Poultry Feed Quotes

Remember when you tried to convince me to feed a poultry pie to the mallards in the park to see if you could breed a race of cannibal ducks?" "They ate it too," Will reminisced. "Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck.

You point your feet out too much when you walk,” Will went on. He was busy polishing an apple on his shirtfront, and appeared not to notice Tessa glaring at him. “Camille walks delicately. Like a faun in the woods. Not like a duck.” “I do not walk like a duck.” “I like ducks,” Jem observed diplomatically. “Especially the ones in Hyde Park.” He glanced sideways at Will; both boys were sitting on the edge of the high table, their legs dangling over the side. “Remember when you tried to convince me to feed poultry pie to the mallards in the park to see if you could breed a race of cannibal ducks?” “They ate it too,” Will reminisced. “Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck.

As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not caviar or truffles, but beef, pork and poultry. Some 38 percent of the world's grain crop is now fed to animals, as well as large quantities of soybeans. There are three times as many domestic animals on this planet as there are human beings. The combined weight of the world's 1.28 billion cattle alone exceeds that of the human population. While we look darkly at the number of babies being born in poorer parts of the world, we ignore the over-population of farm animals, to which we ourselves contribute...[t]hat, however, is only part of the damage done by the animals we deliberately breed. The energy intensive factory farming methods of the industrialised nations are responsible for the consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels. Chemical fertilizers, used to grow the feed crops for cattle in feedlots and pigs and chickens kept indoors in sheds, produce nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Then there is the loss of forests. Everywhere, forest-dwellers, both human and non-human, can be pushed out. Since 1960, 25 percent of the forests of Central America have been cleared for cattle. Once cleared, the poor soils will support grazing for a few years; then the graziers must move on. Shrub takes over the abandoned pasture, but the forest does not return. When the forests are cleared so the cattle can graze, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Finally, the world's cattle are thought to produce about 20 percent of the methane released into the atmosphere, and methane traps twenty-five times as much heat from the sun as carbon dioxide. Factory farm manure also produces methane because, unlike manured dropped naturally in the fields, it dies not decompose in the presence of oxygen. All of this amounts to a compelling reason...for a plant based diet.

Food safety oversight is largely, but not exclusively, divided between two agencies, the FDA and the USDA. The USDA mostly oversees meat and poultry; the FDA mostly handles everything else, including pet food and animal feed. Although this division of responsibility means that the FDA is responsible for 80% of the food supply, it only gets 20% of the federal budget for this purpose. In contrast, the USDA gets 80% of the budget for 20% of the foods. This uneven distribution is the result of a little history and a lot of politics.

... a hunger that is more than simply material connects the human who feeds the chickens to the chickens that feed the humans.

The National Academy of Sciences once estimated that a total ban on the widespread feeding of antibiotics to farm animals would raise the price of poultry anywhere from one to two cents per pound and the price of pork or beef around three to six cents a pound, costing the average meat-eating American consumer up to $9.72 a year.1357 Meanwhile, antibiotic-resistant infections in the United States cost an estimated $30 billion every year1358 and kill ninety thousand people.

We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste, — sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar….

Genetic selection for early egg production, to reduce time and money 'wasted' on feeding and housing unproductive birds for six months, results in eggs being formed that are often too big to be laid by the immature body of a small, five month old bird. Uteruses 'prolapse,' pushing through the vagina of the small, cramped birds forced to strain day after day to expel huge eggs. The uterus protrudes, hangs, and 'blows out,' inviting infection and vent picking by cell mates, from whom the prolapse victim, in severe pain, cannot escape except by dying.

As people get richer, they eat more calories, and in particular they eat more meat and dairy. And producing meat and dairy will require us to grow even more food. A chicken, for example, has to eat two calories’ worth of grain to give us one calorie of poultry—that is, you have to feed a chicken twice as many calories as you’ll get from the chicken when you eat it. A pig eats three times as many calories as we get when we eat it. For cows, the ratio is highest of all: six calories of feed for every calorie of beef. In other words, the more calories we get from these meat sources, the more plants we need to grow for the meat.

Though it’s best not to be born a chicken at all, it is especially bad luck to be born a cockerel. From the perspective of the poultry farmer, male chickens are useless. They can’t lay eggs, their meat is stringy, and they’re ornery to the hens that do all the hard work of putting food on our tables. Commercial hatcheries tend to treat male chicks like fabric cutoffs or scrap metal: the wasteful but necessary by-product of an industrial process. The sooner they can be disposed of—often they’re ground into animal feed—the better. But a costly problem has vexed egg farmers for millennia: It’s virtually impossible to tell the difference between male and female chickens until they’re four to six weeks old, when they begin to grow distinctive feathers and secondary sex characteristics like the rooster’s comb. Until then, they’re all just indistinguishable fluff balls that have to be housed and fed—at considerable expense. Somehow it took until the 1920s before anyone figured out a solution to this costly dilemma. The momentous discovery was made by a group of Japanese veterinary scientists, who realized that just inside the chick’s rear end there is a constellation of folds, marks, spots, and bumps that to the untrained eye appear arbitrary, but when properly read, can divulge the sex of a day-old bird. When this discovery was unveiled at the 1927 World Poultry Congress in Ottawa, it revolutionized the global hatchery industry and eventually lowered the price of eggs worldwide. The professional chicken sexer, equipped with a skill that took years to master, became one of the most valuable workers in agriculture. The best of the best were graduates of the two-year Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School, whose standards were so rigorous that only 5 to 10 percent of students received accreditation. But those who did graduate earned as much as five hundred dollars a day and were shuttled around the world from hatchery to hatchery like top-flight business consultants. A diaspora of Japanese chicken sexers spilled across the globe. Chicken sexing is a delicate art, requiring Zen-like concentration and a brain surgeon’s dexterity. The bird is cradled in the left hand and given a gentle squeeze that causes it to evacuate its intestines (too tight and the intestines will turn inside out, killing the bird and rendering its gender irrelevant). With his thumb and forefinger, the sexer flips the bird over and parts a small flap on its hindquarters to expose the cloaca, a tiny vent where both the genitals and anus are situated, and peers deep inside. To do this properly, his fingernails have to be precisely trimmed. In the simple cases—the ones that the sexer can actually explain—he’s looking for a barely perceptible protuberance called the “bead,” about the size of a pinhead. If the bead is convex, the bird is a boy, and gets thrown to the left; concave or flat and it’s a girl, sent down a chute to the right.

Food animals also get antibiotics for “growth promotion,” a metabolically mysterious process that has made possible the entire high-volume, low-margin business of industrial-scale farming. Since the 1950s, when two pharma company scientists discovered that feeding chicks the waste products from drug manufacturing made them put on weight much faster, many U.S. farmers have been giving tiny doses of antibiotics to cattle, swine, and poultry.34

The costs for Meyerhoeffer and his neighbors to get into the poultry business were almost prohibitive. Doing some quick calculations, Meyerhoeffer realized the group would need somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million just to take over the plant and keep it running. They would need to buy feed and eggs for the hatchery. They’d have to meet payroll at the slaughterhouse and the feed mill.2 Somehow, in a matter of six short months, Meyerhoeffer and his fellow farmers overcame these barriers and created the Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative.

Sample One-Day Menu for Your Eight- to Twelve-Month-Old 1 cup = 8 ounces (240 ml) 4 ounces = 120 ml 6 ounces = 180 ml BREAKFAST ¼–½ cup cereal, or mashed or scrambled egg ¼–½ cup fruit, diced (if your child is self-feeding) 4–6 ounces breast milk or formula SNACK 4–6 ounces breast milk, formula, or water ¼ cup diced cheese or cooked vegetables LUNCH ¼–½ cup yogurt or cottage cheese or meat ¼–½ cup yellow or orange vegetables 4–6 ounces breast milk SNACK 1 whole-grain cracker or teething biscuit ¼ cup yogurt or diced (if child is self-feeding) fruit water DINNER ¼ cup diced poultry, meat, or tofu ¼–½ cup green vegetables ¼ cup whole-grain pasta, rice, or potato ¼ cup diced or mashed fruit 4–6 ounces breast milk/formula BEFORE BEDTIME 6–8 ounces breast milk, formula, or water (If breast milk, follow with water or brush teeth afterward.)

Botolph, Wednesday May 7, 1681 On the day before we left with Joshua in his cart, I hurried to finish my chores. I checked the supplies in the larder to make sure there’d be enough butter and eggs, beef and poultry – milk, cheese, bread – to feed the boarders for a week so Ralph wouldn’t have to look for provisions right away. I try to make things easy for my son, because he’s always been absent-minded and more so since the death of his father, which came not directly from a war injury, but because days on end out of doors in the cruelest time of the year made him susceptible to illness. As a result, he succumbed to pleurisy, which a stronger man might have resisted. I closed the larder door and gazed out the window. The sunlight on the harbor seemed as yellow as lemon, as brilliant as a field of marigolds. I imagined a rainbow of fragrances – lavender, lilac, witch hazel, hawthorn – that used to please me when I was a youngster. I visited Deputy Governor Drayton early in the afternoon. People like me, a child of the first pioneers to Sagadac, don’t usually become friendly with representatives of the royal government for the same reason that we’ve stopped making friends with natives: we don’t know what they’ll think of us. I decided after my husband Cyrus died, however, to break through some of the restrictions we put on ourselves.

The birds are ready. They have grown at a steroidal rate on their hog feed and now clomp around the confines of their pen like clucking sumos.

A mixture of meal and water, with the addition of yeast or such remains of a former fermentation as adhere to the sides or bottom of the vessel, and exposure to a temperature between sixty-eight and seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit, will produce immediate fermentation. In this process there are five stages: the saccharine, by which the starch and gum of the vegetables, in their natural condition, are converted into sugar; the vinous, which changes the sugar into alcohol; the mucilaginous, sometimes taking the place of the vinous, and occurring where the sugar solution, or fermenting principle, is weak, producing a slimy, glutinous product; the acetic, forming vinegar, from the vinous or alcoholic stage; and the putrefactive, which destroys all the nutritive principles and converts them into a poison. The precise points in fermentation, when the food becomes most profitable for feeding, has not as yet been satisfactorily determined; but that it should stop short of the putrefactive, and probably the full maturity of the acetic, is certain.

In the United States, Big Food doesn’t even have to tell you which foods contain this genetically altered corn on the label or whether it was used to feed the animals you’re eating. No wonder Europe won’t import our food. Even China, the country known for feeding poultry feces to its farmed fish, banned our meat and much of our processed food. We can do better.

The most reliable pork and chicken label is “USDA Organic” (used mainly for meat and much different from the FDA’s version of organic), which requires a 100 percent organic diet, no antibiotics (ever), and bans feed made with synthetic pesticides. For poultry shoppers, Smart Chicken is a national brand owned by Tecumseh Poultry, founded in 1998 to fill the void in the quality chicken market. It comes in organic and regular versions, both of which are completely antibiotic and animal by-product free, using a 100 percent vegetarian or 100 percent organic vegetarian diet. I buy Smart Chicken regularly. For pork, the Niman Ranch brand is antibiotic free with a 100 percent vegetarian diet.

Different people in the poultry business took different lessons from the crisis of 1961. For Charles Garrett, the lesson was clear: It was time to get the hell out of the chicken business. Garrett owned Garrett Poultry in Rogers, Arkansas, near Tyson’s headquarters in Springdale. He had survived the storm of 1961 in large part because he had imitated Tyson’s model. Garrett Poultry was a wholly integrated company, with a slaughterhouse, feed mill, and hatchery bundled into the business. But Garrett didn’t share Don Tyson’s stomach for risk. The poultry crisis showed that for all the money Garrett invested in his infrastructure and equipment, his livelihood was as risky as a stock market speculator’s. He wanted to sell his assets, take the cash, and use the money for something more stable.

Don Tyson patiently explained his strategy. Getting bigger would help Tyson survive. The bigger a company was, the more it could drive down its costs. It gained efficiency through its size, using fewer managers to operate bigger slaughterhouses, for example, or buying feed in bulk. It was easier to be more efficient than the next guy if you were bigger than they were. That meant you could outlast them when the poultry business inevitably went underwater. Tyson couldn’t get bigger just by adding more farms or slaughterhouses. If the company expanded its own operations, it would put more chickens on the market, inevitably leading to oversupply. But buying a competitor neatly solved two problems with one move. Tyson could expand, and it could expand without boosting the overall supply of chicken. Tyson simply bought out its competitor’s market share, without adding one bird to the market. It was part of Don Tyson’s new strategy, called “Expand or Expire.

When Tyson bought Valmac, it also bought the services of that company’s young head of operations, David Purtle. He was a man who spent his career in the poultry business, and he had almost a gut instinct about the way it worked. Within two years, Tyson promoted him to head of operations for the entire company. Purtle’s job was to make sure all of Tyson’s complexes ran as efficiently as possible. If one complex spent more money to raise chickens than another, he had to know why, and how to fix it. But one thing made this hard to do. Even into the 1990s, each Tyson complex operated with a certain level of autonomy. Through its chain of acquisitions, Tyson Foods had stitched together a constellation of poultry plants with different management teams, making different products and raising different sizes of birds. It was nearly impossible to measure their efficiency because each complex had the freedom to choose what formula of feed it gave its farmers. Complex managers had their own special recipes, winning formulas they were convinced put the most meat on a bird’s bones. That made it hard for Purtle to figure out which managers were running a more efficient ship. Whenever he tried to judge their operations, they always blamed the feed mixes for the results. Purtle put an end to it. He standardized the feed formulas that all of Tyson’s plants used.

Using cash-basis accounting, Jackson could easily make it look like the corporation suffered massive losses each year. Poultry Growers Inc. paid up front for its feed, fuel, and other farm expenses. Because Tyson sold its birds with long-term contracts to grocery stores and restaurant chains, it could delay reporting its income into the next tax period, when cash from the contracts rolled in. Hypothetically, the company could kick the can of taxable income down the road for years.1 While Tyson couldn’t escape paying taxes altogether, it could reduce its payments substantially. In Jackson’s view, the income tax ploy basically let Tyson take an interest-free loan from taxpayers. By putting off its tax payments, Tyson could put its money to work by investing it in new equipment or more workers. The plan worked, but it was hell on Jackson. After carefully orchestrating Tyson’s cost codes and accounting for all the company’s transactions, Jackson had to translate all the numbers into a different accounting basis. When it came time to pay taxes, he submitted these books to the IRS. When Tyson went to banks to borrow more money, Jackson had the other books on hand, the ones that used accrual-basis accounting. Presumably, all of this was legal. By 1985, Tyson’s Foods had avoided paying $26.5 million in annual taxes through the cash-basis loophole, according to a report written by two economists with the U.S. General Accounting Office.

Dry softwood or pine shavings sold in bales at most feed stores are the ideal litter choice for chickens, though they are also the most expensive. The shavings do an excellent job of neutralizing the ammonia within the droppings and drying out the manure so that it is more easily handled. Shavings can also be used directly from the sawmill, but keep in mind that this litter has most likely not been kiln-dried, and will not be as good at absorbing moisture. It may also contain hardwood shavings, which tend to darken with moisture, making a less attractive interior in your coop.

We always attach ourselves to something that we think relatively better or more valuable than other things, and we are blinded to real life by that. We must purify our system of value. For living out our own life, we must first of all clarify absolute value. Many people live for fulfillment of their desires. These people are like chickens at a poultry farm. I feel sorry for the chickens that just eat nutritious feed day and night and lay as many eggs as possible. This is all that they do in their lives. Chicken raisers keep the light on in the chicken coop all night to keep the chickens producing eggs efficiently. They calculate how many eggs can be laid by one chicken, and they kill the chickens when they become old.

Camille walks delicately. Like a faun in the woods. Not like a duck.” “I do not walk like a duck.” “I like ducks,” Jem observed diplomatically. “Especially the ones in Hyde Park.” He glanced sideways at Will; both boys were sitting on the edge of the high table, their legs dangling over the side. “Remember when you tried to convince me to feed a poultry pie to the mallards in the park to see if you could breed a race of cannibal ducks?” “They ate it too,” Will reminisced. “Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck.

As people get richer, they eat more meat and fish. This significantly increases cereal and oilseed demand for animal feed – and by quite a multiplier. To raise cattle in a feedlot, you need seven kilos of grain to produce one kilo of beef. (3) If you raise pigs, you need four kilos of grain for one kilo of meat. For poultry, the figure is just over two kilos, and for herbivorous species of farmed fish (such as carp, tilapia and catfish), it is slightly less than two kilos.

PROTEIN one serving: ¼ egg, 2 thin strips of chicken, ½ meatball, 1 ounce fish, or 2 table-spoons purée. Good protein choices include meat, fish, poultry, eggs, tofu, or beans and lentils. grain one serving: ½ cup oatmeal or cooked rice, quinoa, pasta, or couscous; 2 slices baked oatmeal; or ½ slice toast, cut into sticks. fruit or vegetable one serving: 2 pieces, such as 2 slices of soft pear or steamed apple, 2 steamed carrot sticks, ¼ medium avocado, 2 small steamed broccoli florets, or 2 tablespoons purée. dairy one serving: ½ cup (4 ounces) full-fat yogurt; ¾ ounce full-fat cheese, shredded or cut into thin sticks. Cow’s milk is not recommended as a main drink for infants under 12 months. 4 to 6 months FIRST THING IN THE MORNING: Breastmilk on demand or 6–7 ounces formula BREAKFAST: 1–2 tablespoons cereal • 1–2 tablespoons fruit or vegetable MIDMORNING: Breastmilk on demand or 6–7 ounces formula LUNCH: 1–2 tablespoons cereal • 1–2 tablespoons fruit or vegetable OR breastmilk on demand or 6–7 ounces formula

Poultry workers are paid very little: in the United States, two cents for every dollar spent on a fast-food chicken goes to workers, and some chicken operators use prison labor, paid twenty-five cents per hour. Think of this as Cheap Work. In the US poultry industry, 86 percent of workers who cut wings are in pain because of the repetitive hacking and twisting on the line. Some employers mock their workers for reporting injury, and the denial of injury claims is common. The result for workers is a 15 percent decline in income for the ten years after injury. While recovering, workers will depend on their families and support networks, a factor outside the circuits of production but central to their continued participation in the workforce. Think of this as Cheap Care. The food produced by this industry ends up keeping bellies full and discontent down through low prices at the checkout and drive-through. That's a strategy of Cheap Food....You can't have low-cost chicken without abundant propane: Cheap Energy. There is some risk in the commercial sale of these processed birds, but through franchising and subsidies, everything from easy financial and physical access to the land on which the soy feed for chickens is grown to small business loans, that risk is mitigated through public expense for private profit. This is one aspect of Cheap Money. Finally, persistent and frequent acts of chauvinism against categories of animal and human life -- such as women, the colonized, the poor, people of color, and immigrants -- have made each of these six cheap things possible. Fixing this ecology in place requires a final element -- the rule of Cheap Lives. Yet at every step of this process, humans resist....