Part I
The Healthy Chicken
In this part...
In Part I, we give you a view — inside and out — of a hen and her family, and we tour the fascinating behavior of chickens in chicken society. Why do we wax poetic about healthy chickens in a book about chicken health problems? First, you can’t recognize a sick chicken if you aren’t thoroughly familiar with healthy ones. And second, attending to a chicken’s behavioral needs (respecting her chickeness?) avoids many preventable stress-related illnesses and injuries.
The keys to chicken health are keeping the flock clean, comfortable, and well fed. We glean tips from wisdom handed down by generations of flock keepers to share with you in this part of the book.
Chapter 1
A Picture of Backyard Flock Health
In This Chapter
Appreciating the useful and fascinating backyard chicken
Increasing your awareness of the hazards of the backyard chicken’s lifestyle
Scrutinizing the stats of common backyard chicken illnesses, injuries, and causes of death
Investigating how flock keepers prevent, treat, and find help with chicken health problems
Chickens have fascinated people for thousands of years, ever since humans and red junglefowl met in Southeast Asia and began a productive relationship together. Humans have taken full advantage of the partnership and of the chicken’s versatility. The wild junglefowl hen lays a scanty 15 to 30 eggs a year; after thousands of years of selection and care by people, modern domesticated hens can surpass the 300-egg-per-year mark. Today, chicken meat is a major source of protein for human nutrition around the globe.
People clearly benefit from the human/chicken bond, but what does the chicken get out of this relationship? In exchange for eggs, meat, entertainment, and a wholesome connection with nature, backyard flock keepers protect their birds from danger and disease, and free them from worries of finding a good meal and a cozy place to sleep at night. In this book, we offer advice to help you keep up your end of the bargain.
Ideally, flock keepers also remember that chickens are, down deep, still wild junglefowl, driven to dustbathe, forage, and establish pecking orders. Caretakers can and should provide opportunities for chickens to be chickens and to express their inner junglefowl.
In this chapter, we introduce you to backyard chickens, their troubles, and what you can do to prevent health problems and respond to unfortunate events.
Introducing the Backyard Chicken
Throughout this book we make the distinction between backyard and commercial chicken flocks. Although you can probably point out general, sometimes overlapping differences between commercial and backyard flocks in terms of management style, reasons for raising chickens, types of birds, and farm sizes, we stick with a simple definition. For the purpose of this book, we consider a farm with 1,000 or more chickens a commercial flock, and call a place with fewer than 1,000 chickens a backyard flock.
Okay, 999 birds is extreme backyard flock keeping, and as you may suspect, most backyard flocks have far fewer than 1,000 birds. The majority of backyard flock keepers in the United States have fewer than 25 chickens, according to informal surveys.
You may already be savvy to the lingo of backyard flock keepers, but to keep us all on the same page, we provide a list of poultry terms used in this book:
Pullet/hen: In poultry show circles, a pullet is a female chicken less than a year old, and a hen is a female chicken 1-year-old and up. Other folks consider a pullet to be a female chicken that has not yet laid an egg, and a hen as one who has.
Cockerel/rooster: A cockerel is a male chicken less than a year old. A rooster is a male chicken 1-year-old and up.
Egg-type chickens: Chickens of breeds developed for egg production. Commercial white egg layers are Leghorns, and commercial brown egg layers were developed from the Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire, and Plymouth Rock breeds of chicken.
Broiler: A young chicken suitable for grilling, roasting, or barbecuing. Very fast-growing
meat-type chickens that make excellent broilers were created from the Cornish and Plymouth Rock breeds of chickens. You may hear meat-type chickens described as “Cornish cross” or “Cornish Rocks.”
Dual-purpose chickens: Chickens of breeds that are suitable for both egg and meat production, such as the Delaware or Plymouth Rock breeds.
Gamefowl: Chickens of breeds developed for the purpose of producing fighting cocks, such as the Modern Game and the Old English Game breeds.
Bantams: Very small chickens belonging to breeds that are often miniature versions of larger chicken breeds.
Heritage breed chickens: Chickens belonging to breeds that were recognized by the American Poultry Association prior to the mid–20th century. Heritage chickens are ideal for backyard settings, because they’re active, long-lived, outdoor foragers.
