Getting the flock out of here - a diary of a crazy chicken man

[ozexpat]

Oz...Speaking of work ethic...when do YOU sleep...! I read every day of managing coco beach from CA...buying/receiving eggs to carry on the plane...arranging for poultry/pig sales...transportation to and fro to the airport to ship birds...flying thousands of miles per year between the US and Philippines...managing a full time position in CA...and on and on. I know some of us just simply get by on less sleep, I only sleep max 6 hours a night even now...but I'm wondering if you get even that much...!

i sleep in 2 hour sessions until i cant - then i sleep for a day.

 

[Tomtommom]

You're right, though... the only thing I can think is that maybe the house is divided by age range, if it's a grow out facility? The economics of poultry operations don't leave space to test for exposure, and there's not the issue with disposal that you see with larger animals. And honestly, even if the house is divided I'm surprised that the entire flock wasn't destroyed, given the virulence of the disease in question.

(I spent 2007 as a biosecurity researcher focused on H5N1. Corporate meat production is one seriously surreal logistics problem, ethics and health issues aside. My breaking point was sitting through a presentation on a miraculous new orange scented foam that could be sprayed into an infected chicken house to simultaneously smother the birds, disinfect the premises and compost the bodies. The inventor of said foam kept emphasizing how it was orange scented, it would be acceptable to the public!)

That's downright disturbing...

Lefty Native...and Oz..... I live in NW GA about 60 miles from gainsville ga. When I was in high school I caught chickens 2-3 nights a week. The job started around midnight and we usually finished about 5-5:30 AM with $16-18 dollars in our pocket. That was a fortune to myself and the other boys in the mid 1950's. We considered ourselves VERY fortunate to have the job. I Had to hurry home and deliver my newspapers (I also had a paper route) and get a bath (no shower in those days) or jump into the creek in warm weather along the way during the summer.

Also there was a service station on my paper route with a water hose at the back and sometimes that rinse off was all the bath I had before going to school. Obviously we were up all night unless we caught a nap before midnight, which most of the time I didn't. I had a part time job after school at the bowling alley where I set up pins (manually) from 4 PM till 11PM. Also on "off nights" I hauled a little moonshine out of the Georgia mountains...40 gallons at a time and got paid $40. Could only do that while I was 16 years old and after I got my drivers license but before I turned 17...those were the moonshiner's rules...he wouldn't let us run after we turned 17...we couldn't be charged as adults at 16 which guaranteed no jail time if we were ever caught...He had scruples :} I never came close to being caught.

But I have very fond memories of those days. The 18 wheeler arrived loaded with empty wooden chicken coops and we unloaded them from the truck first and then started catching chickens. We caught 9 chickens per trip into the house (5 in one hand, 4 in the other) and cooped them 18 chickens per coop and the loaders loaded the full coops onto the truck. It was GRUELING WORK...!!!! We never even thought of dust mask and it took 12-18 hours to stop spitting/blowing/snorting up the dust crud...ha! We didn't take a break at all once we started.

I was about 14-16 years old and learned some very valuable life lessons while catching chickens and they have served me well throughout my life. I learned to never work by the hour if I could help it...productivity was the name of the game...! And I also learned I didn't want to spend my life WORKING THAT HARD....!!!!

Great story! While I'm sure employee safety has gone way up, I quite miss the days of being able to do jobs like that. As a teen I was coming up with all sorts of ways to make money. One summer we decided to have a doggy summer camp while people went on vacation. I totally sold myself short on that one, really.. especially when it turned out one of the dogs was an escape artist and one heck of a runner.. I had to chase and find the dang beast every single day (Got him back from a sheep farmer one day, the police office the next

no charges filed.. no one got hurt, thank God)

Nowadays kids can barely babysit or so much as sell lemonade

 

[Leftcoastnative]

gypsy767,

That's quite a story...... When I look back on my own "I'm indestructible and I'm gonna live forever" stage of my human life cycle, I'm astounded that I managed to survive it alive. It just amazes me.

And I worked with a bunch of those "high school chicken picker crews". The good ones were really good - the not so good ones were.....well....not so good. But they could make pretty good money if they were willing to work at it. And it was work.
We only had one old truck that still carried those old wooden coops. Loading it was a job! Luckily we rarely used it. The rest of the trucks had the coops built right on the truck and we loaded 'em from the side while standing on a platform we carried with us that mounted on the side of the truck. And, to be honest, they weren't "18 wheelers", they were just light duty 20 tonners (tandem axle drive) with an extended wheel base - which meant it took around a quarter acre to turn 'em around. Farmers just love to take light duty trucks and use 'em for heavy duty applications. In three years, I blew up two motors (gas) in one truck and one motor in another. And loaded, I would rarely get above 45mph - and it took 5 miles to get it up to that speed.
One of really good and really bad things about driving a chicken truck was that, once loaded, nothing could stop you. With that many live chickens - failure to get back to the "processing" plant was NOT an option. One time, during the rainy, high water season, I drove across an "out in the countryside" bridge that had unknown thousands of tons of logs, debris, etc. pushed up against it on the upstream side - and I was weighing north of 40,000 pounds. No other choice at 2 in the morning. Sometimes, it was a stimulating job.......

And I too, have sometimes wondered if Oz ever sleeps - glad you asked him that.

 

[ozexpat]

gypsy767,

That's quite a story...... When I look back on my own "I'm indestructible and I'm gonna live forever" stage of my human life cycle, I'm astounded that I managed to survive it alive. It just amazes me.

And I worked with a bunch of those "high school chicken picker crews". The good ones were really good - the not so good ones were.....well....not so good. But they could make pretty good money if they were willing to work at it. And it was work.
We only had one old truck that still carried those old wooden coops. Loading it was a job! Luckily we rarely used it. The rest of the trucks had the coops built right on the truck and we loaded 'em from the side while standing on a platform we carried with us that mounted on the side of the truck. And, to be honest, they weren't "18 wheelers", they were just light duty 20 tonners (tandem axle drive) with an extended wheel base - which meant it took around a quarter acre to turn 'em around. Farmers just love to take light duty trucks and use 'em for heavy duty applications. In three years, I blew up two motors (gas) in one truck and one motor in another. And loaded, I would rarely get above 45mph - and it took 5 miles to get it up to that speed.
One of really good and really bad things about driving a chicken truck was that, once loaded, nothing could stop you. With that many live chickens - failure to get back to the "processing" plant was NOT an option. One time, during the rainy, high water season, I drove across an "out in the countryside" bridge that had unknown thousands of tons of logs, debris, etc. pushed up against it on the upstream side - and I was weighing north of 40,000 pounds. No other choice at 2 in the morning. Sometimes, it was a stimulating job.......

And I too, have sometimes wondered if Oz ever sleeps - glad you asked him that.

you guys will appreciate the trucks in the philippines

and the 10 ton limit bridges.................................

 

[gypsy767]

Lefty

The not so good ones didn't last past one night with us. In order to get on the crew you had to be recommended by one of us. If your vouch didn't pull his weight who ever vouched for him had to pick up the slack. At the end of the night he was paid off and told he wouldn't be needed any more with the FULL blessing of the rest of the crew.

I have been following Oz's thread for some time now...took a while to read up to date from where I started. It's a good thing Oz has all the communication electronics we have these days.


Oz...

Speaking of electronics...We live way out in the country, very weak cell phone signal even now. I bought a gadget called "the smooth talker" (hereafter refereed to as ST) out of canada. Figured it would be a bust but decided to give it a try. It was touted that if you had ANY cell signal at all it would boost it up to a very usable signal and it worked as good as advertized. I had verizon at the time and the ST worked so well we got rid of the land line. Shortly after we got the ST verizon put broadband inet onto the tower we were connecting with. I already had the verizon broadband inet using the phone as a modem and one saturday morning I got up around daylight and started checking my email as usual and the inet was FLYING...! I mean really humming! Full broadband service. We were traveling around the country at the time in a travel trailer...spending 3 months out west (az, wy,ut, co, etc.) and three months at home and then back out again. About 90 % of the places we went we were the only ones in the camping area who had cell service....often desert country. There is no telling haow many of the things we sold for them (with no commission BTW) . But I needed an extra antenna one time and they sent it at no cost.

I said all that to say this...I have the thing around here somewhere I think, and if you think you can use it (at coco beach) you are welcome to it. The phone for use with the ST must have a place to plug an antenna because it's antenna dependent but works GREAT!!! if you have any signal at all. The antenna had a lead wire of about 20 ft I think and it literally GRABS the signal out of the air. We used it for phone and inet until att FINALLY ran DSL by here....thank goodness for small favors. I "might" even have the old cell phone...not sure if it would be compatible or not. It was verizon and didn't have a simm card. Not sure what kind of service you have at coco beach but might be worth looking into....
BTW...my name is chuck and I'm an old fart...72 and feel like 90 a lot of the time. Me thinks I burned out way too young.

 

[gypsy767]

Tomtommom...

I don't think there were any safety rules back then...I never heard of any. We just worked our behinds off and never thought anything about it. But remember...I was in the foothills of the Appalachians and at that time and we barely got a tv signal. It was an experience...but I was born and raised there (here) and very glad for the experience...wouldn't trade it for anything. I believe it provided the "grit" in my craw that enabled me to survive.

 

[Amberjem]

 

[Tomtommom]

Tomtommom...

I don't think there were any safety rules back then...I never heard of any. We just worked our behinds off and never thought anything about it. But remember...I was in the foothills of the Appalachians and at that time and we barely got a tv signal. It was an experience...but I was born and raised there (here) and very glad for the experience...wouldn't trade it for anything. I believe it provided the "grit" in my craw that enabled me to survive.

That's what I'm saying, no rules and not everything was going to kill you (or atleast you werent aware of it). I dont always like knowing all that we do now. With all the warning labels everywhere and OSHA this and OSHA that. Common sense is out the door.

I'm sounding like an old geezer at my 32 years of age haha But I sounded like an old geezer at 12 years old.

I had the pleasure of being very close to an older gentleman and his son, both born and raised in these parts, I just loved listening to him talk about silly things. Crazy things they did in their youth, stories about all sorts of local places

I've only moved to Alabama 10 years ago, I'm from Europe. When I first set foot in the US and stayed 3 weeks in Alabama I felt like I came home to a country I should have been born in. I never fit in at 'home'. Strange thing that. No, the South is where I'm supposed to be.

Growing up I was always running around in the woods, ankle deep in muck, hanging around farms... and I was a suburban kid. Just didn't fit in there. I wanted chickens and pigs for my birthday, needless to say I never got any. My mom had an allotment garden and that was pretty much as close as I got to being a 'farmer'. Did a little stint on a petting zoo/ teaching farm and almost signed up for an agrarian college but decided to go with becoming a teacher instead... agrarian jobs being hard to find and teachers being in high demand. Never did finish my teacher training, just wasn't me. I'm good with kids, but no teacher. Should've figured that out when my class of kindergardners went to the same petting zoo and I ended up herding goats instead of the kids when they let the goats out. I was more worried about the goats than a group of 5 year olds

Ofcourse those kids thought it was funny and let the goats out again.

I would've loved to have grown up in the South and have some wild stories to tell

 

[scottcaddy]

Quote: Have you considered a 18 wheeler driver school? They are all over the place and will not take much time to find out if a person wants to drive a big rig.
Just a passing thought.
Good luck with that!
Scott

 

[ozexpat]

The smooth talker are North American frequencies only

I need to retry the booster I have