the birds into the coop in the evening and away from the fox. Organically raised poultry maybe today's recherché foodstuff but up until the First World War, all small farm country

-bred birds were kept this way. There was also a symbiotic arrangement in that the cattle kept on a farm would graze the grass to a level useful for the foraging poultry to find insects and other invertebrates. Old pasture also had a mixture of plants, with differing nutrients, there were also edible wild flowers and seeds and hedges providing further rich veins of nutrient. Once the hedges were grubbed out to make way for modern machinery that ecosystem vanished too.

In the handbook,  Practical Poultry Management written by James E. Rice and Harold E. Botsford, pastured 'green food' was already being referred to  as an additional foodstuff, in much the same way as organic food, once the only sort of farmed food available was/is relegated in mainstream supermarkets to the 'diet' or 'health food' section. In the 1947 edition of their book, the authors wrote this of green food:

'It is rich in vitamins and should supply any that are lacking in the other ration ingredients. In this sense it is a protective feed. A lack of it is often a cause of ill-health and low production. It acts as a tonic, stimulating the appetite and also aids the digestive tract in functioning properly securing for the bird a larger utilisation of the feed consumed.' 

It is interesting to note that although poultry had been pastured for centuries and the above book was first published in 1925, it would not be until a decade later or more from this date, that some of these vitamins would finally be identified and that one of the consequences of their having been so, was to usher in a packaged food for hens in the way of layer pellets.

The ability to analyse the nutrients; vitamins, minerals and amino acids, bioflavenoids etc.,. contained within the forage the bird selected for its diet, would eventually permit the rise of the synthetic vitamin, farm-cultivated protein, industrial minerals and feed additive enzymes. This in turn would enable the chicken to be removed from pasture onto deep litter and finally to be shut away completely severed from the land in the battery or broiler house. Intensive poultry production would also allow for the CAFO system to be self-perpetuating with skimmed milk, blood, bone and feathers becoming a major part of poultry food protein, vitamin and mineral content. In the U.K., for example and within a few short years of the World Wars poultry had gone from a peripheral farming exercise to one of intensive 'monoculture'. Even the linguistics had changed from Poultry 'Husbandry' to Poultry 'Science' and the Poultry 'Industry'. The idea of a bird foraging in a meadow for the whole or even a major part of its diet was out, now man would dictate what it was to eat. For most part too it would be the end of the meadow, hedges and pastured cattle, with vast fields of monocrop cereals, wheat, corn and in the U.S. ubiquitous soya, which was to become the next major alien ingredient to the poultry diet

The concept of using the products from 'rendering', however, was nothing new. The image of the feed bag above is reputed to come from a poultry breeder directory from 1891.

The idea of a food forest to me is not only to supply food for us but also to provide a return to as near as possible free-range foraging for our birds. Within the walls and hedges of our garden, there are several levels of potential foodstuffs from the floor, the sub canopy and the canopy itself. However, due to the actual size of our forest (1000m²) I am very much aware that green foods need to be brought in. To this end, we have over the years established various contacts which have allowed us to make up this shortfall. This includes 'harvesting' green-stuff from neighbouring gardens and fields.

Most people when they think about forage and free food will be thinking about the economic angle and of cutting feed bills but this is only part of the equation. At one of the organic farm open days we went to some years back, the main interest expressed by the conventional farmers, was in the minimal cost of veterinary bills per farm animal. The words of Hippocrates, of food and medicine being interchangeable should perhaps be taken to mean that food and medicine are one and the same because what good nourishing food does is prevent the necessity for ever needing the other. Green food such as chickweed, stellaria media is a medicinal herb, presently being trialled for all kinds of conditions and diseases but the chicken knows it as food. From observation, my birds also know not to over consume it, nor any other food item I present them with, which I find fascinating. That is of course unless there are special circumstances which I will discuss in the following article.

If you have enjoyed this blog and found it interesting then please think about subscribing, sharing it and/or commenting. Please also feel free to ask questions. 

All the very best,

Sue

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©  Sue Cross 2016