New respect for chickens

[2manyfibers]

Most of the folks on this board can probably remember several years ago when doctors were telling people that eating eggs would kill you (cholesterol). As I was researching things trying to find answers to my problems, I did a lot of research on DNA and ended up finding out a lot about nutrition. I found that now, scientists consider eggs an almost perfect food because of the nutrients contained in them. I thought I would post a brief excerpt from the book I'm writing that kind of pulls it all together. You don't have to feel bad about eating eggs for any reason - chickens lay eggs daily (regardless of whether they've been hangin' around a rooster) and the eggs we eat aren't fertilized, so eating eggs doesn't prevent any chickens from being born. I thought it was pretty interesting and hope you do as well. Here's the excerpt:

DNA: Programmed for Life - DNA is naturally “programmed” to build, grow and maintain a living organism; it only needs the raw materials required to physically construct it! Take an egg for example; the hen’s eggs we consume as humans contain sulfur, vitamin A, zinc, niacin, phosphorous, many B vitamins, sodium, complex proteins, calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, potassium and several other nutrients needed for most any animal to begin life and survive (including all the essential amino acids for humans). Until now, I never had much reason to give this any “deep” amount of thought, but after this experience, I’ve developed a new appreciation for chickens, at least as a form of life (I’ve always had a keen appreciation for chickens that were battered and fried though). Why do eggs contain these life-creating and sustaining nutrients? While I always knew “eggs turn into chickens” under the right conditions (the eggs we eat generally aren’t “fertilized”), I never gave much specific consideration as to why they do. The reason is simple if you understand how DNA works – that’s simply what DNA does! These nutrients are the required “raw” materials for DNA (of most any animal) to transform a clump of chemicals into proteins that eventually form a living, breathing animal. The DNA of a chick combines the nutrients in the egg and the calcium in the egg shell (to form their bones) in the necessary ways to create the collagens, keratins and other proteins that eventually become a baby chick. If you remember, about 20 years ago scientists told everyone that eating eggs was unhealthy because they contained cholesterol (just one of a multitude of examples where medical “science” has been proven absolutely wrong). Today eggs are considered a near perfect food; the reason why is that they contain almost all of the nutrients required by human DNA to produce the substances that create and sustain our very existence!

You may have noticed that one of the key nutrients for building collagen is missing from the contents of an egg; why is vitamin C missing? Because chickens, like most other animals (excluding humans and a few others) produce their own vitamin C within their bodies (I’ll discuss this further a little later in the book). It is precisely these ingredients (the contents of the egg and the chick’s own vitamin C) that enable a chicken embryo’s DNA to assemble the proteins it produces into bones, skin, organs, feathers, claws and the beak of a baby chick (all these structures are made of collagens and keratins) that lives and breathes! Understanding how DNA works explains why an egg contains all the nutrients that it does – these basic chemicals in an egg (including the shell) are the chemical ingredients required for DNA to literally construct the physical body of living animals, human or otherwise. These basic nutrients are the literal “building materials” required by an animal’s DNA to form the proteins of individual cells that eventually aggregate and transform these ingredients into the miracle of life itself!

[hilly]

There's much more to chickens than most people know. That's why batteries are so terrible. They are sociable characters that like to forage and make dust baths ... we have a dear old one called Molly who has just had a bad eye infection which we've managed to cure with curcumin and altho' 15 years old, she's now laying again ! We have a mad one called Christine who gets in a state if anything unusual happens and runs shrieking round the garden, and we have placid laid back ones who like to be stroked. Like humans they are all different and they all feel hunger, pain, happiness etc. Too many people don't know or accept that. They are not just egg factories.

[2manyfibers]

Hey Hilly - didn't mean to offend you (if I did) with my post. Most people have never spent much time around chickens, and even though I have been around them some, I never thought much about them as far as the miraculous things that have to happen for an egg to become a baby chicken. I wasn't trying to imply that hens are just egg factories - in fact, quite the contrary. I had never really considered what a wonderful example of God's gift of life chicken's actually are until recently.

[hilly]

2manyfibres. that's great... perhaps one day you'll have the joy of keeping a few. I have several rare breeds and one or two rescued from a battery.. Molly for instance, and in the last 15 years she had repaid me by laying an egg every day, except when she was sick recently with her eye tumour, but now we've cured that she's back to her old self again, but a bit of an old lady. We never kill any of our chickens unless they are very sick and we can't cure them , they just carry on in our old folk's home ! lol

[2manyfibers]

Hey Hilly - I like the British spelling of fibres (adds a little class to it) - excuse my ignorance but when you say batteries, are you talking about batteries like small "flashlight" batteries? I think I've read where they will swallow shiny things sometimes thinking it's food. I was around them when I was growing up and there weren't many "discards" like batteries laying around then wherre they could get to them.

If I ever get to build my dream "farm" I wouldn't mind having a few chickens around to keep the horses company.

[hilly]

Hi 2manyfibERS sorry.... Battery chickens spend their entire life crammed into a crate with 3 to 7 other birds on a space no bigger than a A4 sheet of paper. She can't groom herself, turn around or express any of the natural hen behaviour. Her bones are brittle because she has no excercise and in her fortunately short life she suffers from osteoporosis and pain in her feet from standing on wire. Her only release will come when she is roughly packed into a crate to go to slaughter (and I won't go into that bit ) Molly was fortunate, the lorry carrying her to the abbatoir crashed on the motorway and all the crates fell off, and Molly was rescued by the RSPCA and then me. She literally jumped for joy in the garden when she got over her shock and realised she could stretch her wings.

[2manyfibers]

I've got you now - I may change my name to 2manyfibREs though - a little touch of class for a southern US redneck. I'm not sure if there is a term like that for "chicken-raising" here in the US. From my experience, the chickens here aren't actually raised in small cages like that. Most chicken farmers here have large "chicken houses" close to the size of a soccer field (I think Georgia is the largest poultry producer in the US now). I remember as a child going to relatives houses that raised chickens and we would help them go "spread out" the chickens. During the summer, the heat would make them all huddle up in a pile in one corner of the chicken house and they would smother if someone didn't separate them. Most of the modern farms here now have large fans that keep the houses much cooler and they don't tend to congregate as much like that. I think most of the time, the chickens here aren't caged up like you are talking about until they are sent to processing plants (not that that's necessarily much if any better though from the chicken's perspective). I remember some of my older relatives having "pet" chickens in their yards and we always had a big time trying to play with them as children. I do remember them talking about not leaving coins or similar "metallic" items in the yard because the chickens would sometimes eat them (I guess it would cause a blockage if they swallowed them).

[hilly]

Hi 2manyfibres.... you're now talking about broilers, the chickens bred for meat rather than producers of eggs. They suffer too by thousands sometimes in one shed and because of the ammonia get very burnt sores. Because they have growth hormones to make them grow quickly for the market, their legs in many cases are not strong enough to hold their weight and therefore they have to sit in this ammonia waste. http://www.ciwf.org.uk/campaigns/pri...s/broiler.html .

I wish I could show you a photo of Molly when she came to us, hardly any feathers, pecked off by frustrated and bored others and in a frightened and distressed state. Now, a happy old lady with shining feathers, wandering around the garden !

Perhaps we should now get back to Morgellons, people will be getting fed up with chickens, although I suspect most on here have a concern for all God's creatures and want to prevent suffering wherever it occurs.

[2manyfibers]

I looked at the website at the link you posted - I haven't been in a chicken house in close to 30 years (which appears to be about when the growth hormone usage got going). The ones I remember as a child didn't have any problems running around - when we would "shoo" them away from each other in the chicken house, they ran pretty fast. I'm guessing that they were more like chickens were supposed to be (at least as opposed to now) and probably didn't have the hormones and chemicals that are used nowadays. I went to an egg farm a few years ago that was pretty new at the time. The chickens there weren't in such cramped quarters as you described (I'm sure I wouldn't like it if I were a chicken, but they did have room to move around and flap their wings some). I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if that's getting worse here though - some people go the cheapest route possible without considering other possibilities that may be as efficient in the long run and better for the animals.

Having never really thought about it, I just found it quite amazing from my research how and why eggs are such perfect self-contained "vehicles" for creating life and how DNA can flawlessly form the intricate parts of these animals generation after generation like the perfectly formed feathers, claws and beaks. It just gives me more appreciation for life in all its forms when I think about the mechanics of how DNA works in chickens using nothing but the nutrients in the egg (and then food as they mature) as the building materials. The basic process of DNA constructing the physical body using natural nutrients is the same in all animals which is even more amazing to me when it's applied to humans.

[hilly]

I'd really like to show you our eggs, all colours from dark brown to blue and the yokes not a pale yellow as in bought ones, but bright orange. Some producers put dye in them to fool people.