Mario : I have two girls who at time of writing (3rd week in June) are 8 years and 4 months old, not a bad age and still very healthy looking. They’ve both had a few problems over the years, thankfully mainly minor injuries, and Anastasia (black one) has every year become stubbornly broody so needed a lot of attention to keep her fit as none of the tricks to keep her off a nest ever work.

However, back in February, Jethro (the brown one and so named because of her habit to stand on one leg like Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull) suffered what seemed to be a stroke. One morning she almost fell out of the hen house when trying to walk down the ramp, her head was quite literally sitting at 90 degrees, resting on her left ‘shoulder’, and when eating she missed the food by a country mile. I asked the vet if it could be a stroke and he said ‘yes’ and that she could get better … could stay the same … or could get worse and die.

For the next week I fed her by hand up to 15 times a day, and moved the two old girls from the hen house to a storeroom in the main house. After a week she was managing to feed herself, her head was now only at 45 degrees, and she chose to go back to the hen house (except for a couple of very cold days). After three weeks she seemed to have completely recovered and now looks as healthy as she ever has. The only things that have changed are that she seems to have stopped laying (even up to last year she was a prolific layer, and had just started to lay agai this year when she had her incident), and since getting better every morning she has started to crow (almost like a cockerel) either from the hen house doorway or she comes to the house and stands by the kitchen door.

We’ll never know whether it was a stroke or something else, but her recovery was something to marvel at.
Many thanks for your fantastic Newsletter!
Mario (Derbyshire)

Sally : Many organic farmers understand the interconnectedness of life and so they not only don’t use pesticides, but they have other farming practices that also work to protect life on earth rather than defeat, tame or damage it. One of the best stories I’ve heard of late was from a friend who is an organic farmer in Sebastopol, CA.

Paul has a friend who raises cattle and chickens, both free range, grass fed. He starts his cows out on a pasture until the grass is short. He then moves the cows to the next pasture, while leaving the old pasture to fallow (cow dung and all) for about a week (the time it takes fly eggs to hatch and grow into larvae). He then moves his chickens into the pasture. They scratch through the cow dung to eat some nice protein filled larvae, poop on the grass (chicken poo is an awesome fertilizer) and they eat a little grass (calcium, omega 3s and more). After he moves the chickens on to the next pasture the grass grows thick, green and tall — making it perfect for the next round of cattle grazing. No pesticides, added fertilizers or feeds involved. Just mother nature and human cultivation working in harmony!