- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Like flour, yeast, toilet paper and hand sanitizer, all over the country there's been a run on chicks, wrote Diana Williams in a article published by the Sacramento Bee. The author and her family adopted four chicks, and as they grew, so did her thirst for information on raising chickens at home.
"Imagine my delight in stumbling across a backyard chicken census online," Williams wrote.
The website, managed by UC Cooperative Extension epidemiology specialist and veterinarian Maurice Pitesky, offers...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating a surge in human Salmonella infections linked to contact with live backyard poultry, reported Macy Jenkins on CBS Sacramento News.
The story included interviews with several chicken owners. One small girl said she loves to cuddle her chickens because "They're so cute." The owner of three specialty chickens said he allows the animals to "sleep inside with me in my bed." Both of those practices run counter to guidelines set by the CDC.
Jenkins spoke to UC Cooperative Extension specialist Maurice Pitesky, who said poultry...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Cities throughout the United States and Canada are reforming land-use and health policies to allow and encourage urban agriculture - including raising chickens, wrote Josie Garthwaite in the New York Times.
Among her sources for the story was the director of UC Cooperative Extension's Statewide Master Gardener Program Pamela Geisel, who keeps 10 hens at her own rural home west of Chico.
She said enthusiasm for homegrown hens in urban areas may be close to peaking.
“It’s sort of a fad,” she said. Still, “it’s easy to buy chicks, and they’re cheap."
Most of the potential...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Last month's enormous egg recall continues to generate news coverage about efforts to keep salmonella-contaminated eggs out of the U.S. food supply.
Experts quoted in a Los Angeles Times story published yesterday agreed that salmonella contamination can happen in any egg production system - large operations, small family farms or in the backyard. Chickens infected with salmonella shed the pathogen in their feces, which can contaminate the egg shell. In rare instances, salmonella infects a hen's ovaries and can end up inside the eggs she lays, the article said.
A Texas A&M University professor said eggs from large-scale...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
As producers and government agencies continue to investigate last month's enormous recall of Iowa-produced eggs, California egg farmers are pondering whether new rules that will govern the state's hen houses will play a role in preventing or exacerbating egg-borne illness, said an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Proposition 2, enacted by a wide margin of California voters in 2008, will require egg producers to provide adequate room for their hens to turn around freely, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs.
A Humane Society of the United States spokesperson told Chron reporter Carolyn...