I passed a pleasant day in the company of a good friend of mine, who is a tutor in "conventional" beekeeping at a local agricultural college, and asked him to confirm one of these "myths", about skep beekeeping - most people believe that the only way the honey was collected was to kill all the bees using a sulphur pit, he confirmed that there were techniques (somewhat messy and crude ones, involving "beating" the skep) which didn't kill the bees, but there is still the widespread belief that they had to be killed.
How coloured were my recollections of chicken keeping? My recounting of encounters with MAFF and the NFU are 100% true, sadly the local flockmaster who oversaw our birds and thousands of others is no longer with us to confirm it - the contents of the "usual" laying mix in those days is 100% true - what's left to confirm? - only my claim that they were very healthy - during the time we had the farm we suffered the occasional wounds from birds attacking each other (usually the over-active preen gland area) - simple treatment, remove the bird for a while, and treat with Stockholm Tar - we found this messy and ineffective, and sprinkling the wound with garlic powder was very effective, and produced an armour-plated scab in a very short time - we never lost a bird through it. Apart from that we had remarkably healthy flocks, never had to resort to antibiotics, and had far lower bird losses than most "conventional" battery farms - that's the truth - take it or leave it!
I can confirm that "free range" poultry keeping has been practised on a small scale for decades before that, and can recollect the free-range hens kept on my father's nursery in the 50's - they were "dual purpose" chooks, chicken was a "treat" and commanded a good price, so near christmas there was a day when the "neck stretchers" arrived, and sat in a circle "necking" the cockerels, then plucking them into tea chests for sale for the Christmas market.
Sadly, during the 80's, "battery" production had most of the market, and MAFF and the NFU were very dismissive of free-range hen keeping at that period - we were "loony heretics" - and I remember the amazement from the feed reps when discussing the feed we wanted......
"We want a feed without any antibiotics, coccidiostats or synthetic colourants" - raised eyebrows, and comments like "they'll all die without the antibiotics" - we assured them that we did indeed not want them, and they'd shrug their shoulders (yes we know the battery producers had to add them to keep the poor creatures alive in the atrocious conditions, but this is free-range) - the rep would then produce a colour swatch (like the paint ones), ranging from pale yellow through to Dayglo bright lifeboat orange - "what colour d'you want the yolks?" - "how is that achieved?" - "Colourants sir" - "why can't we have it without?" - "the yolks will be 'orribly pale and noone will want the eggs sir" - "do you have a natural colourant" - "yessir, Canthaxanthin" (by this time I was getting wise), "is that "natural" as in from natural sources?" - "no sir, it's synthesised, but we're allowed to call it natural as it's a synthetic clone of a natural substance........."
"What's "DPM" on the list of ingredients of this feed?" - (somewhat shamefacedly and mumbling) - dried poultry manure sir"........at that time they used to dry the manure from battery houses and add a hefty proportion to chook food as it still contained a good amount of protein.... the antibiotics in the droppings and the feed dealt with the inevitable disease problems.... any rep who offered that was shown the door.... (that's the polite version!)
