The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

over 200 days a year, raising them for profit is considered good business.When raised commercially these chickens are cooped up in long rows ofsmall cages not unlike cells in a penitentiary, and through their entirelives their feet are never allowed to touch the ground. Disease is commonand the birds are pumped full of antibiotics and fed a formula diet ofvitamins and hormones.It is said that the local chickens that have been kept since ancienttimes, the brown and black shamo and chabo, have only half theegg-laying capacity. As a result these birds have all but disappeared inJapan. I let two hens and one rooster loose to run wild on themountainside and after one year there were twenty-four. When it seemedthat few eggs were being laid, the local birds were busy raising chickens.In the first year, the leghorn has a greater egg-laying efficiency thanthe local chickens, but after one year the white leghorn is exhausted andcast aside, whereas the shamo we started with has become ten healthybirds running about beneath the orchardSetting out for a day’s work.93