Thursday, May 31, 2007

City Chickens? Give me a break

Unbeknown st to me, there's apparently some folks who live in cities that are raising chickens. At least that's what I'm hearing. I guess the idea is to have them as pets. The benefit being, they pay (at least in part) for themselves, by providing eggs for their owners.

OK here's how I see this. I imagine somebody who lives in a co-op ( that's co-op, not coop) wants to experiment with livestock because they think it's the cool thing to do. They decide a pig, cow, horse, or goat won't really be the best thing in an apartment setting (probably up on the roof) so the next best thing is a bunch of chickens. Now, I have to tell you, most of my experience with "city folk" from down state (read New York City) is, they think anyone who lives north of Westchester county lives on a farm and sits on porches chewing bits of hay. So I can't imagine what in Hell they think they'll have to do to keep chickens. They've probably read some "how to" book and now they're "experts" in all the whys and wherefores of chicken rearing.

As a kid I lived on a chicken farm. Yes, it was a hundred years, or so, ago, but I have friends now who live on a chicken farm and things have not progressed as much as you'd think over the years. They still have to clean out the coops, keep the chickens, warm or cool, depending on the season, check the perches, watch for avian diseases, (not to mention Avian Flu today). If they go away for more than a day they need "chicken sitters". They must check feed daily, put those cackling things outside during the day and back into confinement in the night. It's work, hard work... What? For freaking eggs? Go to the store and buy them, or better yet, find a farmer or farmer's market and buy them from the poor guy that's trying to make a living doing the work that you, in your city, shouldn't be doing. These city folk are quite literally, nuts.

Get a cat.

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