Article of the day

[Farrier1987]

Partly in response to TomK and just being generally interested in sciency stuff about raising birds and pets, I have decided to look for and post an article of (maybe) interest every day, if I can find one. Every post will have a short paragraph introduction of what is in the article.

I would like feedback on this idea. And others are welcome to post too.

Today's article is about salmonella in commercial turkey. It brought home some of the problems that occur in flocks of a hundreds of thousands, and the processing and marketing of same. An interesting point was that the one particular outbreak in people came from infected birds that were improperly handled and cooked. Another came from raw pet food. Kind of tells us that as consumers, always make sure it is cooked and we can prevent a lot of the consequences.

This article is fairly long, but easily understood by the layman. A couple links within to scientific papers if anyone is inclined to get deep into the science.

And I reiterate, feedback on this article posting Idea would be appreciated.

https://www.propublica.org/article/when ... ot-so-much

[ross]

Good but yes long read . Two things I get out of it is One I see this is US . Is it same here & if so is CFIA better equipped to handle #2 again shows that lack in preparing & proper handling , cooking by end user is a part of problem as well . Thx Farrier

[ross]

PS just thinking a few years back there was a chicken salmonella issue here in Canada and they come to find out it was the handling of the meat on the preparation table whether it be a counter at home is where the salmonella came from & not cooked properly people got it

[lolotsung]

It's unfortunate that we have to do this but I found a website and it checks for accuracy, bias, etc. ProPublica has a High rating for Factual Reporting. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/propublica/
I think it is a great idea and I'll add an occasional article myself, on occasion, if you don't mind. I love science. I can spend 45 mins looking at a fern

[lolotsung]

Wallenda the tightrope walkers. What a small world! I didn't know this: "nearly all the chicken and turkey that the world eats now descends from birds bred by two chicken companies and two turkey companies." I'm wondering if anyone knows if these birds are all the same breed? If so would there be diversity. If not, then they could lose so many birds so quickly... Long but good. Thanks @Farrier1987 !

[Farrier1987]

Well I take the positive response as a sign that I should continue, but I am also aware that a sample size of one is not statistically significant.

How smart is your chicken? Today's article is much shorter, in some ways too short, but there are links again to scholarly papers if someone wants to dig deeper. Most of us have observed this behaviour in out own flocks, but interesting that someone has bothered to research and quantify.

https://www.springer.com/gp/about-sprin ... -/11952522

[Farrier1987]

Another question for my faithful readers. As I find the articles, should I keep posting one long thread day after day, or would it work better if I started a new thread every day?

Like a new thread today entitled How Smart is your Chicken? Somebody checking in on it every day would check anyway, but maybe two months down the road, someone wants to find that article, it might be easier, instead of looking through the last 20 to find it?

Feedback please.

[WLLady]

There's no limit on new topics.....so if you want to do that....but up to you, our search will also ID words within a post, so with a search it will all come up. Thanks for posting these!

[lolotsung]

This is something I have noticed... A rooster will stab a cricket with his beak then call the hens over to eat it. When a hawk was on our front lawn. There were two roosters ready to fight and the flock was huddled together behind the roosters. When the hawk saw me, it flew away. Then the entire flock followed me to the coop. The hawk sat in a big spruce tree for 1 week looking at the chickens in the coop. They knew that they should follow me to safety right?