> I am raising cornish rock cross chickens on pasture in portable pens.
> I am getting a lot of chickens that have breast tumors. What causes
> this and how to I correct it without antibiotics?
I have recently been reading a lot about hormone mimics or estrogen
mimics. Many
studies are finding that these hormone mimics, which are believed to be
just about
everywhere now, can drastically interfere with fetal and reproductive
development.
It is believed that many hormone mimics are released from plastics,
leaching into foods,
water, etc... In a book by Soto et al. entitled "Our Stolen Future" which
discusses the
hormone mimics, there is an example of a research team that was studying breast
cells. Suddenly, prolific breast cancerous cells were appearing in their
cultures. They
eventually located the contamination and found it was due to the plastics
in the
eppendorf tubes leaching nonylphenol estrogen mimic hormones.
Do you feed and/or water your animals with plastic containers? How much
plastic are
they likely to be exposed to over the long run? It's a long shot, I know.
As for treating the breast tumors - only if the tumors are caused by a
bacteria can they be
treated with an antibiotic.
-- Lelia and Courtney Elliston Farm, Weston, Mass. http://www.nmia.com/~lelia