Why don't people listen... Rant

[Peepsi]

*My suspicion is that part of the reason people have such negative stereotypes about chickens and other farm animals is a deliberate campaign of misinformation by corporations such as Tyson, who do not want you to question their business ethics. I would love to hear what other people think about this, maybe I should start my own thread? I tried to search to see if this has already been discussed on here, apparently everyone likes to name their chickens Tyson.

I personally don't think it has anything to do with Tyson, and everything to do with old adages: "Dumb Cluck", "Chickening Out", "Chicken Little (The Sky is Falling!)". You have a bunch of very old stereotypes about chickens that are all negative (and were probably around before Tyson was even a big company). These stereotypes probably came around from small-time farmers who viewed chickens solely as expendable livestock and not pets. The farmers were only interacted with their free-ranging chickens long enough to throw table scraps at them and collect eggs, so they didn't really understand their behaviors well.

Also, chickens can be STUBBORN, and people will mistake stubbornness for stupidity.

Just my two cents.

 

[aart]

The system is designed that way

Human Nature is 'that way'.

 

[cmom]

Everyone is different and have different setups and ways to care for their birds. There may be right ways and wrong ways but everyone's way is different. How I care for my birds works for me as does how other care for their birds. Most of my birds are not pets but livestock. There are some exceptions but not for the most part. I do show my birds at poultry shows. I hatch out a few hundred chicks every year. I grow them out and sell most of the males I'm not going to use as breeders. I may sell some of the females but most go into general population coops and pens because I also sell eggs. I don't free range anymore due to losses from predators in the past but the birds have large pens. My birds are kept safe. I did loose some birds to predators this past year which is unusual but with each loss I have beefed up the security. Prior it had been several years with no losses. I believe in keeping my birds safe and secure. The breaches I had this past year were unusual. I had an owl recently go through some netting. It was crappy netting, not what I thought it was when I bought it online. I had a hawk breach the netting also. I have since bought some new heavy duty netting to replace the crappy netting.

 

[Rooapalooza]

I personally don't think it has anything to do with Tyson, and everything to do with old adages: "Dumb Cluck", "Chickening Out", "Chicken Little (The Sky is Falling!)". You have a bunch of very old stereotypes about chickens that are all negative (and were probably around before Tyson was even a big company). These stereotypes probably came around from small-time farmers who viewed chickens solely as expendable livestock and not pets. The farmers were only interacted with their free-ranging chickens long enough to throw table scraps at them and collect eggs, so they didn't really understand their behaviors well.

Also, chickens can be STUBBORN, and people will mistake stubbornness for stupidity.

Just my two cents.

I don't know. My grandmother had meat and layer chickens when she was a kid, and from what she remembers, that was the norm. There are so so many phrases and idioms that come from chicken raising. Flew the coop, home to roost, eggs in one basket, coming out of your shell, strutting around, mother hen, clucking... too many to list. Not that many of them are synonymous with stupidity/cowardice; actually a lot of them are chicken wisdom/comparing human behavior to chicken society. I think people who raise birds for meat (no judgment), even including the farmers who work for Tyson, want to treat their birds well while they are alive, and recognize their surprising intelligence and social structure.

It's the company itself that prioritizes money and efficiency over human and animal welfare, and has a huge monetary interest in people not thinking too much about it.

 

[Chullicken]

Sounds like she wanted the conversation and nostalgia for her book group and money can make us kind of arrogant. This is a pretty common scenarios, some of my groups I'm in on another site...some of the situations and people give me shivers. the one woman I think on here asked for complete honesty about her father raising poultry and pretty sure she received it. Her father would buy 100 or so chicks, put them in a crappy shack and he'd wake up to find them all dead from weasel attacks. So, he'd go downtown on the tractor and get 100 more, rinse and repeat. I was open to suggestions I guess he just liked throwing money away. The biggest thing that got me the most out of it was he bought two pairs of peacocks and the daughter found one being attacked by this weasel...she stood there not knowing what to do. 'You could have banged on the wall or opened the door...probably would have saved their lives...' but she didn't, just let them all get murdered while she stood there like a monkey on a tree limb. At this point in my life, I define people and their character as people by how they treat animals...says a lot about a person.

 

[BDutch]

All you can do is give your advice. It's up to them to take it. I do feel your frustration. I have a similar (ongoing) experience with someone who got chicks from me. This person comes to me for advice, listens to what I have to say, then does something different...over and over and over.

I didn't read the whole thread, but do have a question @silkiekeeper.

Cause the discussion seemed to go a different way.

Did you eventually stop selling you’re chicks to this person?
I wouldn’t sell any chicks to such a person, not even for 10 times the price.

I did everything wrong out of ignorance. Everything. Thankfully I found this site early and took advice seriously. That’s the key, taking adv..,

I did things wrong too in the beginning too. Bought sick chicks, probably with coccidiosis. And chicks that turned out to be young cockerels. Probably many of us do things the wrong way at start. But I certainly learned quick cause I didn't want more casualties.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

I did everything wrong out of ignorance. Everything. Thankfully I found this site early and took advice seriously. That’s the key, taking advice seriously. I didn’t do things wrong because of laziness, but from ignorance. I ordered my chicks and bought a TSC coop. I figured the coop had to be the right thing since it came from a farm supply place. Ignorance. You don’t expect lies from a place like that. Once I assembled the coop and waited for my chicks I wanted to know what came next. I found this site and learned that it wasn’t what comes next, it was what should have happened before. Not lazy, just naive type ignorant. As for someone who has been given advice and ignores it that’s ignorance of a lazy genre.

AMEN!!!!!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

...
*My suspicion is that part of the reason people have such negative stereotypes about chickens and other farm animals is a deliberate campaign of misinformation by corporations such as Tyson, who do not want you to question their business ethics. I would love to hear what other people think about this, maybe I should start my own thread? I tried to search to see if this has already been discussed on here, apparently everyone likes to name their chickens Tyson.

I agree with you! - Remember those »Backyard Poultry is causing Salmonella Pandemics« threads in the news? I am so sure there is some lobbying behind those, because if everybody raises their own poultry in their backyards, who would go to the store and buy eggs? Just look at the information available on OpenSecrets.org about the company you've mentioned:
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00169821&cycle=2018
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000460
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000460&cycle=2016
Who said »Freedom is not available for free.«?

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Sounds like she wanted the conversation and nostalgia for her book group and money can make us kind of arrogant. This is a pretty common scenarios, some of my groups I'm in on another site...some of the situations and people give me shivers. the one woman I think on here asked for complete honesty about her father raising poultry and pretty sure she received it. Her father would buy 100 or so chicks, put them in a crappy shack and he'd wake up to find them all dead from weasel attacks. So, he'd go downtown on the tractor and get 100 more, rinse and repeat. I was open to suggestions I guess he just liked throwing money away. The biggest thing that got me the most out of it was he bought two pairs of peacocks and the daughter found one being attacked by this weasel...she stood there not knowing what to do. 'You could have banged on the wall or opened the door...probably would have saved their lives...' but she didn't, just let them all get murdered while she stood there like a monkey on a tree limb. At this point in my life, I define people and their character as people by how they treat animals...says a lot about a person.

One evening last year i saw a Raccoon entering the duck-house, ran out in my pajamas, barefeet, grabbed a broomstick and beat the 'coon dead. - My wife now thinks i'm totally "loco". - So even doing the right thing (in your opinion) can make you look bad in the eye of the observer…

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Are there chicken books available with paragraphs, containing less than 160 characters?

Maybe one of us should write it!!!