It helps that you always leave a trail of bread crumbs to lead the way, Ralphie ------ and welcome @Sparkle Chick !
To answer your questions, "bumping" means to post in a thread just to move it up to the top of the list of threads on the home page. While you do want to respond to threads that interest you or when you have information that might be helpful to the original poster, it's considered a no-no just to find or start a thread then keep posting "fluff" stuff to keep it at the forefront of postings. Also, when I first joined BYC I had a bad habit of finding a thread, responding to it, and realizing only later that it was started in 2011 and was no longer relevant. <sigh> I don't worry too much about it if it's a thread that has really good information on it, but I was finding threads where someone posted that their chicken was doing something odd, I responded, and then found out later that the chicken died years ago and/or the original poster was no longer even a member. Fortunately nobody comes and strips your membership, but it is a little embarrassing to post a long-winded response and have someone come back and say "That post is 10 years old and nobody cares anymore!"That being said, there are times when I've done a search for a particular problem or issue and found an old thread that touched upon it, such as when one of my chicks got severe frostbite on his little feet and I needed help. I had no problem resurrecting that old thread with my question with the hope that someone has some updated information, but for the most part it's always better to simply start a new thread. And now that I think back on it, I never did get a response when I used that old thread, but lots of help when I started a new one. But that is totally different than bumping a thread to keep it up front.
As for animal rights, that can become a heated thread that quickly becomes uncivil and our mods have to waste time cleaning it up or reprimanding folks. It's such a controversial topic, especially here where some of us process our chickens and others of us take great offense to that. The vast majority of us accept that not everyone is able to eat the chickens they raise, and that's just fine as long as nobody gets out of hand with their thoughts. In other words, in a thread about using chickens for meat, it's inappropriate to jump in and begin ranting at the how cruel everyone is....that's when things escalate. And the same is true in reverse, of course. Courtesy goes two ways. In a thread where the majority of the posters are totally anti-culling - even total vegans - it's just cold hearted to go in there and drop a bomb about how you butchered 10 chickens for the freezer. Most of it is just common sense and common courtesy.
Your particular situation is one that in my opinion you are just going to have to decide about. I'm not there, I can't make a judgement call. Is it really bad housing and management or just something you don't like and wouldn't do in your own coop? Some think that the way I raise my chickens is unhealthy, hating the deep litter method and the idea of me only cleaning once a year or so. They clean every week and think I'm being cruel to keep my chickens on the same flooring month after month. So you are the only one who can decide if authorities need to be called in or not, weighing the pros and cons. There's nothing we here can really do to help you - we don't have any special authority or anything and as I said, we aren't there. I got embroiled in a few of those discussions early on, backed out, and avoid them like the plague now.
Again, welcome to the flock!
Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone listened to me and tried harder to be like me?
