Please sign this petition against TSCs new brooders

[chickentrains]

On the assumption that you aren't interested in a lesson in statistics, trends in positive/negative feedback reporting, or even the history of this thread, I'm not going to list all the mistakes made in the short paragraph above.

By Chicken's own admission, CHICKEN has no first hand knowledge, but is merely repeating what was heard in CHICKEN's echo chamber of (likely unconscious) self-selection.

Seeing what we want to see is also a human trait - we tend to dismiss information which does not comport with our pre-existing beliefs, while elevating that which tends to confirm it.

On the subject of TSC and the new Brooders, there are a lot of variables in play, and some emotionally charged anecdotes, but its nothing like a complete data set. Caution in one's pronouncements or the reality of this situation is warranted.

I am very interested in learning about statistics. Let me know.

I don't have any Bias, I am speaking from what I've seen myself in person, and on social media. If there where facts to prove that there is no increase in pasty butt or other issues with these new brooders, I'd drop it.

 

[CHlCKEN]

By Chicken's own admission, CHICKEN has no first hand knowledge, but is merely repeating what was heard in CHICKEN's echo chamber of (likely unconscious) self-selection.

 

[aart]

and on social media.

and honestly have not been thinking before speaking.

....always a problem, one to learn to avoid.

 

[ChickCrazyWorryWort]

TSC has installed new brooders this year that are severely abusive to the chicks. There have been several complaints on their facebook page and at their corporate level. Chicks are dying at a much higher rate due to these tower brooders. Please sign this petition to have TSC go back to doing what is best for the birds!

https://www.change.org/p/tractor-su...ed_by_id=7f02b9a0-3d16-11e8-8272-1bc5bedbc2c3

Thank you. Feel free to post anything you have seen regarding these bad brooder set ups. We went to Rural King yesterday and they still had open air brooders so this is just TSC handing over a project to an engineer to make the ideal brooder.

I would just like to say I used to work at TSC. I actually quit because that whole company is a joke. Yes the chicks are sent from a hatchery to the local post office and an employee has to go pick them up “whenever there is time” aka when they feel like it. Some of the chicks where already gone by the time they arrive at TSC. Others seem very healthy and active, but most still didn’t make it most likely because poor conditions like no water, poop everywhere, pasty butt and my store manager literally said “oh ya I forgot to turn on the heat tray.” I came in and noticed no water in any leaves of the brooders and poop all over the sides, when I asked about it the “chick manager” said “oh I just filled the water and cleaned it an hour ago” and proceeded to chat. Because of all the complaints on Facebook they decided to keep all new chicks in the back on “hold” for 24 hours and assigned “chick managers”. All sounds great until the “chick manager” doesn’t work all weekend and they aren’t taken care of for 3 days straight. I’ve also heard this “chick manager” straight up say she forgot about them! I’ve also come in many times after the “chick manager” and store manager has been there for hours to see the chicks and ducks with no feed or water and completely filthy bedding. Many chicks and ducks that passed away where kept in the holding pins with the live babys or just laying on the table along with other store products! Ultimately this is the reason I left. Just couldn’t take every day going in there to hear “we lost another 100 chicks today.” Also not to mention I was treated like crap and everyone pushed their work onto me while they enjoyed social hour for 8 hours. I did purchase 4 chicks from the level of the brood that said Easter Eggs female only. I know that it’s hard to sex them but then why put female only right on the sign? 3 out of the 4 “female onlys” are roosters... Also most of the poultry products I purchased through them broke within a week! Like the waterer that leaked at the bottom or the chopped straw that had bailers twine in it! I know this is no fault of the people actually working, and while my store manager did let me return the waterer and get another one while I worked there he mentioned if it was someone else they wouldn’t do that. Also now that I don’t work there they refuse to give me a refund on the chopped straw because the bag was opened and half used, even though I have an email from the manufacturer saying I can return it! I highly recommend finding a local hatchery or Amish feed mill to purchase chicks and all products! Most of the time they are cheaper and actually know what they are talking about! I will also add that I hate bagging on anyone or any company especially if they don’t deserve it. I have been to a few TSC’s around my local area and I will agree some are way better then others. I don’t not think TSC should go out of business but I do think they should be banned from selling live animals of any kind.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I am very interested in learning about statistics. Let me know.

Publicly, or Privately?


What we have here on BYC, on the FB forums, Youtube, etc, are anecdotes, not data - and even were we to amalgamate all those anecdotes together, into something looking like a data set, as CHICKEN's example shows, some of those anecdotes are being widely repeated - they aren't new data points, likely skewing any conclusions one might draw from that set.

With almost 2,000 TSC nationwide, experiencing an unknown amount of foot traffic, which unknown interest in chickens and other poultry, we don't even have an idea as to the size of the dataset relative to the universe of experiences this year. Are we drawing conclusions about the nature of a year based on the experiences of a day? an hour? a minute? a second? something less? We don't know. Nor do we know if the experiences, positive or negative, are being reported with equal frequency. Typically, that's not the case. Negative feedback is FAR more likley to be reported than positive.

Nor can we trust our own memory. After all, you are on record saying
chickentrains said:
Every person who has documented their trip to TSC thus far has reported pasty butt in one or more of the chickens. Wouldn't you agree thats a problem?

and yet, not even every poster in this thread claiming first hand experience mentioned pasty butt>
Birds are fine - Also Birds are fine - I think this is chicks are fine (can be read multiple ways, unsure if there is an actual visit this year)- Chicks are warm and fine

Birds are dying (cause not suggested)- Repeating themselves (still no pasty butt) -

Its Operator error (and they are still using the stock tanks, though not where you can see them - but no mention of pasty butt)

(that's just the first three pages, you are welcome to check my work - they don't support your claims)

and again
chickentrains said:
Every person who has documented their trip to TSC thus far has reported pasty butt in one or more of the chickens. Wouldn't you agree thats a problem?

"in one or more chickens" suggests comparison to a state in which no pasty butt was observed - yet prior posters, in this thread, have reported pasty butt in the prior stock tanks, too. (and while I didn't, as irrelevant to the discussion, I bought all my birds from TSC last year, in several waves. Half the batches had one or two pasty butt issues, half did not - all were from stock tanks)

Based on a search of this thread, those were the FIRST mentions of pasty butt, on page 18 - which puts your assertion and hypothesis on shaky ground.

Even setting side the "difficulties" with the data points, correlation is not causation. There is no evidence that the new brooders are the cause of pasty butt, nor much offered in the way of a plausible mechanism for the new brooders to cause pasty butt. There are claims that the new brooders, even where they are being used, aren't being used exclusively (stock tanks for "holding" in the back, linked above).

Many believe pasty butt to be a sign of stress in the birds, and yes, plausibly, these "new" brooders, though used commercially for years, *might* be a cause of stress, particularly where they are operated by untrained and/or uncaring employees (as mentioned by several posters in this thread). But that's hardly the only cause of stress this year - all these chicks were taken directly after hatch and shipped around the country by USPS, who is having problems of their own that might reasonably contribute to chicken's stress - so much so that legislators have proposed laws BANNING the shipment of live animals by USPS in their state in response.

I hope this rather practical example has done more than simply waste my time, and has illustrated, in part, just a few of the errors of statistical analysis implicit in the earlier comment. It does *suggest* a bias re: the topic of brooders in the framing of the above question, I leave that exercise to you to continue.

 

[chickentrains]

Publicly, or Privately?


What we have here on BYC, on the FB forums, Youtube, etc, are anecdotes, not data - and even were we to amalgamate all those anecdotes together, into something looking like a data set, as CHICKEN's example shows, some of those anecdotes are being widely repeated - they aren't new data points, likely skewing any conclusions one might draw from that set.

Now can we trust our own memory. After all, you are on record saying
chickentrains said:
Every person who has documented their trip to TSC thus far has reported pasty butt in one or more of the chickens. Wouldn't you agree thats a problem?

and yet, not even every poster in this thread claiming first hand experience mentioned pasty butt>
Birds are fine - Also Birds are fine - I think this is chicks are fine (can be read multiple ways, unsure if there is an actual visit this year)- Chicks are warm and fine

Birds are dying (cause not suggested)- Repeating themselves (still no pasty butt) -

Its Operator error (and they are still using the stock tanks, though not where you can see them - but no mention of pasty butt)

(that's just the first three pages, you are welcome to check my work - they don't support your claims)

and again
chickentrains said:
Every person who has documented their trip to TSC thus far has reported pasty butt in one or more of the chickens. Wouldn't you agree thats a problem?

"in one or more chickens" suggests comparison to a state in which no pasty butt was observed - yet prior posters, in this thread, have reported pasty butt in the prior stock tanks, too. (and while I didn't, as irrelevant to the discussion, I bought all my birds from TSC last year, in several waves. Half the batches had one or two pasty butt issues, half did not - all were from stock tanks)

Based on a search of this thread, those were the FIRST mentions of pasty butt, on page 18 - which puts your assertion and hypothesis on shaky ground.

Even setting side the "difficulties" with the data points, correlation is not causation. There is no evidence that the new brooders are the cause of pasty butt, nor much offered in the way of a plausible mechanism for the new brooders to cause pasty butt. There are claims that the new brooders, even where they are being used, aren't being used exclusively (stock tanks for "holding" in the back, linked above).

Many believe pasty butt to be a sign of stress in the birds, and yes, plausibly, these "new" brooders, though used commercially for years, *might* be a cause of stress, particularly where they are operated by untrained and/or uncaring employees (as mentioned by several posters in this thread). But that's hardly the only cause of stress this year - all these chicks were taken directly after hatch and shipped around the country by USPS, who is having problems of their own that might reasonably contribute to chicken's stress - so much so that legislators have proposed laws BANNING the shipment of live animals by USPS in their state in response.

I hope this rather practical example has done more than simply waste my time, and has illustrated, in part, just a few of the errors of statistical analysis implicit in the earlier comment. It does *suggest* a bias re: the topic of brooders in the framing of the above question, I leave that exercise to you to continue.

I appreciate all of that. Thank you

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I appreciate all of that. Thank you

Its an emotionally charged issue, and the adage "Passion rules Reason" is often true.

Worse, at this point, all calmer heads can offer is "I don't know" and "its complicated". Those answers are neither comforting, nor helpful in reducing new poultry deaths.

I'd like to see fewer deaths of chicks in shipment, on arrival, and on display - and less stressed chicks overall - even though TSC is now my "competition", as I am technically (if haphazardly) a "breeder" (of mutts - I'm honest about that) and a certified participant in the National Poultry Improvement Program.

Eventually, I'd like to take some local market share from them - by having better birds, not just better PR. Probably naive of me.

In any event, have a great evening. I'm going to step off for a while.

 

[Folly's place]

On a similar vein, this year was our worst ever experience with shipped chicks to our place; 20% dead within 36 hours! It was horrible, and shipping stress all the way. Birds sent from the hatchery Wednesday morning, arrived Saturday morning, cold weather and no heat pack. Our previous worst ever was 10% dead, horrible enough!
This year our birds traveled to the wrong hub, and then reversed course, and so arrived late. And in spite of being within an hour of our location, the post office had no way for us to drive and pick them up.
What I'm saying is that shipping this year was not good in many cases, and not the fault of TSC.
Mary

 

[ChickCrazyWorryWort]

I just want to say I worked at the TSC in Goshen Indiana! I don’t care if this gets me banned from this page. This is a SERIOUS issue! Like I mentioned in my original post and above I worked at tsc and experienced this stuff first hand! Yes not all of the chicks deaths are tsc fault directly, but there are way more that could have been prevented if employees took chicks seriously! This tsc used the new brooders on the sales floor and the stock tanks in the back for holding the chicks for 24 hours. Many chicks had pasty butt that no one would take care of besides a few employees that can’t be there 24/7. Most employees would just try to rip the dried poo off even though we did “training” on a computer that clearly stated DO NOT RIP DRIED POO OFF CHICKS BUTT! As I’m sure we all know this can injure their butts! Sorry to anyone I offend or make upset or mad but it’s just exactly what happened when I worked there. Believe it or not tsc obviously should not be selling live animals!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I just want to say I worked at the TSC in Goshen Indiana! I don’t care if this gets me banned from this page. This is a SERIOUS issue! Like I mentioned in my original post and above I worked at tsc and experienced this stuff first hand! This tsc used the new brooders on the sales floor and the stock tanks in the back for holding the chicks for 24 hours. Many chicks had pasty butt that no one would take care of besides a few employees that can’t be there 24/7. Most employees would just try to rip the dried poo off even though we did “training” on a computer that clearly stated DO NOT RIP DRIED POO OFF CHICKS BUTT! As I’m sure we all know this can injure their butts! Sorry to anyone I offend or make upset or mad but it’s just exactly what happened when I worked there. Believe it or not tsc obviously should not be selling live animals!

Sorry for your experiences. Regret that they confirm that even when instructed (admittedly poorly), some humans (a frustratingly large percentage) will do as little as possible, even where lives are at stake.

That observation has larger implications, of course, but BYC isn't the place to explore them.