Introducing the new hens
We’ve added four new chickens to our established flock of four ex-battery hens, two weeks ago but I’ve only just had the chance to upload any photos of them. The new girls are only babies—I estimate around 14 weeks old, though they were mis-sold, perhaps not knowingly, as 17 weeks old—and three of them are pure breeds, two Cuckoo Marans (the black-and-white stripey ones) and one Buff Orpington (the yellow one that looks like an Easter chick). The fourth is a Buff Orpington/Cuckoo Maran cross, with apparently the front end evidencing the former and the back end the latter.
tags: buff orpingtons, chickens, chicks, cuckoo marans, hens, poultryMRSA in the food chain - another gift from the intensive farming industry?
Not long after it was revealed that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) want to start feeding pig remains to our poultry, comes the news that a variant of MRSA may have entered the human food chain. It’s both ironic and tragic that the ST398 strain is found in factory-farmed pigs in the Netherlands. None of the three humans in three separate UK hospitals had a close association with farm animals.
Most cases of the ST398 strain have been spread to people in close contact with animals such as farmers, vets and abattoir workers. Those who handle and prepare food can be infected if the bacteria gets onto their hands and enters a cut or wound, even microscopic tears in the skin.
tags: antibiotics, chickens, cows, DEFRA, food, FSA, intensive farming, meat, MRSA, pigs
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