Colored chicks mostly male?

SarahInAlaska

Songster
6 Years
Apr 2, 2013
260
10
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I went to pick up pullets right before Easter and was disgusted and appalled at the condition they were being kept in. The lady also had way more dyed chicks than she could get rid of (I'm still seeing her post ads for them on Craigslist.). I picked out five if them and even the one I thought would die that first night they have all made it. I'm not going to keep roosters in my flock (there's no laws against it but I'm pretty close to neighbors and don't want to cause problems since we are new to the neighborhood.). Someone told me yesterday that most dyed chicks are roosters. Is that true? My favorite is the yellow one who's a bantam (has fuzzy feet!) and is the one I thought would die. I'd hate to have to give him up.
 
Hmm...I have only known one dyed chick given as a fair prize but it turned out to be a big pretty rooster
 
It depends on how they were dyed. If it was the egg injection technique, they'll be straight run since there is no telling from the egg what gender chick it contains. If they were sprayed and dried after hatching, they could be straight run or surplus males or sexed pullets (not likely!)
 
Somewhere I read an article where some humane society seized some like 40 dyed chicks from a pet store and they said they were about a 50/50 mix...
I honestly don't see the big deal... Coloring the chicks doesn't hurt them and a chicken doesn't really have to be a lasting commitment, you can always eat them. It's not like getting a cute puppy and then deciding the cute wore off... But if the glamour of chickens wears off just turn them into nuggets...
I don't get it. Shelters say that they get a lot chickens because its trendy to keep chickens now, and that people decide they don't want them anymore... Why not process said birds and give them to the homeless or something?
Basically I want to know why someone would not just eat their chickens should they tire of chicken keeping?
 
Dying chicks encourages people to get them just because they are cute. It is exactly like those who get a cute puppy then neglect or abandon it when they loose interest - we are not speaking of people who are likely to process a bird, but impulsive short-thinkers who have no idea of how to care for a chick.
 
I guess, but why do shelters keep the birds... Why not just turn them into food for the poor? I guess I just don't understand people not eating chickens
 
It's the processing part that gets in the way. For a shelter to donate a chicken to a food kitchen, they'd need to transport the bird to a facility that will process it using approved sanitation standards and then donate the prepared bird. It would be horribly inefficient even if they convince the processor to donate their time. So, unless they have a large number of unwanted chickens and a deal with a processor, I don't see it happening.

Now, why don't local farmers contact shelters and offer to take unwanted chickens? I wouldn't want to expose my layers to all of those strays but if you have someplace to take them to process right away, it's free meat!
 
This one shelter was just making it sound like the worlds latest imposition and that the new chicken keeping craze was the worst thing for animals since the movie 101 Dalmatians, or airbud...
 
Thanks for the info! We actually get a lot of chickens into our local animal shelter. I'd venture to guess a good few are escapees from homes and the rest are exactly what was described. Craigslist had been flooded recently with older chicks that have lost their cuteness. And I just recently got 3 birds that had originally been a preschool incubation project until those chicks also lost their cuteness. I think as far as farmers go, our shelter charges a fee to adopt chickens and I can see a farmer balking at paying money for a bird of unknown health and breeding when he can spend it on several good birds. I remember reading a thread in here about my local shelter. A woman ended up adopting a chicken after being appalled at its treatment. It had been there for a month and was infested with mites. It was also wrongly labeled as a rooster despite being a hen. I can see not wanting to pay money for that when you could get plenty of healthy chicks. I think what needs to happen is something needs to be done to stop people like the lady I came across who had boxes stacked on boxes overflowing with chicks with not enough heat lamps, filthy bedding and not enough food and water for them all and no chick grit at all. Every chick had some level of poop blockage in their butt. There were 50 colored chicks alone in one box. After leaving and talking to others I heard her described as a hoarder. My friend got chicks from her and two didn't even make it through the night. So I totally understand why some are opposed to chick dying. It really doesn't do the chicken world many favors.
 

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