Should feed stores etc... even sell chicks????

[Theapplechicks]

Quote:
The only issue with that is the people who work there are usually to incompetent to know the questions to ask, and if given a list wouldn't know the correct answer themselves.

Our Tractor Supply is very knowledgeable about the animals. They are extremely helpful. There are a couple people there that i know could answer any question I have about my chicks. Ours also has a rule to try to cut out the impulse buyers. There is a minimum purchase requirement of six. (now once you are an established customer, they let is slide sometimes) I had a lady this past weekend try to get me to buy an extra so she could then buy it off me for her kids. Told her no. You could tell they had no idea what to do w/ it and that the kids just wanted a cute little chick. Told her it was a lot bigger responsibility and a lot more work than she thinks.

I'm sure they cringed when they saw me walk in w/ my 2 little girls to pick out our first bunch too, but I guarantee they are well loved and cared for.

 

[Lynette]

Quote:
I didn't realize my Gucci bag made me an incompetent chicken owner.

WHen you go to buy chicks, you should change into bib overalls and a straw hat. Oh, and carry a list of all the chick raising equipment you have at home.

That's funny!!

 

[bethinoklahoma]

just my two cent in the end of a long chain....
I live in a more rual area then some maybe.
My TSC does know their chicks and will tell you what
you must have and what not to buy in their own store.
They have put up cattle panels to block kids even tho it
must kill their sales. The manger has chickens and helps
4-H on his own bith in store and out. "My" sales lady has
a ton of her own chickens and has a big feel for them. As
far as a local feed store they do care for them their well as far
as I can tell. They have all the feed that you need and a HOME
MADE paper printed for care with links from online sites. That
was just a mom and pop store....
Im just saying.....

 

[kitchwitch]

quite frankly if you'd have "nicely intervened" on me this is what you would have gotten

you have no right to assume that just because someone has a designer bag they don't know what they are doing when it comes to animals. Nor do you have any right to assume that anyone buying chicks without all of the accoutrement are going to let their birds die within the week.

I regularly "impulse buy" my chickens and let me tell you they live long, happy, healthy lives with NO brooder lamp, no special food and water dishes and no special water additives.

You'd have to be an absolute IDIOT to think that your chickens don't need food and water.

As for Miraclz5..I'm not going touch what you said with a 10 foot pole because it borders on eugenics.

 

[rungirl]

I think this may be why TSC has a 6 chick minimum purchase. It discourages people from "impulse buying" a cute little chick to take home for the kids at Easter. If you have to buy 6, it may make people who aren't committed to raising them think twice.

 

[Nambroth]

This is a bit long, and I apologize. I have experienced this from both 'sides' and wanted to share my thoughts.

I worked in big chain retail pet stores (for a while in the second busiest in the nation!) for a while and selling animals, I saw these same issues come up time and time again. So, most of my anecdotes come from pet store retail, but it does have some overlap into the discussion here. In the end, nearly all of the problems come down to lack of education, apathy, and the mighty dollar.

Education (ignorance):
Lack of education is the largest factor most of the time. I am not saying 'stupid people'... in fact many of my worst customers were intelligent, well educated people in other aspects of life. I am talking about education about the animal whose fate they are about to control by taking it home. As 'chicken people'

we can certainly understand that there are a lot of myths, misinformation, and general ignorance about chickens out there amongst people that do not keep them! The same can be said for every animal we keep as a companion, pet, or livestock... including dogs and cats. There is a terrible amount of ignorance, and when dealing with some of the more complex species to keep (exotics, fish, etc) it only compounds itself. The responsibility is twofold; the customer has a responsibility to understand and learn about what the animal's basic needs are (if it is a child, the responsibility becomes shared with the guardian of course) before bringing an animal home. Then there is the ongoing education that occurs while keeping the animal. To do initial research and then stop can be fooling yourself. We, as a people, are constantly learning new things about animals and their care and needs, even for common pets such as dogs, cats, and so forth! As an example, I have been keeping companion parrots for about 23 years now. The amount of knowledge and advancement in understanding these birds has increased at least tenfold if not more in those last 23 years! If I were to care for my parrots in the way that I would if I had done all of my research in 1988 and then stopped, I would be doing them a great disservice and they would lead much less pleasant lives. That's one reason I joined BYC! The wealth of information-- and constantly learning new things-- so that I can give my animals the best lives that I am capable of.
So what can we do? The only individual that can take responsibility for educating themselves is... well, themselves. So when possible, I always promote educating oneself and when encountering people that seem even slightly willing to learn, I try to present information and where they can go to learn more in the kindest way possible. A person is far more likely to listen to advice and delve deeper if you are kind and not preachy, I've found!

The second source of lack of education is the point of sale of the animal. Be it a breeder, a store, an individual, whatever. For some, it is natural to expect to get information about the animal they are getting from the source of the animal. This is, of course, not always the case but the (often incorrect) logic is that "If they are selling/breeding this animal, they must know a lot about it / are an expert!" Thus, if the person at the point of sale lacks education, this is passed onto the new customer taking home an animal. It is frustrating to go to a store like a feed store where the employees don't know or care anything for the chicks, just as it's frustrating to go to a pet store where the employees don't know or care about the live animals sold there. Here is the complication: Employees that love animals are more likely to care, educate themselves, be passionate about making sure an animal is well cared for, and will pass this onto the customer. Sadly--! And ironically, this is the same type of individual that will work at a pet store and be so upset by the continual stream of customers that due to ignorance or apathy are cruel to animals, be upset by the bureaucracy of rules intended to make customers happy no matter how unfair to the animal it is, be upset by the practices and standards of the pet trade and how animals are treated, etc. In most chain stores, the employees are directed that they are nor permitted to deny the sale of an animal. My manager told me straight up at my second job that the only time I could deny the sale of a live animal is if the customer straight up told me they were going to engage in a cruel act to the animal (e.g. getting animals to fight them) and even if they said this, and I denied the sale, I still had to sell it to them if they changed their story!! These employees that truly care and want to help the animal and help the customer are the very employees that tend to get overwhelmed by the amount of cruelty and terrible things people do to animals. When I worked there, my mantra was that if I even improved the life of ONE animal each day by taking time to talk to customers about their care, then I was making a difference. After 4 years though it got to me, too, and I couldn't deal with it any more. I worked at three different stores and the trend was usually that people with good hearts that were active in wanting to help animals would start working in retail pet trade, and eventually it'd be too much for them. The ones that were long-term employees were usually the people that were detached, apathetic, and just after a paycheck. Sound familiar....?
So what to do? Some stores are already starting to move in the right direction, by offering easy, free, readily available information at the 'point of sale' or... I should say "point of impulse buy"!! A few big chain pet stores have started putting pamphlets that are free to get one started on the care of an animal, and provide references of where to go for more information. Yesterday when I was in TSC I noticed they have little pamphlets there too on chick care. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink... that is true! However some people, if given the chance, will take advantage of this information and start their education right then and there. I was in TSC for a while yesterday, waiting for an employee to become available to ask if they carried food grade DE. While I was waiting, a gentleman came in, was passing by to presumably get something else, and then wandered back over to the chicks. He watched them for a while, then noticed the pamphlets. Suddenly he was reading every scrap of information they had listed, and started reading the backs of packages (chick starter kit, feeds, etc) and then I saw he had picked up one of the books from their small book and magazine selection! By the time I was checking out, he had a cart full of what he needed to start safely with chicks and had an employee helping him pick some out. Now imagine if that information wasn't there... would this guy have bought a few chicks, gotten home, and realized that he didn't know what to do? It's hard to say but I feel like I experienced some point-of-sale education working.
It's not much, but it's a start. What can we do to improve point-of-sale education?

Apathy:
This is perhaps the saddest one. Apathy, at least in this case, is where a person knows (on some level) that they are not providing the proper life for an animal, but simply don't care or can't be bothered. People that have an animal because it is a fad, a status symbol, or looks nice in or around their home. People that like an animal when it is cute and would just as flippantly get rid of it when it matures. People that would buy an animal for a child to teach 'responsibility', or because they asked loud enough, and not care what the child does (even if the child has good intentions, they often need at least some guidance).

This ties in with the next section, so I will use it to lead into it. I will lump in with this the concept of a 'throw away' pet or animal. This concept is very much alive and very depressing! I saw this many times a day, every day, working in pet retail. The price of the animal is often in direct relationship with how much an apathetic person will care for it. "It's just a goldfish" "It's just a parakeet" "It's just a guinea pig" "It's just a chicken". Animals that cost very little are easily replaced for these types of people. These are often the types of animals purchased for a child, when the guardian knows or suspects that the child may make errors or lose interest in the animal, and thus it was not an expensive investment if it dies! And almost always, I saw this was in relationship with the dollar value of an animal, and had absolutely no relevance to the intelligence, social needs, or welfare of the animal. A budgie/parakeet is arguably as (or close to as) intelligent and socially complex as some larger parrot species. However, if a budgie costs $15, and a larger parrot $1,500... which will be considered a lesser animal, purchased on a whim, or considered 'disposable' if it dies? Or how about fish. A comet goldfish can be as inexpensive as $0.25, whereas some less common species of fish can cost over $25 each. Even though goldfish are as intelligent as and have the same needs as the more expensive fish, which one is more likely to be put in a bowl and live a short, sad life? It is the power of the dollar has over some people, which leads me to....

Money:
The thing we all hate and can't live without, right?

Unfortunately when it comes to animals and money, animals usually lose. Suffice to say, the pet trade and the commercial chick trade is not out there to make animals happy... it's out there to make money. Retail stores exist to sell you the animal once or twice, and keep you coming back for supplies. That is where the most money is to be had-- supplies! Most retail pet (or feed) stores don't turn much profit on any given animal sold; they want you back in there buying food, supplies, accessories. Thus there is not a lot of incentive to making sure the animals are the healthiest or get the best care. I am not saying that they are intentionally cruel to them!! Not by a long shot. Especially in recent years, many retailers have really cleaned up when it comes to the actual care the animals get. On the bureaucratic side, store policies have gotten stricter on the standard of care for live animals (though it is up to individual stores to enforce these, unfortunately). This has led to the downsizing of animals kept in stores... have you noticed that the number of animals kept in Petco and Petsmart is less than half of what they used to have say, 10 years ago (with exception to fish). Still, in chain retail, the bottom line is still the dollar. Just as stores try to buy products for resale at the lowest cost (so that they have more profit margin) so too does this practice apply to animals. When I worked at one chain store many years back (petco), I was the one tasked with checking in the live animals when they were delivered. What would have been a happy time for me, interacting with animals, turned into a depressing run each time. To save money, they were bred at a bird and small animal equivalent of a puppy mill. They were then transported hours from north TX to Houston in a small trailer intended for building supplies that had almost no ventilation and no climate control (anyone that has lived in the south might understand how they felt). They were shipped in crates, which by itself is not cruel, but they were packed in the crates so tightly that each animal did not have room to turn around, and in the case of small animals (mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters) and small birds (budgies, zebra finches) they were stacked two high. Needless to say that many were dead on arrival, but there must have been enough alive to keep profits turning because this didn't change. I was instructed to move animals that seemed weak, heat exhausted, or dehydrated to the 'back room' so that customers would not see them. I was not often granted the time to go back and help them (which broke my heart! Thus begins the breaking of the spirit of an animal-loving retail employee...) so going to the 'back room' was usually their last rites. All of this to save some money so that the company had a better profit margin!!
I have since been back to that petco to see how things were, and they did seem much improved. However, as I am no longer an employee, I am not privileged to know what happens behind the scenes. I can only hope that it's better.


SO! After way too much ranting and rambling...

what is my point? That this is a complex issue! Stopping the sale of animals, in this case chicks, in a retail setting might stop some impulse buys, that is true. Though, devil's advocate: some of the people most outspoken and educated in their area of animal expertise started as innocent people impulse buying an animal years ago...!! How many here brought home their first chicken(s) before they really knew what they were getting into? I bet at least a few. And I bet that now those very people have super happy chickens, living much better lives than they would otherwise. How many people impulse buy a chick (or any other animal) and due to ignorance or apathy let it suffer, and the animal leads a short, sad life? A lot of people. I saw both types of people daily. One type gave me hope! The others depressed me greatly. One of the saddest days was when one individual cockatiel that I loved with all my heart was returned to my store, dead, the day after it was sold. To this day I am deeply upset by this. The terrible stories I could tell! However, I am not entirely convinced that if we didn't sell cockatiels that it wouldn't have happened anyhow. Maybe not to that individual bird, but.. somewhere, to another bird, and so on.

I agree that changes need to be made; in an ideal world, none of these chicks or animals should be made to suffer because someone took them home and allowed them to suffer (either out of ignorance or apathy). Laws do not actually fix either one of these issues. You can make a law that you have to take a knowledge test to buy an animal, but all that would do is increase the number of people buying animals from illegitimate sources! Even as a responsible person, if you had to prove my worth to buy a chick at a store, or if you could just get one from the lady that breeds them down the street in less-than-ideal conditions but doesn't ask a question when you buy one, don't ask don't tell, (examples only), which are you more likely to do? Which are people that don't care about chickens as much as you do more likely to do?? I think education is one of the keys here, and in the internet age it is getting easier to get free, fast information about animal care. Individual education is important, and I think point-of-sale education needs to be beefed up, too. How do we improve this...?

 

[cackydoodledoo]

OK seriously you guys are blowing this WAY out of proportion!!!!!

#1 I was mainly just venting that it is frustrating to me to know that a large number of these chicks will be dead in days and they will die a slow lonely death. If most people just had a little education then it would be much better. I respect your opinion but please quit bashing me. It is not necessary!!!!!

#2 You have to understand the town I live in and the people who live in it. At least 50% of our town's population doesn't have a pot to piss in much less the means to take care of animals. All you have to do is drive around and look at all the dogs tied up in backyards with no doghouses, no water or food. Oh but they were sure cute when they were a puppy. You don't understand it because you don't live here!!!

#3 I am not asking for more legislation or control of anything. I am a big advocate for the morons running our country to MUCH LESS control!!!! I am just simply asking would it be too hard for these stores to require their employees to have a little education on the matter???? I mean this clerk yesterday is giving this guy a waterer that is three times the size he needed. Those chicks were sure to drown. Simple things like that he should have known.

#4 I do wholeheartedly agree that they should all put the fences around them. When I went the other day I had to extract a dead chick who had gotten smooshed by the feeder. Not sure how he got under there but I got a pretty good guess. My kids understand how to pick them up and how to hold them properly but a lot of kids and parents don't.

#5 Most of them were buying one chick sometimes two! Show me a BYCer or chicken lover that goes in and buys just one chick. My point exactly!!! You all know full well that they are like Lay's potato chips!

 

[sundcarrie]

I was glad my local Tractor Supply had chickens and the people I talked to knew enough to help me out. I went the week before and bought all the supplies because I wanted things to be ready when I brought the chicks home. I want to buy a small farm one day and when I found out chickens were legal in my city I started making preparations. Grandpa will be over next week to help me build chicken housing but I am sure when I went into get my chicks in my dress clothes people were looking at me like I was nuts.

I was in heels and everything and I paid for 6 baby chicks and a seed packet. I have been reading and dreaming about having chickens for a good year now. I still don't feel prepared but I do see what you mean about people who just think they can get a chicken and keep it as a backyard pet. I am a dog person and did a little volunteering around them and have seen a lot of people get large breed dogs and decide they don't want them because they are too big or too much work. I am sure it happens with chickens too although they sound like they are easier to care for than my dogs are.

It would be nice if these places at least had a detailed booklet that told you what to do with the baby chicks though. If I had not been reading a lot I might not have been able to remember all the things the babies needed at first from a few conversations. Impulse buyers might be in a state of shock when they realize the things you need for chicks.

 

[BooBear]

It is the responsibility of the buyer to research how to properly care for the chicks.
It should not be forced upon the seller. Most feedstores do try to be helpful, large chains like TSC provide care pamplets. It is the buyer who chooses to accept or not accept their help.

I do not feel it is right to over regulate how a person buys their first chick, dog, cat, ect. To much BS in politics already.
If a person chooses to purchase an animal then they are responsible for the care of that animal. There are laws already in place designed to protect animals in bad situations and discourage animal abuse.

 

[Nicole01]

My last trip to the feed store was just to look at the chicks. I wasn't there the weekend before when Hubby took the kids to pick out their chicks. My children are very responsible and handle every living creature with care. Plus I'm disabled due to severe pain, so leaving the house is difficult. Anyways, I got to the feed store and looked at the chicks. I found a single SS baby hen a I brought her home. We didn't buy anything else. We do have a very nice vechile and I do have a nice designer bag. Hubby and I do dress on the nicer side when we leave the house.

I knew nothing about chickens 3 weeks ago when we got our first three. I had no clue what a brooder was and we had one set up downstairs. Luckily, the Internet, especially this site provides a lot of information on raising chickens. We don't have a coop yet either. I got the chickens because the eggs are fabulous. Now I'm looking to buy two more hens to show. I've learned a lot these last 3 weeks and I'm learning something new everyday.

I do take good care of all my animals. Even the dogs get a bath once a week. My brooder gets cleaned at least 10-15 times a day. I want them healthy. I treat their water with probios and they have vitamins in their chick starter food.

For the posters who were judging on apperance--- Please don't judge others on appearance. Just because they look high class doesn't mean they don't take care of their animals. There is nothing wrong with having nice things in life. If they didn't have chicks in the feed store, I wouldn't have my girls. I love my chickens very much even though I knew nothing about chickens just a few weeks ago.