This makes me so mad...

[Tanichca]

I was staying with my grandparents in downtown Tucson yesterday, and i went down the street to a house that had chickens (i had been woken up by a rooster, so i knew they had some) this is what i found:
4 hens, 5 roosters. 5!!!!
Food was a few hot dog buns thrown on the ground.
Water was in a large bucket.
the yard was filthy, covered in trash, broken furniture, bits of metal. No coop to speak of, the birds were sleeping under a saw horse.
All the birds showed signs of extreme frostbite (one of their combs was almost entirely black)

why cant people take care of their birds??!?

 

[chickie fam]

That makes me so mad!! If you can't take care of an animal DON'T GET ONE!! Or give it away to someone who can take care of them properly. I don't understand why people who don't care how an animal is taken care of want to have animals at all!! How would they like to be forced to live in those conditions.

Those people make me want to slap then, take their animals and run away.

 

[pdsavage]

I have alot of Roosters in with my hens,Untill I thin them out the 19th.
I do also feed em table scraps.
And some of my roos have frost bite on thier combs.
They stay outside in the cold all day instead of going in their coop.even in -0 weather

why not just call animal controle on them....

 

[Tanichca]

well i assume you also feed your birds layer and other REAL chicken feed, not just table scraps?
and you wouldnt let your birds keep that frostbite all the way through, and not care?
ETA that sounded kinda rude... sorry

 

[Reg]

Quote:
Just how cold does it need to be before they get frost bite ?

Reg

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Consider that they may do as some and feed at a specific time of day, and then remove the dishes, not free feed. Or their feed simply may not have been where you could see it. When my dh tosses out pieces of bread or whatever, it is never near their real feeders.

 

[Winggedheart]

My birds get scraps also, and a few roosters have a bit of frostbite.

though they do have coops, proper feed, water, and all that.

I'd call animal control, or offer to take their birds.

 

[HarlansHollowFarms]

Quote:
Sorry, but I think you are little quick to judge people and there behaviour basiced on a walk down the street in Tucson.

I for one am not so sure I would have the same type of coop I have in Montana where it is really cold.....that I would have in Tucson, where it is reletively mild.

Do you for sure know those Roos are not for the dinner table and the hens for the eggs?

People feed scraps, that is not unusual......did you watch all day to be sure they never fed them anything else?

I give water out of a large bucket...easier to dump the ice.......They did have water...so what is the problem there?

Who are we to judge how someone keeps their yard....we do not live there...they can keep it how they like.

As for frostbite... I have a heated coop and my birds...especially the Roo have frostbit combs.....not much you can do about that!

I really would hate for someone to judge me just by walking past my house.

 

[KristyHall]

Quote:
Sorry, but I think you are little quick to judge people and there behaviour basiced on a walk down the street in Tucson.

I for one am not so sure I would have the same type of coop I have in Montana where it is really cold.....that I would have in Tucson, where it is reletively mild.

Do you for sure know those Roos are not for the dinner table and the hens for the eggs?

People feed scraps, that is not unusual......did you watch all day to be sure they never fed them anything else?

I give water out of a large bucket...easier to dump the ice.......They did have water...so what is the problem there?

Who are we to judge how someone keeps their yard....we do not live there...they can keep it how they like.

As for frostbite... I have a heated coop and my birds...especially the Roo have frostbit combs.....not much you can do about that!

I really would hate for someone to judge me just by walking past my house.

I have to agree here. I also find it annoying when people get mad about a "trashy yard" What constitutes as trashy? I tea up card board and put t in the muscadine orchard right before fall to add as extra ground cover for the beneficial organisms in the leaf mold. people say it looks trashy. I tell them by spring it will be covered and pretty much out of sight. Because I am a single person working on 20 acres of undeveloped land, with serious injuries/disabilities form a car accident three years ago, which has also hampered my income, I use a lot of scrap material to build coups, pens, I have stacks of wood, metal sheeting, and half built fences everywhere. It doesn't look pretty but will when I am done, though it will take a couple of years at this rate.
My chickens coup is an old banged up camper I converted into a nice safe coup. It looks ugly outside but very sturdy and warm. I have over grown acres with brush and wild plants hat would give a suburbanite fits, but I see it as a beautiful place for wildlife to go, including beneficial birds and insects. This is why if or when suburbia spreads out this way, I'm selling and moving because I don't want some rich person's view on aesthetics building some silly comity to tell me how to deal with my own property, while they plant their yards with one kind of grass, and spraying with chemicals, and essentially eliminating natural diversity, argh!
ok that was a total off topic rant, sorry about that.
Any how, they could be yard birds. People don't necessarily go to extremes to take care of yard birds, especially if the people come from extreme poverty where they have a lot of other things taking their time to make ends meet. If the birds are for food production then they me using natural selection to ensure their birds are fairly independent and hardy. A lot of people are going to let nature ensure what survives and what doesn't without bothering to put up a built shelter and so on. They're livestock, they don't need an expensive shelter, they are meant to be outside. It is better if they have a shelter, but they are not domesticated animals such as a yorkie terrier, that are completely unable to fend for themselves without a lot of care. ( i am making an exception for over bred or ornamental birds, and i acknowledge chickens need some care unless they are very close to their natural origins since we have wild flocks of game birds out here that do just fine.)

 

[wegotchickens]

If you could see the hotdog buns, and they weren't fighting over them, then they are either well-fed or had food elsewhere. Starving birds don't leave buns laying around.