Old Fashioned, Common Sense Chicken Keeping.
- Thread starter bobbi-j
- Start date
I’m glad for all the action on this thread , I thought common sense was dead
I remove birds as soon as they look ill , I don’t bubble bath them or take them to the vet , I don’t get for a $3 bird , my time is worth more then that !!
I think that’s bad economics, for hens at least. You would need to account for all the eggs she would lay in her life. Lets say 250 a year for the average dual purpose hen. I’ll take a conservative estimate on her egg laying life at six years. That’s 1500 eggs. I don’t know how much farm or free range eggs are in the USA but here on average 3.5 euros for 6.
So that’s 5250 euros worth of eggs /6
roughly 900.euro
Rough dollar to euro conversion gives approximately $800. That’s the probable worth of your $3 hen.
I think I could spare a bit of time for that.
The trouble with common sense is that it’s common. Compassion on the other hand is rare and priceless.
Maybe that’s why there is so little of it.
Last edited:
I think that’s bad economics, for hens at least. You would need to account for all the eggs
I think I could spare a bit of time for that.
The trouble with common sense is that it’s common. Compassion on the other hand is rare and priceless.
Maybe that’s why there is so little of it.
I didn’t say I let them die in a bucket , I said I don’t “bubble bathe them or pay a vet for a $3 hen “
That’s how I will continue to function , remove the sick , treat as I see fit , give them time to recover and move on , it’s not lack of compassion either , it’s common sense , most of my layers have stopped laying by the time they get “ ill”. Also no layer lays efficiently til 6... at least I’ve not heard of one
And by the way I’m not in the USA
Last edited:
Common sense is not so common.
Sparing a "bit of time" is not the same sparing hundreds of dollars at a vet for a bird that might live and lay for 6 years.
Just because one is not willing to got to great lengths to 'save' a chicken,
does not mean they have no compassion.
Last edited:
THIS. A gazillion times this.
Stacyoung13
Crowing
I keep them separate because my pets are small, silkies, frizzled bantams, polish hen. And my food chickens are so much bigger, SLWs, barred rocks, production reds, BSL, Brahma. I didn't want to take a chance of my little babies being picked on by the bigger ones.
Well, since we’ve gone from discussing chicken raising methods to ...... whatever this is now, time to moser on along.
I’ve read every post in this thread. I’ve contributed a few of my own. It’s had a lot of responses and and lot of readers. Despite all this I have no idea what the old fashioned way was, or why the new way, if there is one, is any worse.
There have been a few posts where one got the impression that keeping chickens as pets is the new fashion that some find ridiculous. We got some of our modern breeds from people who did exactly that. Some of the first breeders were nobility and well to do estate owners who wanted exotic fowl wandering around their garden and weren’t the slightest bit interested in egg production or keeping these fowl for meat.
What about other countries? I’ve travelled a bit and some of the places I’ve been their chickens are highly valued because they produce eggs. Some villages even have a young boy, or girl, whose job is to look after the chickens. A villager with 5 or 6 chickens is considered a wealthy person. Do they tend a sick chicken, oh yes, a dead chicken might feed a few at a festival but the eggs are far more important. No, they don’t take them to a vet because there aren’t any vets there. However, some villages in Pakistan, India, Thailand have a chicken ‘expert’ who tends the sick and gets paid in eggs.
How far back are we talking about when we say ‘old fashioned?
When I was a boy I spent most of my life on a farm. Chicken keeping there was a massive shed packed with tiny cages with chickens in that got fed by conveyor belt and had their eggs removed by by another. For me that’s old fashioned. Do we want to return to that?
Chicken keeping changed in the USA post war. People were encouraged to keep a few chickens in their back yards. This ‘tradition’ is still going on but it’s hardly out of necessity and hardly old fashioned.
The desire for some people to know the provenance of their eggs and meat is another factor; I certainly wouldn’t call that old fashioned, its more of a trend in the UK for foody types. How much difference actually is there between the ‘goodness’ of a chicken and its eggs kept in a yard run and fed on layers pellets compared to a commercially kept chicken kept to modern ‘free range’ standards fed on layers pellets, which you can buy most places now?
Of course, if it’s the welfare of the chicken that concerns you then you can hardly condemn people who doctor their chickens.
For many here it’s a hobby; hardly old fashioned ,and frankly not an awful lot of common sense involved when you consider the cost of chicken keeping.
There are a few who seem to think the get a few chickens and let them fend for themselves is old fashioned and hardcore. Maybe that’s possible in areas of the USA but here for example the predation rate would be unacceptably high. This site and many others would call that chicken neglect.
What about the difference between those who would and wouldn’t medicate and seek veterinary treatment for their chickens. If your chicken had value then it might seem economical and common sense. You’re then left with how you assess that value. For some it’s going to be lots of things apart from flat replacement value; not sure if there’s anything modern in that either.
Maybe it’s the ‘dime a dozen’ attitude to chickens that’s the problem. We’ve bred so many now that they’re worthless. I wouldn’t call that old fashioned. I would call it unfortunate for the chicken. ‘Modern’ thinking in the industrialised world for want of a better description is maybe we shouldn’t be breeding these human intervention dependant fowl, maybe the last 70 years or so of factory farming these creatures wasn’t the best way forward. Maybe we should take a really old fashioned view and have a bit more respect for nature and a little less arrogance ourselves. I like the really old fashioned view.
Common sense is a phrase in the title, what exactly is that? It’s going to mean different things to different people I think and in my experience its vastly over rated.
I could go on for quite a while.
So, can someone define exactly what the old fashioned common sense chicken keeping method is?
Then perhaps some could state exactly what it is they object to about what they perceive as the modern chicken keeping method?
There have been a few posts where one got the impression that keeping chickens as pets is the new fashion that some find ridiculous. We got some of our modern breeds from people who did exactly that. Some of the first breeders were nobility and well to do estate owners who wanted exotic fowl wandering around their garden and weren’t the slightest bit interested in egg production or keeping these fowl for meat.
What about other countries? I’ve travelled a bit and some of the places I’ve been their chickens are highly valued because they produce eggs. Some villages even have a young boy, or girl, whose job is to look after the chickens. A villager with 5 or 6 chickens is considered a wealthy person. Do they tend a sick chicken, oh yes, a dead chicken might feed a few at a festival but the eggs are far more important. No, they don’t take them to a vet because there aren’t any vets there. However, some villages in Pakistan, India, Thailand have a chicken ‘expert’ who tends the sick and gets paid in eggs.
How far back are we talking about when we say ‘old fashioned?
When I was a boy I spent most of my life on a farm. Chicken keeping there was a massive shed packed with tiny cages with chickens in that got fed by conveyor belt and had their eggs removed by by another. For me that’s old fashioned. Do we want to return to that?
Chicken keeping changed in the USA post war. People were encouraged to keep a few chickens in their back yards. This ‘tradition’ is still going on but it’s hardly out of necessity and hardly old fashioned.
The desire for some people to know the provenance of their eggs and meat is another factor; I certainly wouldn’t call that old fashioned, its more of a trend in the UK for foody types. How much difference actually is there between the ‘goodness’ of a chicken and its eggs kept in a yard run and fed on layers pellets compared to a commercially kept chicken kept to modern ‘free range’ standards fed on layers pellets, which you can buy most places now?
Of course, if it’s the welfare of the chicken that concerns you then you can hardly condemn people who doctor their chickens.
For many here it’s a hobby; hardly old fashioned ,and frankly not an awful lot of common sense involved when you consider the cost of chicken keeping.
There are a few who seem to think the get a few chickens and let them fend for themselves is old fashioned and hardcore. Maybe that’s possible in areas of the USA but here for example the predation rate would be unacceptably high. This site and many others would call that chicken neglect.
What about the difference between those who would and wouldn’t medicate and seek veterinary treatment for their chickens. If your chicken had value then it might seem economical and common sense. You’re then left with how you assess that value. For some it’s going to be lots of things apart from flat replacement value; not sure if there’s anything modern in that either.
Maybe it’s the ‘dime a dozen’ attitude to chickens that’s the problem. We’ve bred so many now that they’re worthless. I wouldn’t call that old fashioned. I would call it unfortunate for the chicken. ‘Modern’ thinking in the industrialised world for want of a better description is maybe we shouldn’t be breeding these human intervention dependant fowl, maybe the last 70 years or so of factory farming these creatures wasn’t the best way forward. Maybe we should take a really old fashioned view and have a bit more respect for nature and a little less arrogance ourselves. I like the really old fashioned view.
Common sense is a phrase in the title, what exactly is that? It’s going to mean different things to different people I think and in my experience its vastly over rated.
I could go on for quite a while.
So, can someone define exactly what the old fashioned common sense chicken keeping method is?
Then perhaps some could state exactly what it is they object to about what they perceive as the modern chicken keeping method?
Stacyoung13
Crowing
Agreed
Similar threads
New posts New threads Active threads
-
Latest threads
-
-
-
HOA Orange County/FL looking for advice
- Started by AriaBella
- Replies: 0
-
Pink bump on chick's toe 6ish weeks old.
- Started by Chickentender7
- Replies: 4
-
-
-
Threads with more replies in the last 15 days
-
-
Ended Official BYC Poultry Caption Contest 04-25-25 Pic by Sally PB- Started by TwoCrows
- Replies: 78
-
-
-
Is this chick wheaten? How did this happen?
- Started by Sic
- Replies: 55
-
