chercat: novembre 2017

Do Chickens have a Sense of Taste?

You don't have to raise chickens long to notice that they will eat almost anything. Bring them a bowl of kitchen scraps and you'll watch as they quickly devour all your vegetable trimmings, meat scraps, soft and squishy fruit, stale cereal and rice scraped from the bottom of the pot. But watch a little closer and you'll notice that your chickens will gravitate to certain treats more than others. So that begs the question - can chickens taste their food?
Chickens actually do have a sense of taste, but they are a long way from possessing a palate to rival that of a James Beard finalist. While humans have between 8,000-10,000 taste buds, the average chicken has less than 350. To make things worse, unlike human taste buds that are mostly on the tongue and in the front of the mouth, only 2% of a chicken's taste buds are on the tongue itself. The rest are located at the back of the oral cavity, which means that by the time a chicken can taste what it's eating, it has already committed to swallowing it.
Chickens can taste the same tastes as humans, as can most other animals. So what tastes sweet to us, will taste sweet to a chicken. They can also taste salty, sour and bitter, but don't seem particularly attracted to salty, sour or bitter foods. They don't have a receptor for spicy foods, so they can eat hot peppers and other plants containing capsaicin without being bothered by the "hot".

One thing that is interesting to me is that in general herbivores like cows, horses, sheep, etc. tend to have the most taste buds. They can have 25,000 or so, likely because they need to be able to tell if the plants they come across while grazing are toxic or not. Carnivores usually have the lowest number of taste buds. There aren't too many toxic animals running around the planet that they need to be worried about! Omnivores (like chickens, pigs and humans) usually fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, but in this case, chickens seem to have been shortchanged.

One reason for this might be that chickens are extremely visually oriented. They have excellent eyesight and can see in color - in fact they can even see ultraviolet light. They likely are able to pick out their food based in its size, shape and color.
Interestingly enough, the number of taste buds a chicken has varies by age, breed and gender. Male chickens tend to have more taste buds than females. I couldn't find any reason for that, specifically, in my research, but I wonder if it's because traditionally the roosters in a flock would search for food and call the hens over, so it would make sense that they should have a more refined sense of taste. Broiler breeds have more taste buds than layers. and chicks gains taste buds after they hatch until a certain time in their growth, then the number will begin to decrease as the chicken ages.

References and Further Reading:http://www.fresheggsdaily.com/2013/10/do-you-see-what-i-see-12-fascinating.htmlhttp://www.fresheggsdaily.com/2016/09/do-you-hear-what-i-hear-all-about.htmlhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5112566/http://www.hobbyfarms.com/can-chickens-taste-hot-peppers/https://www.mypetchicken.com/backyard-chickens/chicken-help/What-treats-taste-best-to-chickens-H275.aspx

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Take a Peek at our Week - Nov 19th - 25th

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. The short week meant a busy few days leading up to the big day, but then a relaxing day or so afterwards. We didn't host Thanksgiving, so it was nice to be able to just bake a pumpkin cheesecake and bring it along with a bottle of wine to our friends house where we indulged in a delicious traditional Thanksgiving dinner - with Indian pudding, roasted chestnuts and all!
I was content to spend time this week with the girls, our dogs and my husband, and am looking forward to packaging up a lot of signed copies of my books and bags of Coop Confetti that sold during my Black Friday/Small Business Saturday sales yesterday and today! Enjoy this peek at my week!

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Pumpkin Spice Swirl Cheesecake with Candied Walnuts

Far easier to make than it looks, this elegant pumpkin spice cheesecake is perfect for the holidays. I originally found the recipe in a magazine (for the life of me I can't remember which one) about fifteen years ago. After it was a big hit one Thanksgiving, I started making it a holiday tradition. It's nice because you can make it up to two days in advance and keep it refrigerated until you're ready to serve.

After we began to raise our own chickens and I realized that the fresh eggs make any cheesecake so much richer and tastier, this recipe became a keeper at our house and a holiday favorite. I love how the swirls even look like fall leaves. Each year I seem to tweak the recipe just a bit, so my current recipe is quite a bit different than the original recipe I began with all those years ago - but's it's always well received.

Pumpkin Spice Swirl Cheesecake with Candied Walnuts

For the Cheesecake

4 Tablespoons butter, melted
1-1/2 cups crushed gingersnap cookies (about 24- 2" round cookies)
4 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste (or an equal amount of vanilla extract)
3 large fresh eggs
3/4 cup pumpkin puree (homemade or canned)
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon molasses
1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and set a teakettle full of water to boil. Butter a 9" spring form pan and wrap two layers of foil around the outside.

Combine the butter and gingersnap crumbs, stir to coat evenly and press them into the bottom of the pan. Chill until ready to use.

With a stand mixer (I love my KitchenAid!) on medium-low, beat the cream cheese, granulated sugar and cornstarch until smooth. Beat in the sour cream and vanilla bean paste, and then the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated. Pour half the batter into a medium bowl and set aside.

Into the remaining batter mix the pumpkin puree, brown sugar, molasses and spice. Set aside one cup of the pumpkin batter.

Spread half of the pumpkin batter over the crust. Top that with half the plain batter, then the remaining half of pumpkin batter and the remaining plain batter to make layers. Dot the reserved cup of pumpkin batter over the top and with a toothpick swirl the batters to create your design.

Place the cheesecake in a large roasting pan and fill the pan partway with boiling water, making sure not to fill above the foil. (The water bath will keep your cheesecake from splitting or cracking on top).

Bake the cheesecake for about an hour and 10 minutes, or until the center of the cheesecake jiggles only slightly when you gently tap the side. Remove the cheesecake from the oven and place on a wire rack. Run a knife around the edge to loosen it and allow to cool.

When completely cooled, remove the side of the spring form pan and chill your cheesecake several hours (or overnight). When ready to serve, garnish with candied walnuts (see recipe below) and whipped topping.

For the Candied Walnuts

1 cup walnuts (whole or pieces is fine)

2 Tablespoons butter

2 Tablespoons brown sugar

In a heavy cast iron skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the walnuts and brown sugar and toss to mix well. Continue to cook, stirring constantly for several minutes, until the sugar caramelizes and the walnuts start to smell 'nutty'. Remove the nuts to a piece of parchment paper to cool. Remove the cheesecake from the fridge and garnish with the candied walnuts and some whipped cream just prior to serving.

NOTE: Your chickens will love any leftover pumpkin puree. It's super healthy for them and the beta-carotene will make vibrant orange egg yolks!

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Chickens are Omnivores, not Vegetarians

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:om·ni·vore/ˈämnəˌvôr/noun
An animal or person that eats both plants and animals as their main food.The word omnivore comes from the Latin words omni, meaning "everything or all" and vorare which means "to devour." Although some commercial egg producers proclaim that their eggs are from "vegetarian fed" hens, chickens are actually omnivores.
This means that they can (and should!) eat a diet that contains both plants as well as animal proteins. And chickens are hardly alone in their dining preferences in the animal kingdom.
Other omnivores include humans, of course, but also bears, pigs, dogs, fox, skunks, possums, mice, chipmunks and unbelievably...ants.
Commercial chicken feeds blend a balanced mix of grains and seeds, often supplemented with bone meal or fish meal. Certainly not a vegetarian diet, although some organic feeds use insect larvae as the protein source instead of a meat source - but still, not vegetarian.

Chickens left to their own devices will just as happily nibble on grasses, weeds, herbs, flowers, grains, seeds, nuts, veggies, berries and fruit as they will gobble up all the bugs and insects, larvae, spiders, worms, grubs, and even small rodents, birds, snakes, lizards and frogs they can catch.
It's important to note that chickens will eat both "live" and dead meat. While some carnivores only eat fresh meat that they kill, and some like vultures, hyenas, and other scavengers mainly eat carrion.
You'll notice that no mention is made of dairy products. That's because chickens are lactose-intolerant and don't digest milk sugars well, so although they will enjoy the occasional yogurt, dish of milk or some cheese, too much can cause gastric distress, so best to avoid serving dairy.
However, chickens absolutely love eggs!

Scrambled, hard-boiled, or even raw, they'll slurp up as many eggs as you feed them - and be healthier for it. Eggs are one of the best protein sources available for both humans and chickens.
(And before you raise your hand to ask, no feeding your chickens eggs won't turn them into egg eaters, nor does it make them cannibals.) So serve up those eggs, shells and all!
There should no worries about turning your flock into cannibals either, because technically chickens are born cannibals, since the baby chick ingests the yolk of the egg it's hatching from just before cracking the shell open.
And yes, chickens can even eat chicken. While we don't really eat chicken at our house anymore, I do give our chickens the Thanksgiving turkey carcass and you should see them pick that clean!
So next time you're preparing dinner or thinking about leaving your leftovers on your plate when you dine out, save those scraps for your chickens.
Of course, treats should be limited to about 10% of your flock's diet, so remember, everything in moderation.
Allowing your flock to safely free range is a wonderful way to ensure that they are eating a wide variety of all the plants and animal (insect mostly) matter they need to be happy and healthy and lay you delicious fresh eggs!

Resources:Healthy Chicken Treat Guidehttp://articles.extension.org/pages/73541/what-does-a-chicken-eathttps://biologydictionary.net/omnivore/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/29/consumers-love-chickens-that-are-vegetarian-fed-never-mind-what-the-birds-want-to-eathttp://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/94/feeding-chickens-for-best-health-and-performance/

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Pages

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Do Chickens have a Sense of Taste?

Take a Peek at our Week - Nov 19th - 25th

Pumpkin Spice Swirl Cheesecake with Candied Walnuts

Chickens are Omnivores, not Vegetarians