Packing Peanuts - Gone In Minutes

[thomi]

We listed 8 of our 9 packing peanuts on our local Craigs List as "free if you pick up" Only took 15 minutes to get an email response, another 10 to get a phone call back from my response to theirs. Didn't ask what their plans were but hearing peeping in the background on the phone was reassuring

We decided to keep one just to see how it goes. It could still end up in the soup pot later in life.

 

[Master S.M.C]

That seems to happen a lot

 

[chickenannie]

what's a packing peanut?

 

[bangor777]

packing peanuts are males (roos)sent for warmth with chick orders from hatcheries. Last year I got 11 with my bantam order. I had great luck giving them away too...all 11 gone the first day I listed.

 

[chickenannie]

Quote:

OMG, I had no idea. That seems cruel from the hatchery, doesn't it? Treating the male chicks as worthless heaters to be tossed aside. I don't mean either of you, I mean the hatchery who came up with this idea.

 

[warmfuzzies]

hhhhmmmm. I think of it as 'cool, free chicks!' Even if they are males, you can always eat them.....

 

[Chickenmaven]

When they don't use them as worthless heaters, they run them through a grinder & process them for who-knows-what. That is the ugly truth we ignore.

(Guilty, I am...have ordered pullets...)

 

[1acrefarm]

Quote:

OMG, I had no idea. That seems cruel from the hatchery, doesn't it? Treating the male chicks as worthless heaters to be tossed aside. I don't mean either of you, I mean the hatchery who came up with this idea.

They have to get rid of them somehow. The only alternative the hatchery would have is mass euthanization. Less of the pullets would survive without the warmers as well.

 

[Brad7558]

Wow that quick.

 

[Ducklove334]

we kept every single one of our surviving packing peanuts from last fall, alsmost 5 months old now