Trending
McALISTERVILLE – Naomi Leitzel decided she wasn’t too “chicken” to enter her first photography contest.
It’s a good thing, because the Juniata Mennonite School third grader is the first child photographer to have her photo published in the Biosecurity for Birds Calendar by United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The photo appears for the month of January in the 2016 calendar.
Last winter Naomi and younger brother, Connor, now 6, went outside to take some snow photos. Naomi clutched her mom’s $99 Canon camera and snapped away at the white outdoors. While she was outside, she couldn’t help but notice one of the family’s chickens sitting in the snow with her feathers puffed out.
Naomi snapped the picture of the bird, appropriately named “Fluffy,” and showed her family.
The silkie frizzle hen was so photogenic, that family members suggested she enter the USDA PHIS calendar contest for fun.
Naomi and her family live in far eastern Juniata County and have a Liverpool address. Their backyard is home to two dozen backyard chickens, guineas and ducks. Mom Cara Leitzel enjoys crossbreeding the birds. Naomi is responsible for egg collecting, and she enjoys making the chickens her pets – even though they end up on a dinner table eventually.
Naomi and Connor have named the birds based on their appearance. Fluffy lived up to her name.
On that particular snowy day, Naomi said the chicken “looked like she got blow-dried by a hair drier.”
Other members of the Leitzel poultry family include “Snowball,” and “Little White Guy.”
Sometimes, however, the chickens face their demise before they are even taken to be butchered.
Thus was the case with “Fluffy.”
The dark-feathered chicken met her fate courtesy of a determined raccoon, Cara assumed.
The family was dismayed when their calendar girl’s remains were found a few weeks ago inside the pen.
“All that was left was intestines and feathers,” Cara noted, adding no skeletal remains were left behind.
A more recent spike in Avian flu has ruffled the feathers of many backyard flock owners, said Joelle Hayden, public affairs specialist for APHIS.
Hayden, along with poultry health expert Chrislyn Wood with USDA APHIS, visited Juniata Mennonite School to present Naomi with her calendar, and brought additional copies for those at the school.
The purpose of the calendar is to create awareness about such diseases as the bird flu.
“We want to spread the word of backyard biosecurity,” Hayden said.
Inside the calendar there are three easy steps presented to backyard bird care: Look, Report, and Protect.
Approximately 100,000 calendars are printed and can be ordered for free on the website: healthybirds.aphis.usda.gov.