The number of people who choose to keep chickens on their property for meat or eggs is on the rapid rise even in urban locations.
In the UK, close to three quarters of a million people now own a chicken coop. This is an increase of 80% in three years!
Lots of chicken keeping newbies, however, can lead to disaster if the wrong type of equipment is selected for the chicken coop.
The June/July 2012 issue of Backyard Poultry magazine, for instance, details the sad story of a woman who lost an entire flock of 19 chickens from teflon coated light bulbs installed in the coop which off gassed deadly fumes.
The bulbs in question were shatter resistant, GE Rough Service worklight bulbs coated with polytetrafluoroethylene, aka teflon.
When heated, the bulbs emit gas that is deadly to birds who are particularly sensitive to polluted air. There is currently no warning label on the fowl foul GE bulbs although other brands like Sylvania apparently do carry a warning.
So, backyard chicken keepers beware! Do not use the shatter resistant bulbs coated with teflon in your chicken coops. I would imagine the fumes would prove deadly to turkeys too.
Oh, and by the way, those teflon pans in your kitchen should go too. If the fumes from heated teflon are so deadly to your poultry, they are no doubt unhealthy for you to be breathing too!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
we dont use any light – even in Vermont winters
Good ole sunshine is good for chickens too! They are birds! Birds are hard to revive if ill. Is it the bird in the cave? When the bird lives it’s ok??? to go in???
wow I’ve never heard of using a light bulb in a chicken coop. We keep chicken’s I wouldn’t have even dreamed on doing that.
it’s an easy way to keep their water from freezing and slightly extending the day if you live in the northern part of the continent with short winter days.
Those are some evil light bulbs…
http://www.superbrightleds.com
the CFL’s are dangerous as well …… they emit mercury and mostly blue light which prevents melatonin production and the frequency is erratic
CFLs fail at low temperatures as well, just when a heat lamp would be the right type of light in the chicken house. A flood light or poultry lamp well out of reach of pecking or jousting roosters on a timer keeps our girls laying year round. And if a CFL should break, that little dollop of mercury could be consumed as well as the glass shards. Not good.
What in the heck is up with the cursor on this page? I’d fix my writing, but I can only access the first and last sentences. Very weird.
This is just the reason why animals should always be raised as naturally as possible.
The more you try to let farm stores make life easier for you the harder it gets! I got 30 turkeys this summer, and if anyone knows anything about raising turkeys they are sensitive and die VERY easily. So, what do I do? Add nothing artificial, get high quality feed but give as little as possible–emphasize on letting them eat outside on grass and supplementing with herbs. I give russian comfrey, cut and wilted in the sunshine at least an ounce per bid per day, and once in a while sprinkle on some wormwood. Lots of fresh air and sunshine too. This has given me the best batch of turkeys ever with no disease related losses at all! Think: what can I NOT do? This seems to give the best results.
This is an example of one of the comments I would love to be able to copy and paste in file of poultry feeding. I’m not raising turkeys right now but hope to in the future. Unfortunately my mind isn’t that great that I would remember this tip in a year or two. For now I’ll take the extra time and jot down a few notes instead. Thanks for sharing your advice and experiences Luke!
I’m very new to poulty raising but from what I have read it seems chickens are better off with no artifical lighting, they don’t need it for heat in winter unless extremely cold, maybe to increase egg production in winter……. ??
Hi Leah. I was having the same issue until I figured out I can “drag” links up to the tab bar instead of right clicking. I’m using Google Chrome.
Yay!!!!! Thank you Rachel 🙂
I’m not a techie. How can I copy a recipe now. Sarah, can you add a “printable recipe”. I’ve seen these on sites? Thanks.
and a printable link when giving herb readies etc. I copy and put in fill folder. easier bto find when I need it the surfing web
Oh man. Unbelievable. Makes me want to crawl into a dark hole. 🙁
On an unrelated note, I understand why you’ve locked down the text on your page, but now I can’t right click a link to open it in a new tab, so now as I read I can’t just open what I’m interested in, without navigating away from the article. Is there any way around that? I just noticed this was true on Nourished Kitchen too.
I’m not sure how to fix this problem. I’ve tried to avoid having to lock things down, but the content thieves have become so bad and now some of the copied content is ranking higher than my original content in SEO, so I was forced to take action. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Sarah,
As a techie, I can assure you that content thieves do not come to your site and right click, copy/paste your content. They use sophisticated bots that crawl the internet, searching for content based on the keywords they enter. The bots read the raw html source code, completely ignoring the javascript protection that you’ve employed.
My point is, you are only inconveniencing your readers. You should never make it harder for your readers. The burden should always be on you. If somebody does copy your content, simply file a DMCA notice with google, the site itself, and the site’s webhost. The content will be removed usually within 1-2 days.
I find it kind of pointless. If someone really wants to plagiarize the information, they don’t need to copy/paste it to do so. It’s mildly inconvenient. Regardless, you *should* be able to just click your scroll wheel to open a new tab. And as I sit here trying to edit my post for clarity, I find that I can’t even click within the text box where I want my cursor to go, nor can I highlight my own written text. So the only people this is causing a problem for are the people who want to contribute their own words to a post, not the people who want to copy them.
While I understand Sarah’s decision to make it more difficult for people to copy text, I agree with Cassandra. I found it was extremely easy to copy/paste Sarah’s blog posts with a simple workaround requiring only basic HTML knowledge. I have no reason to need to copy the blog posts, but I wanted to see if there was a point to disabling right-clicking. I don’t believe there is. It has only made it more inconvenient for the readers.
I understand Sarah’s reasons for wanting to protect her work but it is making it difficult and frankly unpleasant to spend time on the site. I have in the past copied and pasted info, especially recipes, into a word document to print out. Or occasionally a comment that I found especially important into a word file. It’s not difficult to go back and find an article that had info in it I want to go back and reread, but sometimes there are 50 to 100 comments to go through and that’s if you get the right article on the first try. I agree with Cassandra and Renee that it really doesn’t prevent anyone from plagiarizing Sarah’s work who really wants to, it just makes it inconvenient for the readers. I hope you will consider going back to your old setting Sarah. I really love everything else about your site and think you do awesome work.
Also, isn’t google cracking down on copying and pasting content. The bots can actually tell if you do this so the content has to be tweaked now otherwise they’ll ignore your site.
I would not use anything with Teflon in it. Not a pan, not a light bulb, not anything. It is a new artificial material that has no place on our planet or in our ecosystem.
Why do we tolerate a material that gives off fumes of that nature?
Teflon doesn’t outgas until it gets above 500º, so it is completely safe to cook under most conditions – you just don’t want to use a teflon pan if you’re searing a steak. Besides, Cast Iron is the best stuff for that kind of use anyway – if you need it red hot, then you want good heat retention too!
Lightbulbs could regularly get above the outgassing temp. Cookware isn’t going to usually, so just be aware and enjoy how easily your eggs flip in the non-stick pan.
Tim, not true.
In fact, Teflon produces deadly fumes at temperatures as low as 325F (and possibly lower).
It does not make sense to cook with this material, particularly in the name of convenience!
These are very persistent compounds in the environment, and we should know better than to release them so haphazardly for our future generations to deal with.
We can live without slippery eggs in my cookware. Really!
EWG has some good information on the subject with decent references: