Bellsouth Chicken and Poultry Blog. Information on keeping Chickens, also available at The Chook Feed (Farmer Little).
Some things work in reverse. An idea to improve outcomes, like poultry welfare, can lead to just the opposite. One of the issues I have noticed is the push for better poultry welfare by large shops, or more accurately, the perception of better poultry welfare. Better welfare is a noble aim and one we should all aim for, but when there are blunt rules, the unfortunate and real possibilities are that such rules can badly affect poultry welfare. Added into this are activist groups whose goals are more to do with ending animal ownership, than animal welfare and we have issues.
Consider this: A large shop insists, based on its own version of poultry welfare, without consulting industry, that its suppliers must now supply more perch space for chooks. OK that sounds fine and reasonable. The prices they offer their supplier does not increase to cover the extra costs. Cost free improvements (for the large shop), “guilt” allayed, and a possible advertising moment explaining on how the large shop (not the supplier) is improving poultry welfare! Or has it?
The large shop has not compensated the farmer for the extra costs involved, what can the farmer do? Reduce flock size: Probable Result; slowly go out of business!
One could suspect number 4 will be chosen, and why not! Adhere to this new rule, keep your flock size, and keep your customer. But what’s the cheap alternative? Salaries make DIY expensive and purpose made perches cost money!
Number 4 lets the chickens perch on the nipple lines, which is opposite to the normal practice. Without much effort, or money spent, we have the perch space!
The Chooks now have more space to perch, rule followed…but those chooks on the nipple line have a narrow round, mostly metal pipe to perch and sleep on. Bumble Foot anybody? Disrupted sleep anybody?
An increased chance that poo goes into the splash cups, where chickens occasionally drink dribbles and drops from chicken drinker nipples, not great!
One fact is true, welfare costs!
If the large shop doesn’t pay, if the poultry farmer doesn’t pay, and the consumer doesn’t pay, then the chicken pays!
The same equations relate to backyard poultry keepers and the fancy. Faced with rules, and hopefully, a will to do the right thing, there are decisions to make and some compromise as well. Your time manually feeding chickens versus some automation; Automation allows some ease but may stop you observing your flock as much, perhaps! Making a great Chook pen versus buying one that will just do the job, if you’re lucky?
Keeping poultry, and good stockmanship costs time and money, either upfront or over the long run. Doing things well can actually save both time and money in the long run and have better welfare outcomes, but blunt rules made up to satisfy an activist group, the media hounds or perceived guilt are unlikely to save money, or time or have good welfare outcomes for poultry.
This article is also available on the Bellsouth News page, it’s downloadable there as well.
We at Bellsouth have always provided information to Australians trying to encourage people to get into chooks. This ranged from a onsite print press in the 1980's, a backyard poultry club before the internet existed and during a time when keeping chickens was definetly a pastime for farmers, fanciers and poor people, it was definetly not a pastime of urban dwellers at that time. Much has changed but one thing hasn't Bellsouth still provides information. This information is largely solid and doesn't change with trends or whats may be selling online or what people think is a funky new product. Chickens and poultry need the same things as ever.
Good access to clean quality food and water (not just grass and scraps), good accommodation (an ongoing issue), well considered equipment such as feeders and chicken drinkers , installed in the correct places to enable a peaceful flock and clean eggs. Bellsouth is naturally involved with incubation of eggs, from export to China of large scale, Bellsouth made and designed (yes in Australia) incubators in the 1990s to making our own small incubator for 35 years, again here in Australia. We also made an app to help people globally track their incubation batches and understand incubation and chicken raising neccessities more. We also import quality goods from a wide range of manufacturers world wide, we don't tend to buy gear and re-label it, trying to imply we made it. If we do make it we say so, if not, we are clear where things come from. People may notice Bellsouth gear is not the absolute cheapest on the market, that's because it is highly likely it is not the cheapest gear in Australia, that is not our goal, poultry deserve better than this and so do our customers, we focus of gear that does the job and lasts. We are interested in sustainability( poultry being an important part of this) and cheap gear most often does not meet quality and sustainability expectations we have.
But back, to information we supply, please check it out, most is downloadable and printable but it may not look mega funky, however it is a collection of real information on poultry.
Here we will try a blog on the eshop again, after a rebuild. We have had a Blog before but it seemed superflous given we have a large section on information pages on two websites for example:
Bellsouth Information pages on our eshop
and
Bellsouth Resources on our information webpages
and
News feeds in relation to poultry internationally and Australia wide, and a separate Blog.
Thanks, from Simon