Fred's Hens wrote:
"An Old Timer isn't likely to ever take a chicken to a vet and spend $150. That chicken would be culled and if the Old Timer had an extra $150, he/she would just get 25 chicks and have enough money to feed them out to replace the one sick bird, and still have enough to buy their spouse a pizza and a beer. Easy chicken math that."
Fred's Hens wrote:
"Brood chicks out in the garage, in a shed, or in the barn, or least in your mud room or back porch for goodness sakes. Chicks do not have to be brooded indoors, giving everyone cast iron lungs, sinus allergies and rooms that must look like someone shook out a flour sack. The entire brooder does not need to be 95F. Stop putting so much sugary crap in the water and cooking chicks in little suffocating plastic totes where the temps are 95-100 degrees and 99% of the posts of "Oh No!! My chick has pasty poop butt, what should I do?" would go away."
Fred's Hens wrote:
Is anyone else a gardener? Then you already know that if you live near the Canadian border that you cannot grow Bermuda or St Augustine grass for a lawn or plant southern Azaleas bushes, citrus trees, or grow some of the vegetables that southern gardeners grow. It wouldn't do any good for me to plant 140 days sweet corn, or peppers that need a certain heat to produce well. I accept where I live. We are professional, market selling, organic gardeners and I know which varieties I can grow well, which are risky, and which I should never even bother with, considering our 100-105 day growing zone.
I am not going to keep dainty chickens this far north. I'm not going to be running a heat lamp on them for pity's sake. If I bring home and try to raise certain breeds, shame on me. I would consider myself irresponsible. My grandparents kept chickens in this state in the late 1800's and their parents before them in the mid 1800's. No one could have imagined Thomas Edison's future invention of the light bulb, to say nothing of an electric heater of some kind.
I can whine, worry or fret about the climate in which I choose to farm and keep a flock, or I can accept it, gain some wisdom, practice a lot of common sense and succeed as our fore-parents did before us. This is a state of mind, for the most part, a world view and I've found it helpful over the years.
"An Old Timer isn't likely to ever take a chicken to a vet and spend $150. That chicken would be culled and if the Old Timer had an extra $150, he/she would just get 25 chicks and have enough money to feed them out to replace the one sick bird, and still have enough to buy their spouse a pizza and a beer. Easy chicken math that."
Fred's Hens wrote:
"Brood chicks out in the garage, in a shed, or in the barn, or least in your mud room or back porch for goodness sakes. Chicks do not have to be brooded indoors, giving everyone cast iron lungs, sinus allergies and rooms that must look like someone shook out a flour sack. The entire brooder does not need to be 95F. Stop putting so much sugary crap in the water and cooking chicks in little suffocating plastic totes where the temps are 95-100 degrees and 99% of the posts of "Oh No!! My chick has pasty poop butt, what should I do?" would go away."
Fred's Hens wrote:
Is anyone else a gardener? Then you already know that if you live near the Canadian border that you cannot grow Bermuda or St Augustine grass for a lawn or plant southern Azaleas bushes, citrus trees, or grow some of the vegetables that southern gardeners grow. It wouldn't do any good for me to plant 140 days sweet corn, or peppers that need a certain heat to produce well. I accept where I live. We are professional, market selling, organic gardeners and I know which varieties I can grow well, which are risky, and which I should never even bother with, considering our 100-105 day growing zone.
I am not going to keep dainty chickens this far north. I'm not going to be running a heat lamp on them for pity's sake. If I bring home and try to raise certain breeds, shame on me. I would consider myself irresponsible. My grandparents kept chickens in this state in the late 1800's and their parents before them in the mid 1800's. No one could have imagined Thomas Edison's future invention of the light bulb, to say nothing of an electric heater of some kind.
I can whine, worry or fret about the climate in which I choose to farm and keep a flock, or I can accept it, gain some wisdom, practice a lot of common sense and succeed as our fore-parents did before us. This is a state of mind, for the most part, a world view and I've found it helpful over the years.
