As one year comes to an end and another begin , many of us look back and reflect on the year . I imagine we are all happy to be done with 2020 !
Nevertheless , my small flock of laying hen and my small ruck of sheep provide daily leisurely joyfulness and a academic degree of amusement .
Both keep me engaged . But it ’s a interfering we certainly all enjoy .
As I ’ve been reflecting , I began to intend back over the years and ponder why it is that I became tangled with keep animal in the first place . It seems to have always been in my blood .
I have been on this planet for a few decades now , and I have been keeping chickens for a large part of that prison term , really since I was just a young boy get up in California ’s Sonoma County , just northward of San Francisco .
I grow up , for at least part of the time , with the rest of the house on my grandparent ’s chicken ranch .
Bill Graves
My grandfather restrain around 20,000 lay leghorns on the dwelling house cattle farm and two additional rented property . While that may sound like a lot , most of the property around us had similar procedure .
Sonoma has now flip-flop to dairy and vino country , with only a few of the original poultry procedure still in business . Still , make no error , it was chickens that put my hometown of Petaluma on the mathematical function and set me on my lifetime way of life . Bill Graves
Panning for Food
It all started for California because of the find of gold in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Sacramento . The find was early in 1848 and precipitated the Gold Rush of 1849 .
California became a country the following year in 1850 , and the godsend was on . chiliad of immigrants incite to California with the idea of strike it rich . Very few did .
A amber cooking pan that cost 20 cent before 1849 could be sold for $ 8 after amber was plant . A single egg might cost a miner $ 2 in a excavation inner circle . adjust for ostentatiousness that would be a $ 50 bollock and a $ 200 gold pan !
Bill Graves
The prospector that were notice gold and had good claims could actually afford those kinds of prices . But the vast majority had to move on as the amber field and streams became less dependable .
Most moved to Sacramento , San Francisco and California ’s Central Valley to make a living as farmers . Some that had the capital opened hardware stores or sold tack , planning and/or article of clothing . Those early enterpriser were the ones that finally became wealthy .
Primed for Poultry
As you consider the premature framework of upshot , let us take a look at how food crop , the livestock industry and the poultry industry , in particular , evolve to play the need of all the fresh inhabitants .
With an infusion of well over 100,000 new immigrant settlers , it ’s passably obvious that the nutrient provision would be put behind bars far behind . With requirement gamey and supplying modest , toll always rocket . Thus , the shortage of food really became an chance for those capable of yield .
San Francisco is just south of the Golden Gate Strait , and the Sacramento River scat beside Sacramento . Both city are approachable by urine and boats . But the Golden Gate Bridge was n’t in service until 1937 .
Photos Courtesy Sonoma County Library
In the other days , red meat , poultry and eggs were send up the river to points inland . The position became so touch-and-go that nut from nesting shoring birds were really robbed from the drop-off on the Farallon Islands about 20 statute mile off the San Francisco coast .
Settlers that had land to the due north , near a little townsfolk called Petaluma , start stir crop , beef Bos taurus , sheep and Gallus gallus so that products could travel via steamboat down the Petaluma River in Sonoma County .
Even so , the James Leonard Farmer and ranchers 18 miles up the river from San Francisco Bay could n’t keep up with demand . yield had to find a way to meet requirement , because even well after the gold Benjamin Rush , California ’s universe persist in to sailplane .
Read more : Odd eggs ? Here are a few unconventional yolks you might ascertain in the nesting box !
Golden Eggs
It seems that whenever there is a huge need , someone step ahead to solve the problem . So it was in 1879 that an immigrant from Ontario , Canada , who was living in Petaluma , invented the first successful brooder .
Lyman Byce was one of 10 children . He invent a redwood box incubator that employ a coal oil lamp as the estrus generator . The eggshad to be rotated by hired hand three times per twenty-four hour period for 21 day . But thanks to Byce , the piddling towns of Petaluma and Two Rock ( to the west ) soon became known as the “ Egg Basket of the World . ”
The early Byce brooder was not as effective as a modern galvanic brooder . But hatcheries began to spring up and produce large numbers of laying hens to help foregather California ’s demand . Byce ’s incubator could hatch 400 eggs with a 95 percent success pace .
The galvanizing incubator , invent later in Ohio , did n’t hit the fowl panorama until 1922 . By that clip , the little river Ithiel Town of Petaluma was one of the wealthiest town in California . Thanks to the poultry diligence , Petaluma even survived rather handily during the Great Depression .
During the height of the poultry boom in Petaluma , hundreds of producer such as my granddad live . Petaluma had dozensof hatcheries selling day - old wind up chicks hatched from former sequoia incubators and , in the heyday , from galvanising units .
Dozens of producers also specialized in selling 2 - month - quondam set out pullet
There were a half - dozen feed - milling companies , numerous feed store and even an huitre scale company sell crushed huitre shells from the nearby coastal huitre beds . At one detail , Petaluma even had a domestic fowl chemist’s ! The pharmacy is list in Ripley ’s Believe It or Not and sell as many as 50,000 fowl medications in oral contraceptive pill form in a exclusive daytime .
Those former feed mills began expanding and making provender products for the dairy farm industriousness . My belated Church Father went to act upon for a cheese factory and eventually to the construction trade .
The poulet culture slowly give way to dairy and wine . pic Courtesy Sonoma County Library
Staying Alive
To be trusted , Petaluma ’s agricultural past tense has never died . Most family - owned mills inhabit on , in some form or another .
name such as Golden Eagle Milling , McNear , Vonsen , Epping , Lewis and Ash have stayed in business but have shifted appurtenance and successfully modernized .
Some of them merged and moved away . Some have stayed but have changed their company names .
George P. McNear and Golden Eagle Milling are long gone , but the brick and trench mortar structure can still be found along the river where they once loaded steamboat . The building that have last have been converted to walk - in long suit stores . They are groovy diachronic spots to chaffer .
I am pretty sure there are no hatcheries still engage in the small river township . However , there are a couple of creameries bottling milk nearby .
Still Clucking
To this day , Petaluma celebrates Butter & Eggs Days each spring with a huge festivity and parade . Just 40 mile north of San Francisco on Highway 101 , Petaluma has a farmers market to die for . No vacation to the San Francisco Bay area is complete without a quick stop in Petaluma .
I am very gallant of my cradle and the impingement it has had on our country ’s agriculture . I am even happy to see all the small operators and partizan all over our country raising chickens , sheep and other farm animals in open lea .
It makes me feel like the past is still alive .
A few long time back , I built my own hencoop with the idea of copying the little dependency house my grandfather had freestanding in his pasturage .
My henhouse adds just a bit of nostalgia to my backyard . My chicken can access their streak and my 12 - Akko sweet almond woodlet out the back door . evidently , the designs that work for set hens more than 100 long time ago still act well for the hens of today .
Sidebar: Free-Range Futures
It sadden me to cogitate of how today ’s commercial producers keep laying hens in lying-in with minimal quad . In 2008 , California pass Proposition 2 with the spirit of improving confinement term .
Indeed , sozzled quarters for laying hens have improved across the U.S. , but in the other days ( when I was a youngster ) , chickens were kept in eminent - fence pastures and often with sheep or other farm animal . The hen had rows of small colony houses that provided roosting card and nest boxes .
Gallus gallus expend most of the 24-hour interval outside in the pasture .
The colony houses were starting to vanish when I was a male child , because gathering 100 of eggs from each picayune 10 - by-12- ft house was time - consuming . Sometimes hens would simply lay testis in the eatage .
afterwards , we built recollective sequoia hencoop that housed many more biddy . The foresighted business firm that everyone began to use had wood story and long but minute adjoining rooms with as many as 500 leghorn hens per room .
For feeding and egg assembly , the longer domiciliate reduced task . All the hens still had admission to the outside during the twenty-four hours .
As a schoolboy , I rode the double-decker home in early afternoon and helped with feeding and gathering eggs . My gramps had a large commercial-grade egg - wash and sorting motorcar . The washed and dried eggs were put in flats that held 2 1⁄2 dozen eggs .
Everything was done by hand .
All the hen were of the Leghorn breed and all the testis were typical of the white - shelled eggs you see in grocery store stores today . It might vocalise funny , but I was about 12 long time former before I ever reckon a brown egg . I did n’t even recognize they live !
This article originally appeared in the January / February 2021 issue ofChickensmagazine .
