When my married woman ( aka our livestock director ) Chris and I first became familiarise , she told me that she had previously been a vegetarian for a number of years . I asked her why she had add up back to the dismal side of eating meat ( but not our chicken ) .
She said there were two reason . First , socializing had been difficult . Some dinner party company hosts guess she would be happy with a minimalist salad . secondly , potluck were unlucky affairs .
This was decade ago , a prison term when universal cognition about vegetarianism was limited . During those former , backward days , I tell my sister over the phone , that my lady friend - at - the - time was a vegetarian . She paused , and I ’m sure she was trying to imagine what she would serve us for dinner party when we visited . Then she postulate , “ Can she use up rice ? ”
Meat & Veg
Knowledge and acceptance of vegetarianism has grown at a similar tempo to the espousal of backyard chicken - safekeeping since then . And somewhere along the means , it seems that some chicken - keepers have commingle the two things a slight bit and believe that wimp also have a culture of vegetarianism .
I mean , the element on the bags of some organic chicken provender do n’t name any animal intersection , right ?
Granted , everyone knows that chickens rust bug in increase to seeds , fruit and Green . But I think that most people do n’t think of bugs as meat . And therefore , the feeling of our perfumed short hen as being essentially ataraxis - sleep with vegetarian has become commonplace insomecircles .
Frank Hyman
But chickens are really justpocket - sized dinosaurs , descended as they are from mouthy animal such asTyrannosaurus male monarch . Have you ever seen a chicken chase , collar and corrode a little toad or a mouse ? If so , you might conceive that the chicken ’s Romance name should beTyrannosaurus stack .
If your yard see to it few toads or mice , your hen can also get their pursual - thrills met with a bag of lively crickets bought from the pet - supplying entrepot or a decoy shop for a backyard cricket rodeo .
Poultry Pyramid
A colleague of mine distinguish what he think of as a four - layer food for thought pyramid for chickens .
But I retrieve that ’s uncompleted . It makes more sensation to think of our hen ’ solid food pyramid as get five levels . At the top is : meat .
And to touch their desire for gist , my married woman and I rent our chickens pick blank bones of lamb , pork and beef . We do n’t give them fowl off-white . That would be uncanny .
Frank Hyman
They also get in a dither for runt shell , lobster shells and fish pelt . We have n’t noticed those redolent combat messing up the eggs ’ flavour at all . Frank Hyman
Bacon Bits
Another cause my married woman gave up vegetarianism ? She missed bacon . And , it appear , so do our volaille . Whenever I cook up a mess hall of bacon ( I ’m a Southerner , and I want my daily Lucy in the sky with diamonds of pork products ) , I pour the red-hot , liquid bacon adipose tissue into two low bowls . This goes into the fridge to solidify .
We keep one bowl to fudge with , and we give the other to our crybaby . We ’ve even train some of our neighbour to add bacon fat to the chickens in interchange for a few egg .
I ’m trusted some reader squinch at the cite of bacon fat . My Yankee wife did n’t want it in the house . But she came around when I level out how many of the chefs she admire cook with it .
Ivan Protsiuk/Shutterstock
Bacon fat that does n’t get repurposed for cooking in American kitchens or feed to animals either goes down the drain or end up in the landfill . Did you sleep together that fatness from food companies and eating house often gets tote up to animal feed ?
interpret more : Let the farm fertilise your volaille with healthy , non - GMO provender .
Benefits of Bacon
fatness poured down kitchen drains make what are called “ fatbergs , ” congealed fat blob that induce wastewater to back up in the sewer pipe . That ’s just as repelling as it go . I recommend that you do n’t look online for photos of fatbergs . You ca n’t unsee those images .
Fat and other organic thing in the landfill is n’t much good . It turns into methane gas that escapes into the atmosphere . Methane is even forged than carbon dioxide from your car at cause the climate to-do that melts ice caps and stir up other environmental disasters such as hurricane , wildfire and crack .
So not only is re - purposing Viscount St. Albans fat a tasty option , but it ’s an bionomic imperative form that we turn excess 1st Baron Verulam fat ( and other cooking fatty tissue ) into delicious sassy testicle … if you ask me .
I ’m not worried that our birds will get too much salt from these drippings . They pace themselves . That small bowl of fat lasts two or three days . As omnivore , poulet like to swop things up . After a few sticky mouthfuls of bacon fat , they scratch for some bugs or scavenge other vegetable scraps from our kitchen or schnozzle - tap the vermin - test copy , 5 - gallon bucketful “ vending machine ” for some organic layer pellet . Ivan Protsiuk / Shutterstock
Meating Their Needs
Historically , chicken were never vegetarians . Even as southeasterly Asiatic jungle bird millennia ago , they were opportunistic omnivores , like us . And their nutrient decisions only had to touch four opportunist standard .
Read more : These are the 5 essential nutrient your chickens need .
The Food Chain
And chickens ’ diverse dietary gustatory perception are n’t unique . amazingly , the division between herbivore and omnivores in the natural world is n’t as clearly - cut as we once thought . It ’s more of a spectrum than a yes - or - no selection .
you may find videos online of these healthy herbivores eating scavenged substance : cervid , antelope , cows , horse cavalry , Hippopotamus amphibius , orang , chimps , gorilla , squirrel , elephants , manatees , kangaroos , laughingstock , Giraffa camelopardalis and , yes , even lapin have been caught on cinema eat fish , raspberry and mammals .
phylogenesis has always favored animals that are opportunist over the picky eater . Two of the most endangered brute on earth are koalas and panda bear . The first only eats a few coinage of eucalyptus leaves . And the 2d is mostly jonesing for a few species of bamboo shoots and leaves .
critter with the widest interest in type of foods are more probable to subsist the erratic seasons and change stipulation that existed even before we man skewed the mood .
So , for backyard crybaby to eat up meat is n’t some urban anomaly . It ’s how they roll .
I ’m not say that if your menage is vegetarian , you have to run meat to your chicken . I ’m just saying your wimp would welcome the variety of nonjudgmental inclusiveness that permits your neighbors to earn a few testicle and assist save the planet by recycling their meat scraps in your biddy pen .
This clause originally appeared in the May / June 2021 issue ofChickensmagazine .
