Latest NY Times Article: "When the Problems Come Home to Roost"

[honeydoll]

Just a stupid article. People love seeing the bad in everything. I don't know why, seeing the good side of things makes a person happier. Happier people are more productive people. If bad news had small crowds and good news drew huge crowds the newspapers would look different.

 

[CityChook]

Quote:
Couldn't agree more. I was a CLOSET LURKER here at the BYC for a good 6 months prior to making the jump. Glad I did my homework. No surprises and couldn't be happier.

 

[The Zoo]

Insane - people should NEVER get an animal unless they are willing to take care of it throughout it's life. Of course the same could be said of people who have children without the thought of responsibility......wow - soap box Friday!

 

[JakRat]

Quote:
lol agree!
I love my girls, but I learned as much as I could, and I find that I am a more responsible person now for having them... WHY DIDNT I GET THEM SOONER!!! I think that people get them because it is a cool green hippie pet to some, instead of an awesome farm back to the old days kinda pet...granted I love showing off my girls and talking about them, but they are farm animals, not a monkey or whatever is in style... Luckily I live in an amazing neighboorhood and everyone loves to come see my girls and ask about them.

 

[canada-goose]

So the article was about incompetent urban chicken owners who couldn't keep their birds healthy and wanted to bring everyone down with them. Wonderful.

 

[canada-goose]

Oh, and here's another anti-chicken article:

In all of God's sweet aviary there exists no bird more diabolical and ruthless than the egg-laying chicken. Despite the darkness of this clucking beast's heart, our nation's press has gone on a rampage insisting that more and more citizens everywhere in the United States are choosing to board and feed these creatures in their urban and suburban backyards so they can harvest the eggs.
It's a trend, the press claims. But we know better, don't we? To begin with, keeping chickens is a filthy, time-consuming, and expensive way to keep the pantry filled with eggs. And as this continuing feature has taught its loyal readership, too many of the "trends" reported by the press are actually bogus trends, hyped up by a reporter or her editors to get a lame story into print.
Flaunty bogusity in this morning's (May 14) Washington Post Home section feature, "Hot Chicks: Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition," which claims to have discovered the "vanguard of a resurgent interest in backyard chicken keeping, especially in distinctly nonrural settings." But the closest the Post comes to actually counting chickens is reporting the press run of Backyard Poultry magazine, a bimonthly: It is 100,000. The Jan. 2 USA Today, which reports a "growing number of city dwellers across the country choosing chickens as pets," measures the hen-keeping renaissance by enumerating the size of the BackYardChickens.com community: It is 19,000 worldwide.

I actually like some of it. "Diabolical" and "ruthless" are such cool words. I found it here: www.slate.com/id/2218390/​

 

[Farmer John]

Great, more people for me to sell MY eggs to!

 

[Big C]

Quote:
along with a NTY employee who has no experience in a "real" life beyond her/his artificial world

Thank you Lord for our lives beyond these people who do not realize that there is an actual real world that you created for us to live in.

 

[janetex]

This article was spot on. Raising chickens has become just another cool thing to do for people who want to show how natural and "back to the earth" they are. Chickens are just an accessory to their lifestyle. It's like getting an iPod, and just like any accessory, when they get tired of it, they get rid of it. These are people who pretend to be so concerned about mistreated battery chickens - but it is beyond them to take care of the 2 or 3 they own.

Owning animals is a responsibility and these people were not interested actually in raising chickens. They were only interested in telling people they owned them, because it is the trendy thing to do.

 

[eekgads]

ARGH! Y'all are right!

The article states:

"She ticks through a list of all the ways her chickens have died. There was the breakout of Marek’s disease. Her dog got to one chicken before some rules of the roost were laid down. She suspects a fox or a coyote carried off several when she was away.

More upsetting were the two she found with their necks broken. "

Obviously, this lady didn't do her homework in preventing predators & vandals. She didn't train her dog or build a coop that was as predator-proof as possible. As for the Marek's disease, that's a herpes virus which is unfortunately becoming very common in the U.S. BTW, the article said she didn't bring the chickens to the vet because of the $. You've GOT to be kidding me! Sounds like she was way more focused on the "trendiness" or "popularity" of having chickens.