My rant about chickens.....

[Dinos_rock]

Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE Easter Eggers. My dad has some and they are some of my favorites. But doesn't it just bother you when people call their ee's "Ameraucanas" or "Araucana".

Some people in ffa at my school even call them "Anacondas". Nearly every chicken in the school's chicken coop is an ee, but everyone thinks they are purbred. They got them from the feed store. Some kids I talked to even are going to start breeding programs for their ee hens. I didn't even know that you could show ee's at the county fair, but everyone did and they registered them in as Ameraucanas (I think). Most (if not all) of the ee's didn't make auction and went to live on my teacher's uncle's farm.


And its not just the ee's that every one at my school gets confused with. Once this girl came and showed me her fully-grown golden laced wyandotte hen and told me it was a polish. "I don't think that's a polish," I politely told her. "Yes it is. It just hasn't grown in the feathers on its head yet," she said. "Oh, ok." I said (I didn't want to be a know-it-all).

Yeah, we are real city slickers where I live. Another girl came to my teacher asking for chicken food for her pet silkies that she recently bought from another student, because she 'ran out of food and they haven't been fed for three days'. I don't know what ever happened to those silkies, but they were being fed bread and water the last I know of. Now that I think back, I should have done something, like offer to buy her silkies from her, because I know they were not being treated right. Those poor silkies...

My school bought about thirty chicks for the ffa students to show at the fair and they were going to pull sticks, so everyone wouldn't fight over the same chick, but that girl (the one who had the silkies) said that she was going to kill her chick if she didn't end up with the one she wanted, and she was actually naming off all these inhumane, cruel, slow-dying ways in which she was going to kill it. I told her she should just give the chick to someone else if she didn't want it and that it was cruel and just plain dumb to kill it like that, but she insisted that is what she was going to do if she got a chick she didn't want. Thank goodness she got "her" chick (after practically fighting the girl that was supposed to have it).


Ok, thanks for listening.

This rant was just supposed to be about ee's, but it turned out being about my experience with my school's ffa.

 

[Guitartists]

Now that's a rant

I don't really blame the people.... they TRUST that the hatcheries and feed stores are being honest in their advertising. But, yeah , it can always be annoying when people argue it with you

Well, that's too bad that she got ANY chick at all! Doesn't sound like she should even have them

Sorry to hear that it is turning into this kind of an experience for you.

Good luck!

 

[SpottedCrow]

There's a word for that girl and it starts with "Psycho" and ends with "Pathic"...jes sayin. Gonna kill the innocent chick because she doesn't get the one she wants...sheesh
Aracauna, Anaconda...yeah same thing...

As long as you know, hun...I've been in retail for over 30 years...and I swear that people are dumb as a stump sometimes...no matter what you tell em...

 

[Dinos_rock]

I know, it bugs me so much.

I don't really blame them for not knowing that they are really ee's. It's just the people; the people at my school won't believe me if I try to correct them because they think they know more about chickens than I do (maybe they do, but I doubt it). I kept my pig at school and I kept my chicken at home, so people that kept their chickens at the school didn't even know I have a chicken. I don't really correct them because I don't want to be rude. And yeah, that girl is psycotic. I am not joking. After going to the same school as her for more than three years, I know... I personally don't think that she should have pets. She tells all these stories in class about her cats too. She has several un-fixed cats and they have babies every couple of months and she used to bring them to class.

 

[dacjohns]

Sounds like your adult advisors need to do some homework of their own. Your fellow students need to spend less time playing World of Warcraft (or whatever the game is) and start doing some research.

 

[rooster-red]

Should have asked that girl what if her mother had taken the same attitude when she was born?

 

[hooligan]

I feel your pain!
My big one is when people say 'Orffington' instead of 'Orpington'...

 

[Dinos_rock]

I know, I just hate to correct people because I dont want to be rude.

dacjohns- you are right. My advisors don't know alot about the animals (or maybe they do but they just don't tell us

?). Most of our pigs didn't make weight for the fair and half of the pigs that did make it didn't make the auction (the students just didn't know how much food to feed their pigs). Thankfully I had my uncle, who raises pigs, to help me. Despite all the problems, I still liked FFA and I'm doing it again next year....

 

[dacjohns]

Hang in there. I know what you mean about correcting people. My friend that I have been partnering with in chickens only knows the way his mother raised chickens and has a lot of misconceptions.

 

[gamebirdsonly]

I hate it to when ee's are called ameracanus. then they show them at the county fairs and actually get first place or a ribbon at all. just bugs me. I learned the hard way when I was about 10 and entered some chickens and didn't get a ribbon, I hate to admit this but started to cry. but now i have learned.