Photo Phriday: Oviduct

One doesn't normally deliberately kill a productive laying hen.* So when Dale McNugget departed this mortal coil last week and I dressed her out for the dogs' dinner, there was something other than the usual giblets inside.


I was surprised to see so many egg yolks, lined up in her oviduct and clustered around her ovary.

Chickens (all birds) have two ovaries when the are born, but only the left one (right one in some raptors -- don't ask why because I don't know) develops and produces eggs.

This is a lot of good-sized (i.e. fairly developed) yolks, but apparently not outside normal limits. I asked around.

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* The ornery Daughter of Henery who drew blood while I was gathering eggs last week may find herself an exception sealed her fate by breaking into the turkey coop and killing several hatchling poults; she had fewer eggs lined up than Dale, but was more interesting, as one was in the chamber getting shell laid on when I converted her to curry ingredients.

Even the Devil Can't Fool a Dog

A dog's got a right to have a man around, just the same as that man's got a right to have a dog around.

Best Twilight Zone EVAR.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3, the money shot




You can get it on DVD, Volume 25 of the Twilight Zone complete set. Netflix has it.

The writer, Earl Hamner Jr., has a long list of writing credits for animal-themed television, including Lassie and Gentle Ben, and the 2006 live-action movie adaptation of Charlotte's Web. He was also the creator of the 1970's series The Waltons.

It is an old story, simply retold here.

How old?

"Shakra said, ‘Thou shalt behold thy brothers in Heaven. They have reached it before thee. Indeed, thou shalt see all of them there, with Krishna. Do not yield to grief, O chief of the Bharatas. Having cast off their human bodies they have gone there, O chief of Bharata’s race. As regards thee, it is ordained that thou shalt go thither in this very body of thine.’

"Yudhishthira said, ‘This dog, O lord of the Past and the Present, is exceedingly devoted to me. He should go with me. My heart is full of compassion for him.’

"Shakra said, ‘Immortality and a condition equal to mine, O king, prosperity extending in all directions, and high success, and all the felicities of Heaven, thou hast won today. Do thou cast off this dog. In this there will be no cruelty.’

"Yudhishthira said, ‘O thou of a 1,000 eyes. O thou that art of righteous behaviour, it is exceedingly difficult for one that is of righteous behaviour to perpetrate an act that is unrighteous. I do not desire that union with prosperity for which I shall have to cast off one that is devoted to me.’

"Indra said, ‘There is no place in Heaven for persons with dogs. Besides, the (deities called) Krodhavasas take away all the merits of such persons. Reflecting on this, act, O king Yudhishthira the just. Do thou abandon this dog. There is no cruelty in this.’

"Yudhishthira said, ‘It has been said that the abandonment of one that is devoted is infinitely sinful. It is equal to the sin that one incurs by slaying a Brahmana. Hence, O great Indra, I shall not abandon this dog today from desire of my happiness. Even this is my vow steadily pursued, that I never give up a person that is terrified, nor one that is devoted to me, nor one that seeks my protection, saying that he is destitute, nor one that is afflicted, nor one that has come to me, nor one that is weak in protecting oneself, nor one that is solicitous of life. I shall never give up such a one till my own life is at an end.’

"Indra said, ‘Whatever gifts, or sacrifices spread out, or libations poured on the sacred fire, are seen by a dog, are taken away by the Krodhavasas. Do thou, therefore, abandon this dog. By abandoning this dog thou wilt attain to the region of the deities. Having abandoned thy brothers and Krishna, thou hast, O hero, acquired a region of felicity by thy own deeds. Why art thou so stupefied? Thou hast renounced everything. Why then dost thou not renounce this dog?’ "Yudhishthira said, ‘This is well known in all the worlds that there is neither friendship nor enmity with those that are dead. When my brothers and Krishna died, I was unable to revive them. Hence it was that I abandoned them. I did not, however, abandon them as long as they were alive. To frighten one that has sought protection, the slaying of a woman, the theft of what belongs to a Brahmana, and injuring a friend, each of these four, O Shakra, is I think equal to the abandonment of one that is devoted.’"

Vaishampayana continued: "Hearing these words of king Yudhishthira the just, (the dog became transformed into) the deity of Righteousness, who, well pleased, said these words unto him in a sweet voice fraught with praise.

"Dharma said: ‘Thou art well born, O king of kings, and possessed of the intelligence and the good conduct of Pandu. Thou hast compassion for all creatures, O Bharata, of which this is a bright example. Formerly, O son, thou wert once examined by me in the woods of Dwaita, where thy brothers of great prowess met with (an appearance of) death. Disregarding both thy brothers Bhima and Arjuna, thou didst wish for the revival of Nakula from thy desire of doing good to thy (step-) mother. On the present occasion, thinking the dog to be devoted to thee, thou hast renounced the very car of the celestials instead of renouncing him. Hence. O king, there is no one in Heaven that is equal to thee. Hence, O Bharata, regions of inexhaustible felicity are thine. Thou hast won them, O chief of the Bharatas, and thine is a celestial and high goal.’"

The Mahabharata, Book 17: Mahaprasthanika Parva

ca 400 BCE


I couldn't find any reference to the animal trainer(s). While the dog is well-cast for type (Hollywood likes to cast Labradors as hounds and curs, golden retrievers as mongrels, German shepherds as wolves, and this episode is a refreshing exception), the dog work is fairly poor. Not much is expected of the hound. He's no Terry.

But he wouldn't walk into Hell with his eyes wide open, either.

Refugees

Got a call this morning from Mary Mary, a regular commenter over at the Pet Connection blog.

Apparently, after years of being widely known as the Dog Lady, I am now the designated Chicken Lady.

A senior prank on the last day of school at a suburban high school left ten* young chickens in need of a refuge. (I did make it clear that we aren't a farm sanctuary, and don't guarantee cockerels a sinecure.)

Mary's young friend and her Dad delivered them this afternoon, and I set them up in the now-disused foster dog kennel. (New poultry need to be quarantined from the resident flock.)

There appear to be four cockerels and six pullets. Maybe about five weeks old? What kind is a mystery to me. They appear to be white at first glance, but almost all of them have some brown splotches here and there. They aren't leghorns, nor, thankfully, Cornish crosses.

They were delighted with their new temporary digs and immediately went to work scratching and pecking. They know all about using a roost, and are very lively.

Any ideas about what breed(s) these guys might be?

(Edit: Mount Healthy hatchery has agreed that these appear to be Amberlink hybrid layers, which are only sold by Mount Healthy. Many of our local feed stores deal with Mount Healthy for chicks. They are characterized in the catalog as active foragers and productive brown egg layers with nice temperaments. They should fit in well here and do well under our kind of husbandry.)



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* So we can be very grateful the Class of '99 didn't think of this one.

RIP Dale "Supersize" McNugget 4/14/09-6/6/10

Dale McNugget passed away peacefully and rather suddenly in the sunny barnyard, surrounded by her flockmates, this afternoon.

The proximal cause of death was pulmonary failure. This was secondary to what I would have called morbid obesity -- except, on necropsy, she really had very little body fat. She was just one enormous chicken.

Hybrid broiler birds are not designed by artificial selection to live long, healthy lives. Had Dale been a conventional cornish cross hen, she would have been unlikely to live four months, much less fourteen. Because she was a "freedom ranger," she was a little better equipped to live in the world. But she was still too heavy to flutter up to the roost with the other hens, spending her nights on the coop floor with the ducks and the two auxiliary Dales -- hens who escaped capture on processing day last July. She laid eggs under the nest boxes* after she became too large to fit inside one -- or rather, too large to get out once she had squeezed in. Later I installed a large covered cat litter box as a floor-level nest box for the former McNuggets.

I started limiting the plus-sized girls' access to feed a few months ago, gating them out of the coop during the day by installing a creep on the pop door that the smaller chickens could slip through, but kept the three big girls outside to forage on pasture rather than hog down layer feed. It didn't seem to make a lot of difference in their weights, but they did become more active.

Of course I'm ambivalent about the very existence of hybrid broiler chickens, let alone the lives they usually lead. That those will be short is a given; knowing this and feeling a bit guilty about it, we endeavor to eliminate nasty and brutish from the list of options. There are currently fifteen Cartmans living in a chicken tractor in the pasture; they'd have grown just fine in a stall in the barn, but a chicken should breath fresh air and eat bugs and grass. They'd also be fairly content confined to the tractor, but I open it up during the day so they can shuffle around a bit, and sack out in the tall grass along the old fenceline when they want to, and dustbathe. To the extent their genetics allows, they get to be chickens during their very short span on this earth.

There are 76 new McNuggets growing feathers in preparation for their own move out to pasture, where they'll live behind electronet at night, range free for much of the day, and have even more chicken-like and slightly longer lives.

But their genetics dictate, always, that those lives will be short. Not even an internet rabble with money in their teeth will convince me to hold back any meat birds from this years' flocks. I do not believe it is kind.

I think of the short lives of giant breed dogs, and how their hearts so often give out. The incredibly plastic canine genome can produce 200 pound dog bodies, but not the hearts to run them.

One of the two auxiliary Dales died a month or so ago; her heart was at least four times normal size.

I didn't weigh Dale after my mom found her still-warm body this afternoon. But a necropsy on a chicken is another way of saying "dressed out," with a little more haruspicy. She makes at least a dozen dog meals -- feeding five English shepherds and one hollow-legged German shepherd -- in other words, you could easily feed an English shepherd for a week on one chicken. She must have been at least sixteen pounds alive.

I took her skin, head, and intestines out to the Fox Stump at the far end of the south pasture, where we leave offerings to the vulpine neighbors in exchange for respect for our living flock. Think of it as a sky burial.

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* She had no fewer than eight eggs at various stages of growth queued up in her oviduct.

Goat Day 2010

By popular demand, photos of Goat Day 2010



If you have trouble viewing the slideshow, you can check the Picasa album here

Sangria was consumed, mostly by the hostess, and a couple of last year's McNuggets returned from freezer camp for their charcoal debut. There was much pie.

Small goats provided entertainment.

And young Cole began his progression from poultry-herding hound to real stockdog.

He has so far hung back from the goats, because (unwitnessed, but easily surmised) encounters with their electric fence has convinced him that all goats come with a painful force-field.

So we put him in the x-pen with the kids, and when we let the kids out to romp some more, we put Rosie and Sophia in the house so they wouldn't bogart the goatiness.

Cole decided that since the goatboys had been in the x-pen for a while, they were supposed to stay there. So he started penning them -- with very appropriate gentleness.

We closed the pen, let the kids wander a little further, and he started (spontaneously) to gather them to me. Clearly was concerned about keeping them grouped, and stopped to think when they split. (Goats flock poorly; sheep are much better for training dogs. But goats is what I gots.)

I got two (self-directed) pens, two gathers, a snappy down when he got too excited, and a look-back when he lost one kid on the second gather. And then we stopped for the day. Asking for anything more would be unconscionably greedy, and court disaster.

Snapshot Sunday: Formation

Long-overdue cave trip on Saturday.

Like most of our "local" caves, Sharps is either not old enough or lacks the right kind of minerals to have many impressive speleothems.

This "formation" is composed of clay. AKA cave mud.

I think it looks like a movie miniature under construction; a fantasy mountain range that is no doubt delved by dwarves.

Falling Through When the Whole Damned Thing is Cracks

The USDA has released a report on its own puppy-mill inspection results and practices.

You can download the PDF here.

From the report's executive summary:

In this audit, one objective was to review AC’s (Animal Care's) enforcement process against dealers that violated AWA (Animal Welfare Act). Accordingly, we focused on dealers with a history of violations in the past 3 years.

Another objective was to review the impact of recent changes the agency made to the penalty
assessment process. We identified the following major deficiencies with APHIS’ (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) administration of AWA:

• AC’s Enforcement Process Was Ineffective Against Problematic Dealers. AC’s enforcement process was ineffective in achieving dealer compliance with AWA and regulations, which are intended to ensure the humane care and treatment of animals. The agency believed that compliance achieved through education and cooperation would result in long-term dealer compliance and, accordingly, it chose to take little or no enforcement action against most violators.

However, the agency’s education efforts have not always been successful in deterring problematic dealers from violating AWA. During FYs 2006-2008, at the re-inspection of 4,250 violators, inspectors found that 2,416 repeatedly violated AWA, including some that ignored minimum care standards. Therefore, relying heavily on education for serious or repeat violators—without an appropriate level of enforcement—weakened the agency’s ability to protect the animals.

• AC Inspectors Did Not Cite or Document Violations Properly To Support Enforcement Actions.

Many inspectors were highly committed, conducting timely and thorough inspections and making significant efforts to improve the humane treatment of covered animals. However, we noted that 6 of 19 inspectors did not correctly report all repeat or direct violations (those that are generally more serious and affect the animals’ health). Consequently, some problematic dealers were inspected less frequently. In addition, some inspectors did not always adequately describe violations in their inspection reports or support violations with photos. Between 2000 and 2009, this lack of documentary evidence weakened AC’s case in 7 of the 16 administrative hearings involving dealers. In discussing these problems with regional management, they
explained that some inspectors appeared to need additional training in identifying violations and collecting evidence.

• APHIS’ New Penalty Worksheet Calculated Minimal Penalties. Although APHIS previously agreed to revise its penalty worksheet to produce “significantly higher” penalties for violators of AWA, the agency continued to assess minimal penalties that did not deter violators. This occurred because the new worksheet allowed reductions up to 145 percent of the maximum penalty. While we are not advocating that APHIS assess the maximum penalty, we found that at a time when Congress tripled the authorized maximum penalty to “strengthen fines for violations,” the actual penalties were 20 percent less using the new worksheet as compared to the worksheet APHIS previously used.

• APHIS Misused Guidelines to Lower Penalties for AWA Violators. In completing penalty worksheets, APHIS misused its guidelines in 32 of the 94 cases we reviewed to lower the penalties for AWA violators. Specifically, it (1) inconsistently counted violations; (2) applied “good faith” reductions without merit; (3) allowed a “no history of violations” reduction when the violators had a prior history; and (4) arbitrarily changed the gravity of some violations and the business size. AC told us that it assessed lower penalties as an incentive to encourage violators to pay a stipulated amount rather than exercise their right to a hearing.

I'm not going to have a chance to read the whole thing tonight.

However, I have one question.

In what universe does the person who kept this dog in this condition for at least a week:

Not get arrested on the spot for felony animal cruelty?

I'm serious. If your neighbor's pet was chained in the yard suffering from this festering, untreated injury, would he not get a visit from the law? Would you not make this happen? Are federal employees conducting licensing inspections not mandated reporters when they observe a felony in progress?

Not the Big Bad inspector who can write you up. The big bad policeman with the gun on his hip who takes you to jail. Where the bikers and potheads and bar-fighters take a dim view of people who hurt children and animals.

This willful act of cruelty took place in Oklahoma, which does have a first-offense felony animal cruelty law. The federal inspector -- our tax dollars at work -- did not trouble himself to notify the appropriate local law enforcement officials. And at the time the report was written, the puppymiller had not even been fined for the license violation.


This willful act of cruelty, also in Oklahoma, similarly resulted in no criminal charges, no write-up for a "direct violation," and no documentation by the inspector that would allow the agency, "to identify the animals during re-inspection to determine if they were treated or just disposed of. "

What's wrong with this little dog? I thought she had an untreated suite of tumors or cysts, or some exotic skin condition, until I read the caption.

Her face is covered with engorged ticks. So many that the inspector who didn't see fit to cite the puppymill operator for the violation was, "concerned about their hematocrit [a red blood cell ratio indicating anemic conditions].”

Concerned, but not concerned enough to, you know, do her goddamned job.

I'll be going over this report thoroughly tomorrow. For an internal agency document, it appears to be blunt and honest about the shortcomings in the current inspection system. It correctly identifies, as well, the enormous loophole presented by direct-to-consumer internet sales of puppies. I'm hopeful that it represents a commitment to agency reform, to requiring inspectors to do the job the taxpayers pay them to perform.

If federal and state inspectors did their jobs, if police and humane enforcement officers, prosecutors, and mandated reporters did their jobs and enforced the cruelty laws, if citizens reported violators and ensured that law enforcement followed through, we'd be light-years further along in meeting our barest obligations to the animals who depend on us for everything.