Sorry if this is the wrong category. But anyways, I have a question. I believe that my chickens are treated like wonderful pets just like any other dog or cat including you guys who do a great job of taking care of chickens. I wanted to know (just for fun) how many chickens are in the world that are treated like pets, not meat? Chickens who are loved and cared for. Like, how many actually LOVED chickens are there out of the chickens total population? I know that there are about 20 billion chickens. I sure also know byc members are very loving to thier poultry. If you don't know the awnser, its okay. But if you do know, please let me know.
I'm not sure that your question is answerable. It's a false premise--you can totally treat chickens extremely well, and like them a lot, love and care for them, AND eat them. This is especially true since the majority of people on these boards keep their hens for eggs, not meat. Why would anyone treat a laying hen as meat? Our hens have a very good life. They come running for treats, they have lots of room to roam, I can pick them up and pet them--and they're working girls. They have a job--to produce eggs, which we sell. If they can't produce enough eggs to pay for their feed, they can't stay. I love my chickens, but I would also eat my chickens if I needed to. I try to sell all my older hens, but if I have hens that won't sell, I eat them--which seems much better to me than culling them and throwing them in the trash. I've also raised meat birds. They are TOTALLY DIFFERENT than laying hens. As different from a layer as a bulldog is from a Chihuahua. And even those meat birds, which I didn't really like very much, were treated well, and cared for, and given a great place to live and lots of room to roam before killed them as humanely as possible and ate them. I don't think it's right to set up the dichotomy PET=LOVED, NOT PET=MEAT. I think you'll have a lot of people arguing that there's a definite middle ground.
I don't have the answer to your question of "how many Chickens are loved", but I sure know that my 5 chickens are loved very much.
Everybody at my house loves chicken and dumplings, chicken gumbo, coq au vin, and the occasional chicken curry.
Well, I can certainly see that your chickens are loved! I had a rooster that was over the top rough on the hens. I loved him as chicken and dumplings most of all.
