ammojamo
Joined 9 years ago
Joined 9 years ago
I do agree it's bad form to indicate when you know there is a car in your blind spot already.
Discovering a car in your blind spot should be a relatively rare occurrence if you are driving attentively.
That said, I'm not that emotionally attached to them – I like them, care for them, but if I thought they were seriously sick I would put them down. We're all different :-)
1. Scale also comes into play: We only have 8 hens, and are able to significantly supplement their feed with scraps from the kitchen, which are effectively free. The chooks are free ranging over a similar area (~half an acre), so the lower density means more free-range food for them, I guess. As a result, our feed costs per egg are actually much lower than if we had more chooks, and keeping a few old hens around is a negligible cost for us.
2. We regard our chooks somewhere halfway between pets and livestock - it's not a binary choice. We enjoy having them around so they have some intrinsic value for us, but at the same time if they were getting too expensive to keep, we'd be OK with occasionally cooking one up.
However, we do have a large yard where they are free to range around – I think this is key.
In my experience there is no need to kill a chook after 3 years. Average lifespan for a chick is 8-10 years. Egg laying frequency does decrease with age, but there's no need to kill them just because they're slowing down a bit. Our oldest chook is 8 years, and laid her (probably) last egg only a few months ago.
When it does come time to kill one for whatever reason, the broom stick method breaks the neck instantly - easy and clean, just a bit of flapping around. As for the body, we just bury them if we are not going to eat them.
I think the heirarchical behaviour depends somewhat on the breed and the environment. Our chooks do have a clear hierarchy, none of them have died as a result. We have a mix of breeds - Australorp, Plymouth Rock, ISA Brown and one other mystery breed.
Flies probably depend on your environment – in Australia here we have a ton of flies already, I don't think the chooks make much difference!
Some of our chooks have a lot of personality and are almost pets, especially the early ones we basically hand raised as chicks – although you don't want to be too sentimental about them either. You have to be OK with killing them if that becomes necessary - it's still a sad time when I have to do that though.
If you have enough yard space and like the idea of being connected to the creatures that supply some of your food, I'd totally recommend giving chooks a go.
* edit: should have added, we don't keep a rooster which probably changes the dynamics too
(Matthew 5:33-37)
These days I live in a rural Australian town and mostly walk or ride a bike to get around. We don't have a TV, a dishwasher, an air-conditioner or a ride-on lawn mower. Life is great. I'm working on a small building project in my spare time and instead of using machinery to level the ground, I just used a mattock and shovel (like my grandfather would have). It took weeks instead of hours, but that's OK.