One of 50 million

Posting this on 27th June - somehow missed the day.

Sadly this little fellow didn't make it. I am assuming its a he, the girls seem to generally be stronger. He was clearly from our Chabo (Jap) bantam chickens and looked so fit here in this Blip. However, his mum couldn't or wouldn't look after him, staying put on her unhatched eggs.

The day after this Blip, we took him together with another poorly looking chick indoors as the weather also turned cold and put them under an infrared lamp and tried to teach them to drink and eat. This little fellow was looking great while his mate was for me about to die. Then suddenly both looked in bad shape and the only option was to risk putting them in with a hen who had 6 chicks of various ages. The next morning he was dead while his mate had fully recovered.

I guess we only have ourselves to blame trying to be smarter than mother nature. Still hurts even if he is one of some 50 million male chicks that are shredded each year in Germany alone. There are moves to have this banned and the first "dual" hen is now on the market - if female it lays "sufficient" eggs and if male adds "sufficient" meat. However it is not being bought for commercial use as "sufficient" is not sufficient enough to get the prices that attract the buyers from Aldi, Tesco et al. If you consider Tesco sells us an egg for 10 pence, what does the farmer get - 5 pence. A top layer produces 300 eggs/year which brings in £15/year. No wonder we now have mainly massive egg farms.

Just this month there has been outrage in Bavaria when it became known that a huge egg "farm" in Bavaria known as "Bayern-Ei" (Bavaria-Egg) with nearly 500,000 hens was where the European Salmonella outbreak of 2014 originated in which an Englishman and an Austrian died.

I doubt we could produce an egg for under 20 pence alone when I consider how many very fat wild garden birds are seen sitting around on the fences at feeding time waiting for their share of the very expensive wheat.

For the record, Angie took this photo I somehow didn't get around to taking any.