Do you like this story?
Is the unexamined chicken worth keeping?
By Gina Spadafori
March 17, 2010
My friend Sue was the first person I knew to have backyard chickens. That was almost 10 years ago, and I know she did it because she grew up in a rural area and missed having chickens around.
Her two hens, Maude and Roxie, were the first chickens I’d ever met, or at least had seen as individuals with their feathers on. They were gorgeous and friendly, their eggs delicious, and at that point I have to say, the bug bit.
I wanted chickens, though it would be a while before I’d pull everything together enough to get them.
About the same time as Sue got her chickens, my mom clipped an article for me from Martha Stewart’s magazine, about Ms. Stewart’s chickens, especially the “easter-eggers” who lay green- or blue-shelled eggs.
Looking back now, I suspect it was Martha Stewart who got interest in backyard chicken-keeping going. (Although it’s not new to Ms. Stewart: Check out this picture, from 1976!)
The Martha-ness of chicken-keeping continues, and in fact I laughed out loud at a story in the New York Times over the weekend tying chicken-keeping to the our endless media fascination with well-educated urban women who married well and opted to stay home to raise a family in a home ever-so-full of “Good Things” like Martha’s.
The dateline, predictably, was Berkeley (media shorthand for “silly liberals live here” just as “San Francisco” is shorthand for “Teh Gays, they so crazy!” and any dateline in the Deep South is meant to cue the banjo music — even though all that is just the laziest of stereotyping), and the picture with the story was beyond parody: A woman just over the line into middle age, her hair pulled back except for a few wispy escapees. She is dressed in a simple aubergine frock with a no doubt fair-trade shawl thrown artfully around her shoulders. Posed in front of a weathered structure accented with lovely old-fashioned rose vines, she holds in her arms a red hen, perhaps (and I’m guessing here), a New Hampshire Red. (Oh, and note in the background, pretty blue sheets on a clothesline.)
The woman is, the story said, one of a new breed: The Femivore. Bored with the drudgery of common child-raising and house-work, she has claimed the higher ground. No Wal-Mart eggs for her brood. Why, that would be as bad as getting the little ones into the wrong preschool.
And so is a social movement that is so much broader in scope and significance neatly categorized, mocked and dismissed. In the word of the NYT contributor, it’s all so very “precious.”
After I finished laughing, the whole thing pissed me off. Because increasingly, I find that the renewed interest in where our food comes from, what’s in it and the treatment of the animals we eat is being pushed — and I don’t think it’s an accident, by the way — into the frame of what silly liberals in precious places like Berkeley do.
Because real Americans, you see, can’t afford such silliness.
About the only thing I have with in common that Times-mocked “femivore” is a New Hampshire Red hen. I don’t trip merrily past organic cotton sheets fluttering in a pool of sunlight to an artfully weathered coop to feed my chickens — I tromp in my feed-store rubber boots and an oversized men’s shirt, a WSU College of Vet Med coat thrown on for warmth on cool mornings. My chickens live in a second-hand plastic storage unit, and they lay their eggs in plastic cat carriers picked up on Freecycle.
If the author of “
The Femivore’s Dilemma” had looked beyond her circle of Berkeley friends — say, by visiting the discussion forums at BackyardChickens.com instead of just reading a little about non-Berkeleyites in a book — she’d have found the real story more wide-reaching. The new (and not-so-new) chicken-keepers are both men and women, young and old, rural and urban poor to the affluent, politically liberal to conservative religious home-schoolers — all involved in learning more about the food we eat, growing and saving what we can ourselves and re-learning the virtues of thrift (not “cheap” imported goods, but self-denial and value) and self-determination.
This is not about elite “foodies” with too much time and money — although I gotta tell you, real food tastes a lot better than the crap that gets extruded through the processors of Food Inc. — but about more people realizing that it’s healthy and flat-out satisfying to grow and to know your food. To trade veggies, chickens and eggs with friends and family, to put away good food for the winter, to support honest-to-God family farmers who respect their land and their animals, and who welcome you for a visit on their property or shake your hand in greeting at the farmers market.
And by the way: The Slow Food movement’s motto isn’t “expensive food for rich people,” but rather: “Good, clean and fair food.” For everyone.
My food expenditure is actually lower with gardening, chickens and buying local, regional and sustainable product from people I can get on the phone, or visit in person. That’s not because my food is “cheaper” — it’s certainly not, item by item — but because my diet now relies far more on vegetables, little on meat and not at all on “snacks.” Also lower is my weight, my blood sugar and my blood pressure. (That last might be because I no longer worry about melamine in anything I eat, or if any other crap put in my food legally or illegally is toxic.)
When gardening, chicken-keeping and buying food you can recognize from people you can talk to yourself is framed as something only rich liberals from Berkeley or Santa Monica or maybe the hippest parts of the new Brooklyn urban paradise would do, it pushes people who could most use real food — rural and urban poor — away from empowering themselves by growing and raising food themselves and changing their diets to match. Where do they go? Towards continuing to choose crap off the “value” menu at the fast-food chain, where the higher costs are paid in a lifetime of the fallout of poor nutrition.
That’s the true story of chickens, not aubergine frocks and bored Berkeley housewives.
***
Meanwhile, back on the microfarm …
My neighbor Judy and I “balanced” our flocks last week, trading chickens back and forth to better get the flocks we each preferred, and making our overall flocks smaller by selling some of our extras. We aren’t raising any chicks this year, since all our hens are young and laying like crazy, but next year, who knows?
We were both getting three dozen or more eggs a week, and that’s a lot. So I decided to part with my Plymouth Rock and Black Australorp, and Judy pulled three of her Red Stars — all five steady layers, and all about a year old. We sold them to a couple in the county east of us, who had a coop ready but were looking for healthy young layers to get them a jump-start on eggs.
After a week, the report back is rosy: The five hens are happy and laying like mad in their beautiful new digs, and their new family is hooked on chickens.
That just makes me happy, I gotta say.
Images, from the top:
Martha Stewart and her eggs. The green and blue eggs — and the chickens who produce them — are so identified with Ms. Stewart now than they’re often just called “Marthas.”
An incredible find — and a more incredible gift! — from regular reader Susan Fox, who included one of her own gorgeous chicken cards, which I’m framing for the office. I’m going through the publication she sent me page by page now, and wow, fascinating.
New digs for the hens Judy and I sold. Lucky chickens!
Share & Enjoy
|
Facebook
|
Twitter
|
Google Buzz
|
Digg
|
|
Technorati
|
StumbleUpon
|
Delicious
|
Email
|
Home
We raised chickens when I was growing up, fresh eggs really do taste better than store bought! I can’t help but think that a lot of our increased allergies and health problems are due to the increase in preservatives and chemicals. While I couldn’t live a Femivore lifestyle, there are some valid points made!
Comment by Marjorie Williams — March 17, 2010 @ 10:59 am
I don’t live a “femivore lifestyle” Majorie: I have chickens. That’s the point.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 11:05 am
In the rural Midwest, small flocks aren’t considered new or faddish. My grandmother kept chickens even after she moved into town. The local feed stores (that exist mostly to cater to people who actually farm for a living) carry chicks every spring and summer.
About of quarter of my neighbors have chickens. We live inside the city limits in an area zoned borderline agricultural where other livestock is allowed (and common) as well.
I haven’t raised meat birds because locally raised, free range birds are so easy to find. Chicken, turkey, duck. All the pork and lamb we eat is local, pasture-raised meat too.
In our area I see that as demand for this kind of food goes up, so does production. As Martha would say this is “a very good thing.”
Comment by Janeen — March 17, 2010 @ 11:21 am
Amen, Gina. I have four that are giving me four eggs a day and three more in the brooder. My mother’s family had chickens in NE Portland where she grew up, and my father’s family had chickens in downtown Corvallis where he grew up. I’m not bored, I want to know that the eggs I’m eating didn’t come from chickens who can’t stand up or turn around, have had their beaks cut off, and are starved when they go into molt so that they will continue to lay eggs until they’re dead. I may eat them when they need to be replaced and I’ll know what they ate before I eat them. (By the way, the “trend” is causing a new problem for the shelters in our area. We have “rescue chickens.” Seems that the idiots who don’t give any thought to their cats, dogs, and horses, haven’t given any thought to the care of chickens, either.)
Comment by C.L.H. — March 17, 2010 @ 11:21 am
(By the way, the “trend” is causing a new problem for the shelters in our area. We have “rescue chickens.” Seems that the idiots who don’t give any thought to their cats, dogs, and horses, haven’t given any thought to the care of chickens, either.)
Comment by C.L.H. — March 17, 2010 @ 11:21 am
————————-
Thank you for being the one to post that so I didn’t have to. I can’t help seeing the bad with all the good and I’m holding my breath for that same thing happening where I live.
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 11:57 am
And I do feel like a hypocrite because I’m brooding my own chicks when I could probably find a couple of rescues. But I’m worried about bringing in disease from chickens of uncertain history.
Comment by C.L.H. — March 17, 2010 @ 12:12 pm
I can’t help seeing the bad with all the good and I’m holding my breath for that same thing happening where I live.
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010
Oh … what to do with the unwanted chickens. Here’s an idea: Eat them.
My chickens are pet livestock. They are layers, not meat birds, but they are still a food source. They are not like my dogs and cats, for cultural reasons of my own choosing, to be sure.
When I say that, I know it means we’re heading into waters no one likes, of course. But even though I like and name the my chickens, I do think most of them will be feeding the dogs and cats here when they stop laying. Aside from Agatha, who’s not laying now and to judge from her legs is far older than she was represented. Agatha is my first chicken, and she runs the flock. She will be living out her natural life. I like her personality, and that’s why she and the duck don’t have to produce anything to be fed.
The others … not.
I eat chicken, and I bet that’s true of most of us here. Aside from the squeamishness we feel about discussing killing, can we agree that one of my chickens lived a better life than the overwhelming majority of chickens we buy pre-killed and already dressed for cooking?
When I move, I plan to have other, larger food animals as well. I do not have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is people who tell me (and it happens all the time) that they’d rather buy a factory farmed supermarket chicken because they “don’t have to think about where it came from.”
I think about where it came from, and make my own choices. YMMV, and surely will.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 12:48 pm
Hey Gina, that works for me.
My problem is with the people who will go into “hobby” farming of animals without thinking it through.
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 1:08 pm
My chickens are pet livestock.
You’ll get no blame from me for it. This is what I consider ideal: an easy comfortable life, and a quick and quiet death in familiar surroundings. From my own experience (now years ago) it doesn’t make it easy to kill - far from it - but then, I don’t think meat should be too easy. We ought to at least think about it and be thankful for it.
And I says it, who grew up in Berkeley. And who doesn’t live there now.
BTW, the farm we’ve a CSA share in has got in some of the prettiest chickens I’ve ever seen: silver-laced Wyandotte. Even my husband was impressed. Friendly, too.
Comment by Eucritta — March 17, 2010 @ 1:11 pm
Marymary - what I think is ridiculous is city shelters trying to adopt chickens out for $25 adoption fees. Old roosters, mangey old hens - yes, there’s probably some sucker who will take them just for pets - but why not save the euth fees and cage space and let them go for market rate as food?
Comment by Cait — March 17, 2010 @ 1:13 pm
Cait,
That is a fair question.
My species of choice is domestic rabbits, which are both a house pet and food source. There are people who make the same argument about shelter rabbits.
I guess my answer would be that if the shelter wants to save an animal, and can do the math to see if it makes some bit of sense in the bigger context (ie, do they ever place any of them in new homes), then why not?
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 1:20 pm
Marymary - because when no one takes them up on the $25 adoption fee, they just euthanize them and bemoan the irresponsibility of anyone who keeps chickens!
Comment by Cait — March 17, 2010 @ 1:25 pm
When chickens come to the shelters here, they are sent to a farm somewhere. I’m not sure what their fate is.
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 1:31 pm
Meant to add … but there will probably be an increase of “chicken” dumps, as people are currently fighting to make chicken-keeping legal in the city limits.
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 1:33 pm
This is really tough territory to work through. I’ve had to “dispatch” a few chickens here after they were left for near-dead — a couple times by what I’m guessing was a raccoon I’d seen around, or early when they were taken down by one of my own dogs — McKenzie the Merciless — before I got the fencing and wing-clipping down.
I used Dr. Patty Khuly’s method of snapping their heads down in a motion like flicking a thermometer. It was a tad horrifying the first time I did it, except that it was so easy and the hen was limp and lifeless in less than five seconds. I didn’t really have much choice: They were going to die, and I needed to end their suffering.
That said, I haven’t yet walked out and said, “This is your day” and done one in. Last year, I started out raising 50 red ranger meat birds, but after losing my father and three of McKenzie’s puppies all in a short period I found I had no more stomach for death, and I sold them all to a rancher. Their fate was the same: They ended up on a dinner table, but my hands didn’t personally end their lives. I was ready to do that.
So, yes, I intend to turn most of my pampered poultry into dog/cat food and soup when their egg-laying days are behind them. And yes, I have ended the lives of a few chickens when I had to. But I have yet to kill in a premeditated fashion, although I suspect when I’m ready to, I will. And after that, it’ll be easier.
As for the chickens in the shelter … around here, at least, there’s no shortage of people who will take free birds and kill them for food. They are immigrants (Latin American, Asian and eastern European) who grew up in a culture that thought nothing of keeping chickens both for eggs and meat. On Sunday mornings here in Sacramento, you can go downtown to the Asian farmers market, pick out a chicken and have it slaughtered, butchered and wrapped to go.
I’m not thinking those chickens lived a life like mine do, frankly, although the small scale family farmers who brought them to market probably did better by them than a concentrated animal feeding operation does.
OK, now … rabbits. I absolutely, positively know that for many, rabbits fall in the pets and meat category, same as chickens. And in a lot of Europe, you can find rabbit at the meat counter just as you find chicken, with no fanfare. But you can also find horsemeat, and I’m not buying that, either.
What I’m coming around to, myself, and yes, again, it’s purely arbitrary, is that I’ll eat and feed to my dogs/cats any humanely and sustainably raised animal that I myself would raise and (theoretically, at least at this point) am willing to slaughter for the freezer. That means chicken, ducks, turkeys, cattle, sheep and goats, but not horses or rabbits. I’m not comfortable with killing pigs, so I don’t eat pork.
Yes, it’s arbitrary and largely cultural in nature. But whatever animals I do eat and feed to my dogs/cats, they are not going to be treated like unfeeling meat machines in a factory farm.
Again, it’s just what works for me.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 2:30 pm
My thing with the shelter chickens is this — if a person took them to the shelter instead of killing them or selling them to a farm for food … if a person took them there so that they’d be adopted out as pets, isn’t it the shelter’s responsibility to honor that?
Or else get out of the chicken business?
Otherwise, beyond US cultural taboos, why not sell the cats and dogs at “meat rate” to the immigrants, such as Chinese, who might choose to buy them for meat?
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 3:27 pm
That’s a wonderful point, and having people bring in “pet” chickens really does put a shelter in a no-win situation.
As far as the dog/cats go, the cultural taboos (and laws, for that matter) against killing them for food in this country makes it a moot point what the culture of any immigrant population believes to be an appropriate food animal.
NO shelter would last a day selling animals that the majority of Americans and the preponderance of American culture sees as pets out the back door as food. The torches and pitchforks would be lined up to chase that shelters management out of town by the end of the first day such a policy became common knowledge.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 3:37 pm
NO shelter would last a day selling animals that the majority of Americans and the preponderance of American culture sees as pets out the back door as food. The torches and pitchforks would be lined up to chase that shelters management out of town by the end of the first day such a policy became common knowledge.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 3:37 pm
Yes, but wouldn’t it inspire some amazing debates in the meantime?
One of the reasons I finally got VERY serious about acknowledging the source of my meat — and either choosing to ignore my dismay/disgust or to make inconvenient changes — was the Vick case.
I would read blog comments (not here) arguing that it was hypocritical to care so much about pit bulls when I ate meat from animals raised in factory farms … and ya know, it bugged me and bugged me and bugged me until I had to admit that they were right.
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 3:44 pm
I chose my birds as “dual purpose” and as per Joel Salatin, I will be slaughtering two year olds as soon as the new layers are laying. I’m only allowed six birds and I want them laying regularly. I will not be running a retirement home for aged hens. My thought was, “What on earth is a rescue chicken, but stew?” But it is a tough thing. For a lot of backyard chicken keepers, they are pets who happen to provide eggs. It’s a problem with horses, also. Lots of people eat them. As a general rule, we don’t in this country. Most people view them as pets. A lot of people view them as working livestock. But we have indiscriminate backyard breeding and too many and then we have the slaughter debate. That’s what happens when livestock become backyard pets. I would have to agree with Mary Mary. If a chicken came to a shelter, the previous owner’s wishes should be respected. But people who don’t think through the ownership of any animal are going continue to be a burden on shelters.
Comment by C.L.H. — March 17, 2010 @ 3:49 pm
Isn’t there anyone willing to adopt nonproductive chickens? I’m surprised. Perhaps they don’t know how good they are at keeping down bugs in a garden? How friendly they can be? How pleasant their sounds are?
If chickens were legal in my neighborhood, I’d adopt a couple in a shot, eggs or no. Ducks and geese no, but chickens, sure thing.
Comment by Eucritta — March 17, 2010 @ 3:54 pm
That certainly is the most popular argument to support ethical veganism: Why is eating a dog or cat off limits when eating a very intelligent animal such as a pig is not?
Except … no one gets out of this argument blame free. The fields that are harvested to produce the soy that vegans rely on for their protein are fields of death: Countless live beings from nesting birds and rabbits to gazillions of invertebrates are (literally) mowed down.
Fact is: If you’re alive, something else is dying to keep you that way.
Everyone must decide for himself or herself. My own point of view is generally that prey animals who are not used in partnership with people (such as horses) are OK to eat, as long as they’re not tortured their whole lives to get onto my plate. Other apex predators are not OK. And then I add generally used as pets to my off-limits list, such as domestic rabbits. (Got no problem with wild hare, though.)
We get to debate these things because we’re the ones with the big brains and opposable thumbs. Lucky us.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 3:56 pm
20.Isn’t there anyone willing to adopt nonproductive chickens? I’m surprised. Perhaps they don’t know how good they are at keeping down bugs in a garden? How friendly they can be? How pleasant their sounds are?
Comment by Eucritta — March 17, 2010 @ 3:54 pm
Also manure.
I have a guy who comes every few weeks to get bags of bunny poop from me for his garden. I have six litter boxes here. WAY more fertilizer than I need.
Comment by Mary Mary — March 17, 2010 @ 3:59 pm
My fear is that eventually we won’t get to decide what meat we want to eat. With chickens becoming backyard “pets” what’s to stop one of my neighbors from calling the authorities when I slaughter a chicken because they view it as inhumane? They may be put on the same level as dogs and cats.
Comment by C.L.H. — March 17, 2010 @ 4:00 pm
I gotta say, with the percentage of self-identified vegans at less than 1 percent and the broader category vegetarians at about 10 percent, I’m not that worried about the future of having meat as much as I am about the future of sustainably and humanely produced meat being available once the current surge of interest passes. Big ag and the animal rights movement can fend for themselves and slug it out forever. But small family farmers? I wonder.
And by they way, to judge from the discussion, the answer to the question: Is the unexamined chicken worth keeping? is clearly “no.”
:)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 4:08 pm
If you head over to “Fugly” today the discussion is on eating whale and horse meat and what constitutes an acceptable meat to eat. Some of the same thoughts are being expressed over there.
Comment by C.L.H. — March 17, 2010 @ 4:23 pm
I have to wonder how likely it is that neighbors would interfere anyway. Most of the time where I’ve lived, people have tended to mind their own business. Where I’m at now I doubt anyone would kick up a fuss at chicken slaughter, so long as it didn’t raise a ruckus, their noses weren’t rubbed in it, and offal wasn’t left out to rot.
Comment by Eucritta — March 17, 2010 @ 4:39 pm
From Simone de Beauvoir Made Me Keep Chickens by Elizabeth Nolan Brown: “[W]hy does everything women do – and I was going to say outside the realm of paid work, but really, it’s everything: working, not-working, part-time work, hobbies, etc. – have to be considered as a reaction to or against “feminism?” Why can’t we accept that there have, are and always will be myriad ways for arranging domestic, social and professional life, and the periodic, cyclical “discovery” of them by magazine or style section reporters says close to nothing about the state of gender relations, the nature of egalitarianism, feminism or the rejection thereof?” H/T to Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish for this one.
Comment by Luisa — March 17, 2010 @ 5:50 pm
Awesomesauce, Luisa. With a cherry on top.
I guess this NYT piece and its silly picture really did set a lot of women’s teeth on edge: http://www.doublex.com/blog/xx.....-isnt-farm
And by the way, speaking of the other “foodies,” that in the dog-training sense (“foodies” being the mildly snarky term self-described “balanced trainers” give to the purely positive kind.) … if I have one more
“R+ trainer” ask me if I have clicker trained any of my chickens to do tricks, I will barf.
I have dogs to train. I have chickens to lay eggs. Kthnx.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
I’m not a foodie, but I trained my chickens to come when I call. Having a somewhat sick sense of humor, I call “Who tastes like chicken?” And they run to me like a pack of happy puppies.
I also trained my rooster to hop up on my arm.
But I didn’t use a clicker. Or an electronic training collar (I couldn’t find one small enough…)
Comment by Janeen — March 17, 2010 @ 6:53 pm
My entire flock comes running to the tune of “Good Night, Ladies” from “The Music Man.”
Except the duck, of course. She’s too cool for that.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 17, 2010 @ 6:58 pm
Oh, *ouch.* I should’ve known Amanda Marcotte would have something snarky to say about Orenstein’s article. Lovely - thanks for the link.
Comment by Eucritta — March 17, 2010 @ 8:12 pm
I’m stealing your phrase ‘pet livestock’ Gina. That so describes my chickens and goats-I’ve already told little (goat)Francine that I’m not going to be sorry to eat her ‘cause she’s so loud!
And I liked Sharon Astyk’s take on the article http://scienceblogs.com/casaub....._issue.php -she points out that a femivore is actually someone who eats women. Maybe think before you make up words next time, New York Times person?
Comment by redheather — March 18, 2010 @ 6:27 am
a femivore is actually someone who eats women. Maybe think before you make up words next time, New York Times person?
Comment by redheather — March 18, 2010
Oh, that’s utterly, uh, delicious!
I would think Peggy Orenstein might by now be very sorry she wrote that shallow piece of nonsense … except for the cashing of the check, of course.
Love this graph from the link you gave:
By the way, redheather, that’s a blog I’d not seen before, and I’m so glad to know of it now.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 18, 2010 @ 6:34 am
Sweet.
Yah, I was under the impression that the whole point of feminism was that everybody gets to live his or her life, and pursue his or her passions and interests, without reference to biological or cultural determinism.You get to choose what interests you and what kind of life you want to lead.
Which is why no one — literally NO ONE — thinks it is weird or girly that PC does most of the day-to-day cooking, or strange and manly that I work as a dog trainer. And we aren’t eggzactly living in Berserkely here.
That wouldn’t have been true forty years ago. Wasn’t true. My Dad did a lot of cooking. This was aberrant. My infant obsession with animals was labeled “tomboy” behavior. Whatever. The feminist movement was about kicking off that perception of aberration.
If I say that our farm is a singular dream that goes back to when one of us was a little KID — which kid was that? Who cares?
If we are part of what the media considers a fad, then it’s a fad that also goes back forty years. Much longer. Those Rodale books on my grandfather’s shelves were ancient and well-worn when I was just old enough to crack them and start reading about composting and cabbages.
The Grey Lady can kiss my Carhartt-clad ass.
But I am going to hang some blue (plaid) sheets on the line today.
Electric dryers are expensive to run.
Comment by H. Houlahan — March 18, 2010 @ 6:34 am
Houlie, I was just WAITING for you to pop in on this.
Plaid sheets? Oh my! They are sooo 2002. Please stop in to your nearest Williams-Sonoma store and get that fixed, will ya?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 18, 2010 @ 6:40 am
I thought about adopting when I was going to add a couple hens to my flock….but the rescue group’s adoption terms specifically prohibited using the chickens for egg production. I thought that was weird.
Comment by Joy — March 19, 2010 @ 4:50 am
How on earth would you stop a chicken from laying eggs? Or would you just not be allowed to eat them?
That is mind boggling weird.
Comment by redheather — March 19, 2010 @ 7:18 am
Another sad sign of the total disconnect we have in understanding where food comes from.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 19, 2010 @ 7:28 am
Wow! Just Wow. Well, I suppose someone from PETA would tell me my chickens are imprisoned and enslaved in their coop just so I can have a nice quiche once in awhile.
Comment by C.L.H. — March 19, 2010 @ 7:36 am
How much does a chicken spay cost?
Or do you just shove a cork up there?
Comment by H. Houlahan — March 19, 2010 @ 7:37 am
The chicken rescue groups I’ve spoken to (tried to have a reasonable conversation with) argued that they want the chickens to be pets and not “just food machines”. Of course slaughter is COMPLETELY out of the question but what shocked me most was that they honestly felt that an animal kept for (as they put it) “egg production” was somehow going to be mistreated. I don’t see how they could enforce this rule anyway…I guess I could have just promised to never eat the eggs? But then, I asked, what are adopters supposed to do with the eggs? Let the hen sit on them? But then, (gasp!), there could be chicks!
I can’t even find the words here. Just weird.
Funny thing is, they had a bake sale fundraiser. I got curious and checked into it. Egg-free goodies? Nope. Explain that to me. Just Weird.
I could have gone on about how all the food they fed to the rescued dogs and cats contained chicken as one of the main ingredients….but I didn’t.
Comment by Joy — March 20, 2010 @ 5:31 am
I was just looking online at one of the bigger, well-known chicken rescue groups. It’s called Chicken Run Rescue. According to their website, they’re sponsored under the tax umbrella of the Animal Rights Coalition.
Comment by Joy — March 20, 2010 @ 5:55 am
To be fair. I think the above mentioned rescue group allows adopters to eat eggs (just not sell them or let them hatch). This is *not* one of the rescue groups I’ve personally ever tried to adopt from…but the adoption rule language was similar.
Comment by Joy — March 20, 2010 @ 6:01 am
“Allow the to eat eggs.”
How very generous of them!
As for not letting them hatch … so they’re promoting chicken abortions?
I can’t tell you how many rescuers, etc., are vegans who feed the nastiest of cheap kibble to their dogs and cats. Foods that surely have the remains of the worst-treated chicken in the world. My neighbors are like that. Thet told me they “try not to think about it.”
Me, I think about it. And because I do, I make conscious choices that ensure better lives for more food animals.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 20, 2010 @ 6:41 am
Gina, yes, you *think*…that’s what we need more of in this world, people thinking. :-)
I actually had this conversation with a vegan acquaintance who was very upset with me for promoting the idea of backyard chickens through my store. She was unbelievably angry with me. I was actually kind of shocked. I tried so hard to explain how if more people went back to keeping chickens in their yards, less people would be buying factory farmed food. She just insisted that chickens should be “free” and never used for anything.
In that same conversation she admitted that she buys “whatever is on sale” in the Walmart pet food aisle but said that’s different because it was going to a “good cause”; her rescued cats. Huh? I got so confused I just ended the conversation with a polite bow-out.
Comment by Joy — March 20, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
I made a snarky comment above how purely positive always ask me if I’ve trained my chickens to do tricks, and how my head would explode the next time.
In a behavoral session at the vet conf where the presenter had just offered her third chicken example. Aiiiyeeee!
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 20, 2010 @ 3:38 pm