To Heather & Sourland, the Poultry Keeping Merit Badge was discontinued in 1973 or 1974 when its requirements were adjusted and merged into the Animal Science Merit Badge, which now has a section on avian livestock. The 4H program has a big leader's notebook available on poultry - everything you ever wanted to know and then some - that you might be able to borrow and use as a reference manual for boys interested in pursuing the merit badge and more thoroughly learn the information about poultry. Check with the folks at your county extension council to ask about it.
Even though it's pretty well known that being resistant to taking on responsibilites is a typical teenage attribute because of the way their brains develop, Mom's Folly should consider taking a firmer stand on her boy's refusal to follow through to the completion of projects, especially in avoidance of doing the nasty chores that so often go with the fun stuff. Perhaps she ought to inform her Boy Scout that personal responsibility goes along with being a member of the troop, and cleaning up after one's self, one's patrol, one's pets/livestock at home, and even one's family on occasion, is part of learning to be a responsible, contributing adult human being who achieves success later on. A young man who assumes responsibility as a part of the whole project package has a much greater chance of achieving success in school, and in his chosen occupation later on, than one who continually shirks responsibility and assumes someone else will get tired enough of nagging him and go do those things for him.
Please have him re-examine the Scout Oath and the Scout Law, and sit down with him for a discussion. Have him tell you what each part of those primary elements of Scouting means to him, have him put it in his own words and use examples from his own experience to illustrate what he's saying. Sometimes we just have to take these kids aside for a little talk, and threaten to take away all the television, video games, computers, I-pods, and other gadgets of mass-couchpotato-syndrome until they realize they need to follow through and finish what they're supposed to, what they started.
My son, who was also in Scouting, was one who needed prodding. He was told early on when he was about 12, that if he wanted to drive a car, he would have to either make Eagle or turn 18 before I would allow him to obtain his driver's license. He was eligible to get a license at 16, but didn't have the Eagle. He wasn't a very happy camper. So when he finally made Eagle - a month before he turned 18 - I took him to get his driver's license the day after he passed his Eagle Board of Review.
