Apparently there is some website called, I believe, "Change" where busybodies with nothing else to do can post petitions for members to sign to get changes made, Seems some woman went into the PO and heard a shipment of chicks from My Pet Chicken peeping. Since the package carried a warning that said not to open in presence of children and since the birds were "crying for their mother" this woman was convinced the poor neglected chicks were on the verge of dehydration and starvation. Consequently she started a petition to have this cruel practice stopped. At the point that one of my Facebook friends posted the petition she already had over 2000 bleeding hearts sign the petition.
I went into a nature lesson for this friend, explaining how once chicks hatch they have the ability to go without eating and drinking while waiting for the rest of the clutch to hatch. I mentioned that the reason for the peeping was not that they were calling for their mama but that they were probably not at an ideal temperature but, except for idiot USPS employee placing a shipment in areas of extreme heat or cold, the shipper had been doing this long enough to know how to package the chicks so they would not suffer from temperature problems. I also pointed out that some chicks, whether brooder hatched and shipped or hatch under a brooding hen, are fragile and could die during the first couple of weeks of life. Since these chicks were probably being shipped to a family for pets, this was what prompted the warning on the box. I pointed out to her that in the last 20 years or so I had received at least 15 shipments of newly hatched birds(over 500 chicks, including 32 this year) and never found one dead in the box. Finally I suggested she do some research before blindly forwarding petitions.
I haven't heard from this "friend" since.
Haha, my friend, every time I see this type stuff, I think of Jack Nicholson in that military trial movie yelling, "YOU CAN'T
HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
Here's a story for you about someone not handling the truth. My own best friend was almost removed from a FB swap group for telling a woman the truth about her very sick birds. She was vindicated, of course, after the entire conversation was analyzed. There was an argument when another member joined into an exchange between my friend and another member who was seeking advice for very ill birds.
The woman with the sick flock wasn't angry at all and took the advice to heart, took the proper course of action, but the other man in the group was furious and when called on
his carrier flock -he said the woman should not cull her birds, that my friend was evil to suggest that, to treat them with Benadryl or some such nonsense, that's what
he does when his are sick so, by saying that, he outed his carrier birds, shot himself in the foot, as it were. It was a long heated conversation, more than I can even recall to tell you. Remember, this is a
swap group, so they buy and sell chickens through this group and he put himself in quite a position by admitting he had to repeatedly treat his flock.
This is the crazy part: If you can believe someone would stoop so low over a chicken conversation, he had a friend of his contact my friend's husband via FB messenger and tell him that his wife, my friend, was using poultry swaps as an excuse to have affairs and go to motel rooms with men instead! Needless to say, the head of the swap group got the full conversation handed to him and the troublemaker has been banned from the FB group, from the swaps and his name is being spread amongst the area swap organizers. What goes around, comes around, doesn't it?
