We went on a short vacation this past weekend, Friday through Monday. We asked our neighbor's son, who is 21, to take care of our animals while we were gone. We had been looking forward to getting some chicks from one of our Golden Comet hens, who had been patiently setting and whose chicks were due yesterday. We went out to the barn on Monday and found that one of our roosters who is in a pen had no water, and his pen door was not even latched, meaning he had not had any water all day. The other roo in a pen had water but no food. One of the first things I noticed was what looked like an old blood stain on the ground outside the barn. I didn't pay much attention as we accounted for all the birds, or so we thought. Tuesday we noticed the hen was not on her eggs, and, in fact her eggs were missing and she pathetically kept going over there and looking for them. I think our neighbor left our barn open too late one night and a coon or something got the eggs, that would account for the old blood stain...we left him specific instructions about what to do for our animals and house but yet, when we got home, the security system on the house was not set, we found he had accidentally left our cats locked in the basement the first night, and, as I said, his slipshod care of our chickens which probably resulted in the loss of our unhatched chicks...this after his sincere assurances that he would take the best care of everything, blah,blah, blah. My question is, how much should I pay this person? We really can't afford to alienate him as his family are our neighbors and farm our hayfield, they are close with all our other neighbors...it amazes me that this person was so careless as he wants to pursue a career involving animals and has always been very active in 4H with their own farm animals, and seemed to take good care of them...in fact, the roo with no water was one he begged us to take off his hands a year ago, because he said all the other chickens he had had died and he did not want the roo to be lonely. We will not use him again but my DH did tell him we'd bring him a check, so we're kinda on the hook...I guess we should thank our lucky stars that nothing worse happened then the loss of a few unhatched chicks...we still do have our hen who has been setting on her invisible eggs the past four weeks and will not accept any real ones....
I'm so sorry about your losses. And it must pain you to know that this kid turned out to be irresponsible. Did you quote him a daily rate, or promise him a certain amount? I would give him whatever you decide to pay him in an envelope with a polite note telling him what you found. Try to make it as nice as possible, because he needs to know his care was not superb, but you don't want to trash him either.
i think you should not pay him. he did not do the job for which he was hired. in any business, you would not be paid. maybe you could talk to him calmly and ask what happened, but there is no reason that he should be compensated for work not completed. God bless and sorry that this has happened.
I dont know about the pay,depends on how much you want to PO your neighbor,but really if I am only going to be gone a short while I make sure everyone has enough food and water and leave them alone,over a weekend there really isnt a need for anyone to be coming over and not doing things correctly,and they wont die if left alone for a few days,well,unless something gets them but that would happen anyway.
If he still lives with his parents next door, I would go over and have a sit down with them. Let them know how much you needed their son and was trusting him to do the job he was hired to do. Tell them what he DIDN"T do and how disappointed you were. Let them know you are unsure of what to pay him if anything. They will probably be so embarrassed they will tell you not to pay him.
I'd get his side of the story before I decided to pay or not. It depends on if he shows any kind of remorse for his actions. No remorse, no pay and I wouldn't hire him again. Nobody is going to care for your animals the way you do, they have no investment in the animals, you do.
Did you leave written instructions for their care and a timetable for when the chicks should all be tucked away? I agree you don't want to alienate the neighbors, but you also shouldn't be taken advantage of. Perhaps partial pay?
