11 April 2010

I love it when someone else makes my point


I just found this on Design Sponge and it relates perfectly to my post about urban chicken husbandry.
It might also be worthwhile to go ahead and give some thought to who might be willing to take care of your birds when you are away on vacation, or out late at night for a soiree or late-show at the theater. Chickens need care and attention just like any other domesticated animal and it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll find someone offering “chicken-sitting” services in your area. Make sure you’ve got a neighbor, or family member, or fellow chicken aficionado willing to steward your flock in your absence. Fortunately, we’ve got neighbors and friends alike willing to lock “The Ladies” up when a dinner party keeps us from getting home at sunset or a family excursion to Florida or jaunt to San Francisco takes us away for a week or two (a wide range of predators find your chickens just as alluring as you do, but for very different reasons; protect them accordingly). Find your ace in the hole and secure it in advance.
That paragraph is aimed at a very specific reader. A reader who's wildly unprepared for the kind of non-emotional decisions that have to be made when it comes to raising livestock. How's that reader going to react when he or she realizes that it's impossible to sex chicks with 100% accuracy? This person's going to order a bunch of chicks and believe it when they are labeled as females. In about three months, this reader's going to realize that 20% of her hens are roosters and they'll need to be dispatched.

It's not like they can be put up for adoption.

2 comments:

  1. THANK YOU. I live way out in the country (and am SO OVER the "charms" of country living) and had chickens for a while, and I can tell you it was not pleasant or fun or rewarding in any way except that the few eggs they provided were indeed far better than store-bought. But the eggs weren't worth the squalling and squawking nor (especially) the destruction these nasty creatures wrought upon every patch of green in my yard, digging heartlessly for bugs and tearing up whole plants in the process. One by one they flew the coop right into the neighbor's yard where they were quickly dispatched by the dogs they could have avoided if they'd had half a brain. {end rant about chickens}

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  2. Thanks for your story Anna. I had a rural childhood and I'm grateful I did. It taught me from a very early age that romanticizing rural life and attributing human emotional lives to livestock is a mistake. Farm life is hard!

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