Wonderful update @pipdzipdnreadytogo ! I am sorry you suffer with such anxiety,it can be crippling for sure, I struggle myself. Some days just breathing is too much.
Beautiful photos, ❤ thanks for sharing! Your birds and cat are simply adorable!!
Thanks again and take care of your dear self!
Thank you for the update Pip. I've struggled with many of the same issues. They never go away, but I've become more confident which helps.
Your cochins are gorgeous. And Casper is beyond ridiculously adorable. I had a blue point Himalayan years ago. They are great cats. Give him a chin scratch from me.
Pip, great update and loved seeing the pictures! Thank you for taking the time to do this.
Nice update!** UPDATE on @pipdzipdnreadytogo 09-29-23 **
It's been a few years since @pipdzipdnreadytogo's interview, it's time to catch up!
Let me start with a little bit of a reintroduction. Pretty much everyone I interact with online knows me as Pip these days, everywhere except here where I've left the d on the end of my nickname because, well, there are still a few other 'Pips' around BYC! Outside of my family, I now generally prefer that those who know me by my real name shorten it just to K. I am still the nature-loving, genetics-studying, serial-lurking bird nerd I was in the original interview. I've certainly matured quite a bit since then, at least I'd like to think so, but for the most part I don't think I've changed too much as a person. However, a whole lot has changed in my life!
For one, I've been on one heck of a roller coaster with my mental health over all this time! I mentioned in the original interview that I was very, very shy. That's, well, mostly the same I guess! But I've since learned that that is because I have pretty severe social anxiety. I tend to be a very private person in general so I tried to keep this to myself and, possibly as a result, I had begun to close myself away from the world for a bit because even a small and simple post in a thread, even if I was already a participant in it, was causing me too much anxiety to send. It has been years of fighting, struggling, desperately trying to drag myself out of that pit. Today, I can say I'm in a much better place mentally, but acknowledge that I have a long way to go still. Anxiety still tries to control my life, and I still have to work hard to prevent it from taking over again. I do still have my moments where I get too anxious to actually post things I write out or too anxious to do things I know I need to do. Finishing and sending in this interview update had me on and off anxious and second guessing for days! But I am getting better at not letting my anxiety take over, and a bit of openness about my struggles combined with the overwhelming support of some very good friends has helped immensely.
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I graduated with a bachelor's of science in ecology and evolutionary biology in late 2018. That was really when my mental health struggles began, mostly because I did not feel like I had a direction in life at that point, or at least a direction that I was happy with. See, I went to college because, well, that's just what you do after high school, right? But I really didn't know what I wanted to do and, while I enjoyed my studies immensely, I didn't find that I necessarily enjoyed the kind of work that my degree set me up to do. I've done a lot of reflecting this year, figured some things out, and just recently decided to go back to school next year for a degree in a career field I feel I'd be more content doing for the rest of my life. So the next few years are bound to be exciting, scary, and very, very busy for me!
As far as the chickens go, I still consider most of them pets. But, things have changed just a little bit with them as well. Mainly, I started hatching, and of course from that stemmed a need for some way of reliably thinning down cockerel numbers. So, I started having my extras processed for the table. I cannot overstate how much I love my boys, and how hard it is for me to do this every time, but at the end of the day there just is not enough demand in my area to find homes for cockerels, and no way for me to keep them all. This does go hand in hand with my ongoing goal to eat better, eat more locally, avoid supporting high-intensity animal farming practices, and work toward growing and raising more of my own food. Their lives are never taken without purpose.
What I consider the biggest change in how I keep my birds, however, started not that long after the original interview. That fall, I came across someone only a few hours' drive from me who was selling out of their silkied Cochin bantams. That was a variety I'd only seen in a hand full of pictures across the internet and I had fallen in love with them, but I never dreamed that I would ever actually own them! Years passed and, as those original birds and their offspring aged and lost fertility, I struggled to find any more silkied Cochins to continue working with... Up until another user posted that that was what they were hatching for the 2020 BYC.
Easter Hatchalong, that is!After finally finding another farm to buy more birds from through that user, I decided I never again wanted to experience that helpless feeling of watching a beloved variety age and fade away like that, feeling as if I might never see them again once they were gone. So after a ton of research, I've set up breeding pens, done a whole lot of hatching, and, I guess officially at this point, I breed silkied Cochin bantams with a goal of preserving and raising awareness of the variety, and perhaps even helping them get accepted into the standard one day.
This thread serves as my log of my line and its progress: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/breeding-silkied-cochin-bantams-to-the-standard.1555327/
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At this point, I imagine I'll have put any readers to sleep, so I'll wrap it up with this: In the original interview I had said that, despite having many different kinds of pets over the years, I'd never had one that I grew as attached to as I had with some of my birds. I don't think I can say that any longer. You see, one day back in October of 2021, this dirty, scruffy, burr-covered critter showed up near the coop and, well, long story short that little thief has absolutely stolen my heart and the hearts of pretty much everyone he has met since! My beautiful, fluffy, and completely ridiculous cat, Casper.https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/its-time-for-me-to-admit-i-have-a-problem.1508954/
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