A good week for chickens

It’s been a good week for chickens. I don’t think they have enjoyed so much publicity since the last bout of bird flu. On TV there was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver both campaigning strongly against intensive chicken farming.

Then the government announced it would be banning battery hens. Now Oliver and Sainsbury's are trying to patch things up after reports of a rift that threatened to damage Oliver's lucrative contractual arrangement to appear in the supermarket’s advertisements and promotions.

Crying mums

Animal rights campaigners have been banging on about intensive farming methods for years without making much progress. But once celebrities get involved everything changes. Add a bit of theatre, some crying mums and kids – even Fearnley-Whittingstall was sobbing – and before you know it farmers, retailers, shoppers and journalists are running around like chickens with no heads.

I remember watching a Joan Bakewell programme years ago when chickens were having their heads removed on a conveyor belt. That did it for me for and I went vegetarian for two years.

Turkey gravy

It was tough being vegetarian, particularly at Christmas when I was eating nut roast and everyone else was having turkey. We had turkey gravy and vegetarian gravy in two separate jugs but my mother-in-law poured them both together. She said it was an accident but I have always suspected otherwise.

My own stance on eating animals had less to do with the killing animals of animals and more to do with the way they were living under intensive farming regimes. I have never had a problem with killing and eating wild things, which was why my vegetarian diet allowed fish, pheasant, venison, that kind of thing (OK, I realise that is not likely to pass muster among signed-up bean-eating veggies).

Later I decided sheep were OK because they lived on the hills, and when I began to see pigs in fields I came out of my meat eating hibernation although I still have issues with the indiscriminate netting of fish and I’m right behind the latest chicken campaigns. I looked around a chicken-rearing shed in Norway last year and it neither looked nor smelled pretty although it was well run.

Good egg

Sainsbury's has been leafleting heavily this week to tell us about its various awards in recognition of its animal welfare standards. These include "the Good Egg Award" from Compassion in World Farming.

Its leaflet also explains its various food standards labels from Sainsbury's basics (a shed)to Sainsbury's SO organic chicken (comparative chicken luxury where the chickens are allowed to get about a bit). My problem is not just with the chickens on display but the hundreds of chicken products in supermarkets. Where did all those chicken bits come from in the chicken supreme, chicken soup and chicken stock?

Chicken wars

Watch out for chicken wars in the next few weeks as the big stores begin to try grab the moral high ground on chicken welfare. The Sainsbury's leaflets, I suspect, were merely the first salvo.

Perhaps this is the start of something big. Where next? How about taking a stand to save battery people? Down with work cubicles.

The Shooting Party

Every year I join a shooting party in deepest Devon for what always turns out to be an endurance event. It starts in the pub on a Thursday night, continues through a rough shoot on the Friday, a driven shoot on the Saturday and dinner at a local restaurant before the drive back feeling worse for wear on the Sunday.

A cup is awarded, usually for the most eccentric or outlandish behaviour, but occasionally for outstanding shooting. It is generally filled with a noxious combination of drinks for the lucky recipient.

High birds

This year it was won by one of our number who exceeded all expectations, accounting for two birds taken behind with a single shot from his small-bore. They were high too, so he did well.

He deserved his trophy, not only for that, but also for the way he took pity on a tatty old turkey, running wild, that one of the guns found in a hedgerow and carried in to the house.

It was an ugly, misshapen thing and smelled pretty gamy but our top gun did what he could for it, which wasn’t much, although no-one else would go near it.

No bird farm

Game shooters are often criticised for pursuing what many consider a cruel sport but at least this gun showed that there is a compassionate side to shooting. As we’re stuffing our turkey this year I will spare a thought for his intervention.

The Friday rough shoot at “No Bird farm” was particularly sparse: a jackdaw, a crow, two pigeons and a hen pheasant. But it's good to get out and particularly satisfying for those who like dogs.

Walnut-smashing

As I said, this is an endurance event, sometimes involving behaviour in a party of nine men that is childish in the extreme. How childish? Let me count the ways.

One year there was walnut-smashing with foreheads. There was arm wrestling, there were silly, drink-fuelled card games and there has been occasional throwing of eggs, even punches. Every year there is a particularly juvenile sport called hiding things.

Lord of the Flies

The whole weekend is like a not-so-grown-up version of “Lord of the Flies” where the pressure is on from the start and anyone betraying a weakness is going to suffer.

It takes me back to my school days when boys had the bumps on their birthday. I never went to boarding school but a few of our party did and it shows in flashes of boorish behaviour.

At least our cup-winner set an example this year. He has shown himself capable of handling the hardest of dogs, penetrating the thickest undergrowth to fetch a bird. Unlike some of the guns, he never complains, never forgets his manners, never boasts and is never ostentatious or chippy.

On the contrary he is quiet, unassuming, modest and extraordinary charitable. He wouldn’t like me to mention this but I know that he made a very generous donation to help hard-pressed families in the area when some collectors were doing the rounds one evening. It’s gestures like that that restore my faith in human nature.

Swan and chips

Spent the day on the River Avon looking at mink rafts among other things. These are not designed to give mink a Huckleberry Finn adventure. Initially they're intended to find out whether mink are in the vicinity. A basket covered with a layer of clay is placed in a tunnel on the raft and if the paw prints reveal a mink in the neighbourhood a trap is placed on the raft.

Any mink caught in the trap is shot with an air pistol using a pointed round. The game conservancy people who worked on the method used a Yellow Pages directory to test the penetration of the round. "The blunt round reached chartered accountants," said the officer showing us the trap. "But the pointed one got as far as Estate Agents."

I saw a mink the other day on the River Wey. Should it suffer the same fate as the estate agents? It's tough for the mink but the presence of mink is tough for our water voles that have been disappearing at an alarming rate.

Apparently the notion that otters drive off any mink is a myth. They can and do co-exist together on a number of rivers.

There was a discussion also on swans. There's been a problem with swans on some chalk streams such as the River Wylye. I've seen great gangs of them in the fields. These are non-breeding birds that have molted their flight feathers. The eat large amounts of ranunculus that provides habitat for the insects on which trout feed. More than that, the weed helps to maintain water levels.

I remember when swan populations were declining 30 years ago when lead shot was allowed among anglers. Since its ban the swan population has made a dramatic recovery. Personally I'd be happy to see some of them farmed for food. I had some swan once and it was very good meat.

But I suppose it would be unpopular. It's a beautiful bird, granted, but ducks and pheasant are beautiful too and we eat them. As it is, a lot of swan eggs are pricked on the QT by river keepers. But that seems wasteful. Swan and chips. Why not? Then again, maybe estate agents would be more palatable.