Dumbest Things People Have Said About Your Chickens/Eggs/Meat

[chickenboy100]

Pass the hat, I have a project! We buy a thousand WL roos, raise them to 5-6 months and air drop them to the middle of Portland Oregon. There will be crowing, fighting, pooping roosters everywhere. See h

Not sure how to take that.... :/

 

[LavLady]

Yeah thats what I get for typing it from a phone, lol. It was supposed to read "see how many make it through a week."

My point is nobody wants to kill the roos, but nobody wants to live with them either.

 

[chickenboy100]

Yeah thats what I get for typing it from a phone, lol. It was supposed to read "see how many make it through a week."

My point is nobody wants to kill the roos, but nobody wants to live with them either.

 

[PrairieChickens]

There was a time not that long ago when roosters hatched on egg farms were raised to butchering weight and sold for meat. These days, that is no longer the practice because cornish cross are so much more profitable. There's nothing wrong with the birds--they could still be raised for meat, but it's just not profitable enough. Not "not profitable", mind you--not profitable enough.

The reason this bothers me is because I grew up poor. REALLY poor. You did NOT waste food in our family, and this is waste on an epic scale. It seems to me that at least some of those roosters could be raised up and used for meat. Sure, they wouldn't produce like a cornish cross, but at 200 million chicks being culled per year, that's a lot of meat no matter what breed it is.

In an ideal world, unwanted chickens would be donated to either individuals or farms so that they could be raised up to butchering weight and then processed and given to families in need. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, and profit (rather than sustainability) continues to drive most of our actions.

 

[Desert]

I've had those conversations, too!
I love to laugh about it afterward but I HATE having to grin and bear it when someone starts prattling on with that junk.

Last month it was, "I saw a hawk, therefore, ALL of your chickens are doomed and they will be eaten."

Keep in mind this person has never raised chickens, but apparently they are an expert and I am just a dumb novice.

On a sidenote, how cool would it be to have a chicken that was about 4' tall, something so big you could walk it on a leash like a dog? Wouldn't that just scare the holy crap out of those people?

 

[LavLady]

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I would like to point out that if those were raised up they would be more expensive. Higher cost, lower quality product. The sad fact is that itt would not help the poor.

 

[PrairieChickens]

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I would like to point out that if those were raised up they would be more expensive. Higher cost, lower quality product. The sad fact is that itt would not help the poor.

Like I said, raised to butchering weight, then donated to families in need. Most poor families live in areas where they wouldn't be able to keep chickens, so it would do little good to just donate them straight to the needy families and say "here you go--now raise it!"

I have to disagree entirely with "higher cost, lower quality", though. For thousands of years, chickens were raised on range and scraps. The only reason we are so dependent on commercial feeds for meat birds relates back to the "profit first and foremost" mentality. Although feeds for chicks and laying hens are genuinely beneficial to the long-term health of the chickens, when it comes to chickens being butchered for meat, the feed is formulated to make them grow bigger faster. There's no reason "donated" roosters couldn't be fed what's available to make the most of materials that would otherwise go to waste.

As for "lower quality", that's not true at all. Lower quantity perhaps, but the quality would be--at the very least--as good as conventionally-raised meat, if not better. Just because something is bigger doesn't mean it's higher quality. Aside from the taste, chicken raised the "old fashioned" way (what we call "organic" now) is shown to be higher in omega-3s, and since they don't live in filth and aren't constantly fed antibiotics to keep them alive, they are less likely to cause food-borne illness.

I'm not in any way saying my wish is realistic. As I said, in an IDEAL world, the chicks wouldn't be culled and would be put to use, and we do not live in an ideal world. I do my part by producing my own eggs from my own chickens, and giving any male chicks born in my flock a chance to grow, live, be chickens, and eventually serve a purpose.

 

[love2grinchicke]

Yeah thats what I get for typing it from a phone, lol. It was supposed to read "see how many make it through a week."

My point is nobody wants to kill the roos, but nobody wants to live with them either.

 

[LavLady]

@PC
You're wound pretty tight, aintcha? Is there a utopia thread in here somewhere?


@ everyone else
Um, anyone said anything dumb about your chickens lately?

 

[PrairieChickens]

I don't think I'm wound tight. I think people are trying awfully hard to debate with me when I was just sharing a few facts and my opinion. How many times do I have to say that it's just wishful thinking before people stop telling me how stupid I'm being?