Was I supposed to fall in love with my food?

[featherhead007]

Hey fido.. You crapped on lawn again.. Time to slaughter you and eat....... Doesn't make sense, does it!

 

[featherhead007]

But the strangest thing is....
I can eat eggs everyday ????? Go figure

 

[drumstick diva]

If the eggs you eat are not fertile (due to no rooster), you aren't eating a chick embryo

 

[Celticdragonfly]

Welcome to BYC. What a very unusual first job!

 

[Jealous Gypsy]

OK, well... Maybe not LOVE!

But I really find them fascinating and learning the animal husbandry of raising a sustainable flock of egg-laying, meat producing, yard-birds is my latest challenge in life!

Part of me hates to be cheesy and copy the suggested questions, but the part of me that's typing is doing it on an older phone! So not keen on flipping back and forth!

So here goes!

(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens?

My grandparents retired from a life in Baltimore city and moved to the country at 65 and acquired a flock of about a dozen birds. Pullets, I believe. I was about 4 or 5. This was a very formative experience!

At around 12, my first paying job was to briskly walk through a neighbor's 10,000-chicken houses and grab any slow (lame) ones and... "Dispatch" them. Also, a very formative experience!

My parents later had a dozen birds, as well. Mostly escapees from the Purdue truck!

(2) How many chickens do you have right now?

10

(3) What breeds do you have?

1 Adult laying female Rhode Island Red
1 juvenile/8-12 week male Rhode Island Red
3 chicks 2 week female Rhode Island Red

4 chicks 2 week female Silver Wyandotte

1 chick 2 week female Americana (I believe she snuck in with my Rhode Island Red chickies. It was dark in there, catching those chicks! She's here now, and she's adorable, so I think I'll keep her!)

(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens?

My 4 and 5 year old boys. Youngest is an animal ENTHUSIAST! His second or third WORD was "chicken"! He loves all the animal shows and nature shows. My older boy likes to watch my younger one obsess over animals! The younger will pick up any insect, mouse, bird, kitten, etc he finds. The older LOVES it too... WATCHING his little brother touch the critters, that is! He just LOVES to watch YOU pick up that bug... But he's fine if its just YOU doing it, not him!

I like the fact that chickens are a self-reliance staple that can make " incredible, edible, eggs" with very little input from their keepers.

I like that they are also varied pretty colors and have personalities that I get to know, on top of it all.

(5) What are some of your other hobbies?

I'm a 40 year old Information worker/IT Analyst. Dude. My wife is a 5th grade teacher and despises chickens due to living with a sloppy chicken keeper in her younger years. She loves our cat, dog and guinea pigs though, so there's HOPE!

My hobbies are ham radio, electronics and related tinkering, mechanics and related tinkering, overlanding with my 4x4 Tacoma, taking my small boys to Rock Concerts (with shooting earmuffs on), and I am also a midlife Physics major at UTSA - currently exploring a retirement career of radio astronomy for my "twilight years" (pun pun pun!)

(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.

2 medium sized pound-mutt girls, 1 male Bengal cat, 2 guinea pigs, a dozen fish (mostly White Clouds) and a Blue Lobster.

house full of teen/young adult leeches, too! the chickens have been a big hit with everyone (except Momma) so far! / :-(

(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?

Found BYC in Google searches and it was immediately obvious that this is THE site for amateur chicken keepers! Most of my OTHER hobbies have a "THE SITE" too!

Welcome aboard! Where'd you pick up a blue lobster? I live in Maine and have heard of them but not seen one.

 

[K9SPY]

Welcome aboard! Where'd you pick up a blue lobster? I live in Maine and have heard of them but not seen one.

They are at the local Petco and PetSmart chains. About $10. I bet they are some designer crayfish... but they sell them as "Blue Lobster". Max size about 6 inches. Had him about 1-1.5 years now. We found a female about 1 year ago... but he literally mated her to death... :-( He has molted a few times. He lost a claw and has molted through several regrowth stages until it is now back to full size and symmetrical. but yeah! That's my "Blue Lobster"!

 

[K9SPY]

I love Bengals (and chickens, of course)! Where did you get him?

Just a local lady... she says the parents are pure but she doesnt care for the Cost and Circumstance of official "Cat Fancying". Just likes occasional kittens and the cash doesnt hurt. Her family runs a VERY successful local safari park. So they have some serious animal husbandry creds. He looks pretty damn purebred though. And he ACTS the same! I'm happy! Whole family is in love with our living room leopard!

 

[K9SPY]

Two chickens, in the back of my Lexus yah they did crap, but hey they are family

MWHAHAHAHA!! Our Relationship has not progressed QUITE that far yet!

 

[K9SPY]

Welcome to BYC. What a very unusual first job!

Oh no... its a super common job in those big commercial chicken farms. There's usually like 100,000 chickens to a family farm... if a bird bug catches, it can bankrupt them! You don't literally dispatch every chicken you can catch... only the ones who are clearly slow... and the idea is that those are the sick ones. I wouldn't be able to
do it today. I'd be inclined to put em in a quarantine coop and maybe set em loose to free range after a few weeks if the whole
coop wasn't wiped out. Then again, there was probably some sort of legal stuff that prevented that. I was too young to ask "the hard questions". And MOST of the time, the SLOW ones, were also clearly sick... CLEARLY. That WAS 25 years ago... I wonder how its done today...

 

[Lazy Farmer]

OK, well... Maybe not LOVE!

But I really find them fascinating and learning the animal husbandry of raising a sustainable flock of egg-laying, meat producing, yard-birds is my latest challenge in life!

Part of me hates to be cheesy and copy the suggested questions, but the part of me that's typing is doing it on an older phone! So not keen on flipping back and forth!

So here goes!

(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens?

My grandparents retired from a life in Baltimore city and moved to the country at 65 and acquired a flock of about a dozen birds. Pullets, I believe. I was about 4 or 5. This was a very formative experience!

At around 12, my first paying job was to briskly walk through a neighbor's 10,000-chicken houses and grab any slow (lame) ones and... "Dispatch" them. Also, a very formative experience!

My parents later had a dozen birds, as well. Mostly escapees from the Purdue truck!

(2) How many chickens do you have right now?

10

(3) What breeds do you have?

1 Adult laying female Rhode Island Red
1 juvenile/8-12 week male Rhode Island Red
3 chicks 2 week female Rhode Island Red

4 chicks 2 week female Silver Wyandotte

1 chick 2 week female Americana (I believe she snuck in with my Rhode Island Red chickies. It was dark in there, catching those chicks! She's here now, and she's adorable, so I think I'll keep her!)

(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens?

My 4 and 5 year old boys. Youngest is an animal ENTHUSIAST! His second or third WORD was "chicken"! He loves all the animal shows and nature shows. My older boy likes to watch my younger one obsess over animals! The younger will pick up any insect, mouse, bird, kitten, etc he finds. The older LOVES it too... WATCHING his little brother touch the critters, that is! He just LOVES to watch YOU pick up that bug... But he's fine if its just YOU doing it, not him!

I like the fact that chickens are a self-reliance staple that can make " incredible, edible, eggs" with very little input from their keepers.

I like that they are also varied pretty colors and have personalities that I get to know, on top of it all.

(5) What are some of your other hobbies?

I'm a 40 year old Information worker/IT Analyst. Dude. My wife is a 5th grade teacher and despises chickens due to living with a sloppy chicken keeper in her younger years. She loves our cat, dog and guinea pigs though, so there's HOPE!

My hobbies are ham radio, electronics and related tinkering, mechanics and related tinkering, overlanding with my 4x4 Tacoma, taking my small boys to Rock Concerts (with shooting earmuffs on), and I am also a midlife Physics major at UTSA - currently exploring a retirement career of radio astronomy for my "twilight years" (pun pun pun!)

(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.

2 medium sized pound-mutt girls, 1 male Bengal cat, 2 guinea pigs, a dozen fish (mostly White Clouds) and a Blue Lobster.

house full of teen/young adult leeches, too! the chickens have been a big hit with everyone (except Momma) so far! / :-(

(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?

Found BYC in Google searches and it was immediately obvious that this is THE site for amateur chicken keepers! Most of my OTHER hobbies have a "THE SITE" too!