Hell, I’m from Detroit and even I knew this. Chickens are food. That’s why they call that meat in the market “chicken.”
And yet…Backyard chickens dumped at shelters when hipsters can’t cope, critics say
Hundreds of chickens, sometimes dozens at a time, are being abandoned each year at the nation’s shelters from California to New York as some hipster farmers discover that hens lay eggs for two years, but can live for a good decade longer, and that actually raising the birds can be noisy, messy, labor-intensive and expensive.
I guess they slept through that scene in Babe.
I get a kick out of this. There are a couple of great quotes in the article from a lady named Mary Britton Clouse, who sounds at first like she’s got her head screwed on straight…
“It’s the stupid foodies,” said Britton Clouse, 60, who admits she speaks frankly. “We’re just sick to death of it.”
“People don’t know what they’re doing,” Britton Clouse said. “And you’ve got this whole culture of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing teaching every other idiot out there.”
Yeah, can’t argue, until I go to her website for something called “Chicken Run Rescue,” where I learn that:
Chicken Run provides the birds with temporary shelter and vet care, locates and screens adopters and transports the birds to their new homes within 90 miles of Minneapolis/St. Paul vicinity. There is a special need for rooster homes.
I’ll just bet there is. And I wish them a lot of success, since Minneapolis must have far different chickens than the ones in my admittedly limited experience…
Chickens are highly intelligent, gentle, vivacious individuals who form strong lifelong emotional bonds with each other as well as other species. They are warm and silky and lovely to hold.
It turns out Ms. Britton Clouse is strongly against the killing of chickens, and if I ever meet one of her highly intelligent ones I might agree in that case. In the case of the ones we have here, I confess I can hardly wait. I am not tempted to make pets of them, and don’t really understand the impulse. But I find her complaints about people who ‘don’t know what they’re doing,’ yet who presume to teach, kind of ironic.
As it is: You hipster backyard chicken farmers! Send’em here! We’ll take care of them for you, and you don’t have to worry your precious little heads about the details.
Hmmm, I can’t say that I really buy most of that article. MSN of all the news agencies I’ve read (yes even fox) seems to have by far the most outright biased and agenda driven reporters. Heck I’m honestly surprised the article didn’t quite degenerate into sneering at anyone who thinks they could care for any animal without the wise and benevolent hand of the government helping them. No, if I had to guess I’d say it was a slow news day and they needed someone to go out and find a controversy. Some people dumping their chickens at shelters? Sure why not, make it into a headline.
That said, why are there hundreds of chickens waiting for a new home rather than waiting to become dinner for some destitute family. I keep hearing about how 1 in 8 Americans are going hungry, so why not put them to good use?
lol – this is definitely a first world “problem”. “Oh no! we have too much food running around!”
Pet fads are common as dirt, and when they end there are always animal shelters looking for homes for owls or pot-bellied pigs or something, where no homes exist. So if the backyard chicken flock fad is grinding to a halt, that’s plausible. I can even believe there are a lot of people who thought their chickens would peck, cluck quietly and lay eggs in a clean and heart-warming manner until the moment of their decorous death, moments before the end of the fad. It probably never occurred to any of these people that the traditional thing to do with a hen who’s no longer laying is to eat her. Which, in a
Not learning the facts prior to jumping in with the crowd is as American as chicken pot pie.
Intelligent…lasting relationships? Huh? They are craven predators that eat their own given the chance. How moron do you have to be to think a chicken is intelligent?
I have only one thing to say about out of season hens:
Coq au vin.
hipsters is stoopid
So my wife wants to raise urban chickens. We mentioned this in conversation to my extended family, and my sister chimed in with this winner…
“Oh, don’t do that, avian vet bills are horrendous if one gets sick or injured, and they only lay eggs for a few years then your stuck with a chicken that wont”
I stared at her with this look of confusion and disbelief, and responded “No, if they get sick or injured, or when they stop laying, they meet ‘Mr Hatchet’, and end up in the pot for dinner.”
To which she was horrified, and started asking if I would eat one of my dogs next (Which I said I would if it was a case of that or letting my kids starve, much to her shock and dismay)
This is probably why my sisters don’t like having me over much.