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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.)
