Approximately, 98% of chickens in the
United States are produced by large corporations, the other 2% are
made up of local farmers free ranging their chickens. My husband and
I are in that 2%.
As I write this, we have 67 Cornish
cross chickens on grass. When we moved to our farm, we designated
part of the lawn as pasture just so I would feel better about putting
chickens on it. I still mow it, but the chickens are happy to roam
the area in their chicken tractor.
This spring has been especially
challenging. We had to keep the chicks in their brooder longer than
expected, which meant keeping them in the garage. Normally, it
wouldn't have been an issue, but they got too big too fast. This
caused overcrowding and when we did get them outside, I saw some red
in their feces. To combat that, I gave them garlic, honey, and apple
cider vinegar in their water. The red was gone within a week, we
didn't loose any chicks, and we didn't have to resort to medication.
However, the real trouble started when
the temperature started dipping into the 30's and 40's at night. When
I was growing up, we had to worry about heat stress, so I knew
nothing about cold stress. When we started loosing birds, we would
find one in the morning, then two in the morning. I was loath to do
an autopsy on one, but when I saw one that wasn't going to recover I
had no qualms about butchering it. We found a very healthy bird, but
a low body temperature. Then when we butchered another one after a
cold night, we found an enlarged heart and fluid in the abdominal
cavity.
In fast growing meat birds, too much
stress can easily be put on their hearts. In this case, the heart
failure or hypertension caused the liver to stop working leaving
fluid to build up in their abdominal cavity, which was evident in our
chicken. This is known as “water belly” or Ascites Syndrome. This
is caused when the chicken experiences cold temperatures. The good
news is that the weather will get warmer, which carries hope for the
rest of our chickens.
My husband and I don't have a chicken
CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation), but after pasture
raising meat birds for a couple of years I have come to realize that
the Cornish Cross was bred for a CAFO. Their chicken instincts have
been nearly bred out of them, so grass foraging is minimal. They
grow so fast that any environmental stress on them will likely be
fatal. Their legs have to carry such massive bodies and huge breasts
that walking and even moving becomes difficult. However, even with
the knowledge that they were bred for a CAFO, I still wouldn't put
them in one.
