YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett

You know, now that I think about it...the part of Bosnia I was in didn't seem to have that many birds...chickens...turkeys...ect...ect.

It wasn't like some other places I've been. Where I'm at now is full of chickens. You can't step outside your door without nearly stepping on one.

I hope this is a good thing for Bosnia. I saw a few birds but nothing like in other countries. I wonder why this is?

And thanks for your comments on my year anniversary. Wow, a year! How time flys by!

John
 

Well when i was in Sarajevo, the area I was in there was right by some smaller apartment buidings a tiny farm, I mean the whole thing was under two acres. The owners kept one cow, they had a huge number of chickens. The chickens got loose all the time, they were some breed common to the region.
I also saw chickens and goats on the bus trip I took between Sarajevo and Mostar, and I can say I saw chickens loose in a village on a bus trip I made through Republika Srpska. The thing about chickens is they are a fairly economical domestic animal, but it takes time to establish a decent flock of them.
There are swans in most parks in the region. The one park that I went to in Sarajevo, still had areas that needed to be de-mined but there was a nice pond with a lot of swans. The rough winter this year caused swans which normally spend winter in the Balkans to go isntead to Italy, perhaps swans I enjoyed seeing in Sarajevo carried bird flu to Italy!
A lot of birds die in such a bad winter anyway, and flu isn't necessarily the cause, so all dead birds end up being tested if people find them.
The problme is when wild birds come into contact with domestic birds. The flu thing anyway seems to be mostly in China, pigs get it, then the ducks and geese on the same farm get it, next thing you know the chickens get it. They may get it in the first place from wild birds.
If dometic poultry are sheltered enough, which almost never happens in most of the Balkans, then odds of domestic fowl getting it are low. If the birds are sheltered then they don't get it. This means they have to even be protected from the droppings of wild birds.
The virus can live three weeks in bird droppings in the winter months.
People in Bosnia don't seem to eat a lot of turkey. I've only ever seen a few recipes from the whole region for turkey. I saw a Romanian recipe once, and one from Slovenia, one from Slavonia, the northern part of Croatia. People there do eat geese and ducks, but not as much as they eat chicken.