stuff
Wow. On one hand, I'm glad that Bernie has enthusiastically endorsed Biden. On the other hand...
WHAT THE FUCK WAS 2016, BERNIE?
But here's hoping that the majority of people at least can hold their nose and vote for Biden. No, he may not be what progressives abjectly want, but he is one step on the path to what they want - considerably more so than Trump. And the fact that he is not the path, just a gate to step through may burns some rumps, but seriously, when media talk about the instant appeasement generation? This is what I think of: people who are so short-sighted they can't vote for something mediocre simply because it's not good.
Politics is not an 'achievement unlocked' like a gift in a box, it's a journey. And unfortunately Trump sent the best parts of American politics (and world politics) aaaaall the way back to the start. So you're going to have to go back through the wilderness all over again to reach the promised land. Luckily, it's been traversed once before, so the path is there and you can tread it deeper this time around.
How do you that? How do you make a future for your country out of the wilderness that you're in?
Well, you can start by fucking well hold your stupid stuck-up too-good-for-politics American idiot nose and bloody well vote for the Democrats with Joe Biden up as leader.
Or shut the fuck up about politics ever again. I've had it up to here with pwecious Septic Tanks storing their shit up before bubbling over about how their politics ain't perfect. They get an option to vote, to make a difference. So many people don't. But because they're American and better than the rest of us, they shouldn't have to lift a finger for it! *whine whine moan*
Yes, I most definitely have feelings.
On the other hand, for the first time in the last six months, I feel like the US might actually be able to be rid of Trump.
--
I'm writing a series on 'Real Chooken Keeping' for all the people who went out and panic-bought chickens to provide them with eggs after eggs got cleaned out off the shelves. (Dumbest hoarding ever, if you ask me.)
This was the version I wrote while pretty frustrated with people who bought chooks for eggs but clearly haven't actually thought the actual care and ownership of chickens through.With the onset of people scrambling for hens, I foresee a great deal of misinformation about just how easy it is to keep chickens.
Firstly, what's your definition of 'easy'?
Easier than full-scale self-sufficient farming? Easier than any other domestic barn animal? Easier than keeping a cat or a dog around the house? Easier than going to the shop and buying a dozen eggs, no muss, no fuss?
Firstly, keeping chookens responsibly is probably about as intensive as keeping a dog or a cat. Only more difficult because not everyone does it, so not everyone knows how to.
It's easier than keeping goats, sheep, pigs, ducks, and geese, but probably not as easy as keeping rabbits or fish, and maybe about the same difficulty as quails.
On he other hand, keeping 'battery style hens' is easy. You just have to not give a damn about the animal itself. Sadly, this is going to be the way of many backyard chickens in the coming months: cooped up in tiny coops, bored out of their brains, and many of them not laying because it's over winter.
Oh yeah, many of them don't lay over winter. The joke is that most home chooks are freeloaders, because they eat and eat and eat every day, but you don't always get an egg every day. Even the most productive breeds only lay an egg ~320 days out of 365, and the pretty heritage breeds with the nice temperaments? They may lay considerably less often than that.
So, now that you've had the basic warning, let's get to the meat and milk of the matter, eh?
SO YOU WANT TO BE A RESPONSIBLE CHOOKEN OWNER?
Three basic principles to remember when thinking of getting chickens:
1. Chooks are living creatures. They eat, sleep, get bored, get sick. They have status and ego, they have personalities, they want things, they complain when they don't get it. They want to live free and run wild.
2. Eggs should be a by-product of keeping chickens, not the purpose of keeping chickens. The chickens themselves perform many functions beyond that: ground tillage, pest control, garden fertilisation, compost turning. And they lay eggs. But if you don't take into account all the other functions that they perform, then your life with them is going to be fraught.
3. Your life with chickens will be better if you have taken Points 1 & 2 into consideration. Because so many people are buying the 'it's so easy' line in answer to backyard chickens, and yet the number of clueless people wandering around asking painfully questions about chook keeping right now is LEGION.
Finally, with regards to all this, my job is not to humiliate you for not thinking this through first. We make mistakes. We buy recklessly and regret later: the clothing that's too small for the size that we presently are, or the giant TV that we don't really need and which cost us two month's pay. Stuff like that.
But this? Is a bit like having a baby: living breathing creatures whose lives are entirely dependent on your responsibility. Sure, you can have fun with them and love them, but a lot of the comfort of their existence will hinge on how you treat them.
Anyway, because some of you are not going to like this and others of you are going to take this as gospel truth (which presents its own set of complications), here's my disclaimer for this: all this advice is from my own experience and my own perspective. You are welcome to do chook keeping as you see fit, but these are the things that I have learned and pass onto you, no charge, my padawans.
WE ALL NEED OUR OWN PLACE TO LIVE. NOT JUST SOMEWHERE TO PARK THE LEGHORN
First things first. Somewhere for the chook to live. Do you have a coop for them to stay in at night? Is it large enough? Is it warm enough if you live in an area that gets cold? Is it cool enough if you live in an area that gets hot? Does it have a yard? Is it a decently sized yard with protection from predators? Is it somewhere they can scratch and dustbathe and be chickens beneath the great wide sky?
"But why do I have to have a coop or a yard for them? Don't hens in egg production just sit there and lay?"
Let us briefly delve into the life of a battery hen. The instant they're old enough to start laying, they're shoved into a cage, fed as much food as they can handle, and left to lay eggs and shit all day. When they're two years old, they stop laying. At that point, they're toast. Off with their heads! Or, more likely, they're tossed into something to be ground up as food for their fellow chickens? Maybe some of them might be rehomed, post-battery? I don't know what happens to them, but for most of them it's not a nice retirement in a shady orchard with all the rotten fruit with worms they can handle. Of that I assure you.
Are your chickens better off than a battery hen? Probably. But is that really all that you aspire to? Imagine if your child (or your niece, nephew, or a child that you're fond of) was stuck in a box and expected to produce one thing a day. Never let out for play. Fed and watered and sheltered and their excrement was carried away on a conveyor belt below them. And then you took them out and put them in a 2x2m yard and said, "well, they're better off, aren't they?"
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. NOPE.
This is not Comparative Chicken Care 101. If your standard of care is 'better than a battery' then you need better standards.
So, the common advice for chook keeping is 1m2 per chicken. Honestly? I'd say at least 2m2, and even that's a bare minimum, because chickens will scratch an area down to bare soil if you let them. (The trick is not to let them.)
There are several options for coops and yards.
The first is to constantly move them - shift them from one location to another. A chicken tractor is excellent for this:
That pristine lawn of yours? Shit-covered and scratched up.
Those prize flowers of your neighbour? Yeah, they dug them up, too.
True free range chooken are another matter entirely; they are kept in giant sheds and allowed to go outside which is certainly a better life than battery hens. But...they are still allowed to go outside and a good free range chook farmer will move them around from field to field so they never completely destroy a single field.
Chickens are originally forest birds - rainforest birds, actually, like the Amazon, or the jungles of South-East Asia. They love scratching around in dirt, leaf litter, hay, straw, coffee chaff, lawn clippings, food scraps, woodchips. The instant I let any of my chickens out, they had directly for the banana circle, where soil is piled up like black gold and bugs and beetles reside in the cracks and crevices between all the plants. They'll uproot every plant if they have the chance; I try not to give it to them.
CHOOKS ACTUALLY HAVE MORE FUNCTIONS THAN A XEROX MACHINE IN THE OFFICE, BUT YOU MOSTLY USE THE COPY FUNCTION DON'T YOU?
So. Chooks eat and excrete, like the rest of the living universe. What goes in must come out.
Some of it comes out in the form of eggs. Others of it comes out in the form of shit. Quite a lot of it comes out in the form of shit. And you need to deal with this, because chooks shit a metric ton of the stuff. If you dislike 'getting dirty', my dears, chook keeping is not for you.
ps. The hole that the egg comes out of is also the hole that the poop comes out of. And they're not always particular where they lay; if they've crapped where they're laying, you're going to have a poop-smeared egg.
YEAH BUT WHAT'S YOUR BONAFIDES FOR CHOOK KEEPING? WHY SHOULD WE LISTEN TO YOU?
I've kept chickens in my backyard (and frontyard) for the last three years in Sydney suburbia - 600sqm of property with 2 laying chickens - an Isa Brown and a Leghorn. I am by no means an expert at chicken keeping, but I have learned things along the way, and learned to learn things along the way, too. I started with more than the basic "have chicken, get eggs" knowledge, but not even half as much as I know now. However, I was lucky enough to start from the solid base of "these chickens are not just for eggs, they are living creatures who it is my responsibility to give a good life". And from there I built up.
That's not complete, there are some sections which I haven't filled in. But I decided not to go so hardcore in the end. The actual version is a bit nicer, but I don't pull punches.
--
After a weekend or two not coming over, B2 is still coming over during the week. She really doesn't do isolation. *sigh*
WHAT THE FUCK WAS 2016, BERNIE?
But here's hoping that the majority of people at least can hold their nose and vote for Biden. No, he may not be what progressives abjectly want, but he is one step on the path to what they want - considerably more so than Trump. And the fact that he is not the path, just a gate to step through may burns some rumps, but seriously, when media talk about the instant appeasement generation? This is what I think of: people who are so short-sighted they can't vote for something mediocre simply because it's not good.
Politics is not an 'achievement unlocked' like a gift in a box, it's a journey. And unfortunately Trump sent the best parts of American politics (and world politics) aaaaall the way back to the start. So you're going to have to go back through the wilderness all over again to reach the promised land. Luckily, it's been traversed once before, so the path is there and you can tread it deeper this time around.
How do you that? How do you make a future for your country out of the wilderness that you're in?
Well, you can start by fucking well hold your stupid stuck-up too-good-for-politics American idiot nose and bloody well vote for the Democrats with Joe Biden up as leader.
Or shut the fuck up about politics ever again. I've had it up to here with pwecious Septic Tanks storing their shit up before bubbling over about how their politics ain't perfect. They get an option to vote, to make a difference. So many people don't. But because they're American and better than the rest of us, they shouldn't have to lift a finger for it! *whine whine moan*
Yes, I most definitely have feelings.
On the other hand, for the first time in the last six months, I feel like the US might actually be able to be rid of Trump.
--
I'm writing a series on 'Real Chooken Keeping' for all the people who went out and panic-bought chickens to provide them with eggs after eggs got cleaned out off the shelves. (Dumbest hoarding ever, if you ask me.)
This was the version I wrote while pretty frustrated with people who bought chooks for eggs but clearly haven't actually thought the actual care and ownership of chickens through.With the onset of people scrambling for hens, I foresee a great deal of misinformation about just how easy it is to keep chickens.
Firstly, what's your definition of 'easy'?
Easier than full-scale self-sufficient farming? Easier than any other domestic barn animal? Easier than keeping a cat or a dog around the house? Easier than going to the shop and buying a dozen eggs, no muss, no fuss?
Firstly, keeping chookens responsibly is probably about as intensive as keeping a dog or a cat. Only more difficult because not everyone does it, so not everyone knows how to.
It's easier than keeping goats, sheep, pigs, ducks, and geese, but probably not as easy as keeping rabbits or fish, and maybe about the same difficulty as quails.
On he other hand, keeping 'battery style hens' is easy. You just have to not give a damn about the animal itself. Sadly, this is going to be the way of many backyard chickens in the coming months: cooped up in tiny coops, bored out of their brains, and many of them not laying because it's over winter.
Oh yeah, many of them don't lay over winter. The joke is that most home chooks are freeloaders, because they eat and eat and eat every day, but you don't always get an egg every day. Even the most productive breeds only lay an egg ~320 days out of 365, and the pretty heritage breeds with the nice temperaments? They may lay considerably less often than that.
So, now that you've had the basic warning, let's get to the meat and milk of the matter, eh?
SO YOU WANT TO BE A RESPONSIBLE CHOOKEN OWNER?
Three basic principles to remember when thinking of getting chickens:
1. Chooks are living creatures. They eat, sleep, get bored, get sick. They have status and ego, they have personalities, they want things, they complain when they don't get it. They want to live free and run wild.
2. Eggs should be a by-product of keeping chickens, not the purpose of keeping chickens. The chickens themselves perform many functions beyond that: ground tillage, pest control, garden fertilisation, compost turning. And they lay eggs. But if you don't take into account all the other functions that they perform, then your life with them is going to be fraught.
3. Your life with chickens will be better if you have taken Points 1 & 2 into consideration. Because so many people are buying the 'it's so easy' line in answer to backyard chickens, and yet the number of clueless people wandering around asking painfully questions about chook keeping right now is LEGION.
Finally, with regards to all this, my job is not to humiliate you for not thinking this through first. We make mistakes. We buy recklessly and regret later: the clothing that's too small for the size that we presently are, or the giant TV that we don't really need and which cost us two month's pay. Stuff like that.
But this? Is a bit like having a baby: living breathing creatures whose lives are entirely dependent on your responsibility. Sure, you can have fun with them and love them, but a lot of the comfort of their existence will hinge on how you treat them.
Anyway, because some of you are not going to like this and others of you are going to take this as gospel truth (which presents its own set of complications), here's my disclaimer for this: all this advice is from my own experience and my own perspective. You are welcome to do chook keeping as you see fit, but these are the things that I have learned and pass onto you, no charge, my padawans.
WE ALL NEED OUR OWN PLACE TO LIVE. NOT JUST SOMEWHERE TO PARK THE LEGHORN
First things first. Somewhere for the chook to live. Do you have a coop for them to stay in at night? Is it large enough? Is it warm enough if you live in an area that gets cold? Is it cool enough if you live in an area that gets hot? Does it have a yard? Is it a decently sized yard with protection from predators? Is it somewhere they can scratch and dustbathe and be chickens beneath the great wide sky?
"But why do I have to have a coop or a yard for them? Don't hens in egg production just sit there and lay?"
Let us briefly delve into the life of a battery hen. The instant they're old enough to start laying, they're shoved into a cage, fed as much food as they can handle, and left to lay eggs and shit all day. When they're two years old, they stop laying. At that point, they're toast. Off with their heads! Or, more likely, they're tossed into something to be ground up as food for their fellow chickens? Maybe some of them might be rehomed, post-battery? I don't know what happens to them, but for most of them it's not a nice retirement in a shady orchard with all the rotten fruit with worms they can handle. Of that I assure you.
Are your chickens better off than a battery hen? Probably. But is that really all that you aspire to? Imagine if your child (or your niece, nephew, or a child that you're fond of) was stuck in a box and expected to produce one thing a day. Never let out for play. Fed and watered and sheltered and their excrement was carried away on a conveyor belt below them. And then you took them out and put them in a 2x2m yard and said, "well, they're better off, aren't they?"
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. NOPE.
This is not Comparative Chicken Care 101. If your standard of care is 'better than a battery' then you need better standards.
So, the common advice for chook keeping is 1m2 per chicken. Honestly? I'd say at least 2m2, and even that's a bare minimum, because chickens will scratch an area down to bare soil if you let them. (The trick is not to let them.)
There are several options for coops and yards.
The first is to constantly move them - shift them from one location to another. A chicken tractor is excellent for this:
That pristine lawn of yours? Shit-covered and scratched up.
Those prize flowers of your neighbour? Yeah, they dug them up, too.
True free range chooken are another matter entirely; they are kept in giant sheds and allowed to go outside which is certainly a better life than battery hens. But...they are still allowed to go outside and a good free range chook farmer will move them around from field to field so they never completely destroy a single field.
Chickens are originally forest birds - rainforest birds, actually, like the Amazon, or the jungles of South-East Asia. They love scratching around in dirt, leaf litter, hay, straw, coffee chaff, lawn clippings, food scraps, woodchips. The instant I let any of my chickens out, they had directly for the banana circle, where soil is piled up like black gold and bugs and beetles reside in the cracks and crevices between all the plants. They'll uproot every plant if they have the chance; I try not to give it to them.
CHOOKS ACTUALLY HAVE MORE FUNCTIONS THAN A XEROX MACHINE IN THE OFFICE, BUT YOU MOSTLY USE THE COPY FUNCTION DON'T YOU?
So. Chooks eat and excrete, like the rest of the living universe. What goes in must come out.
Some of it comes out in the form of eggs. Others of it comes out in the form of shit. Quite a lot of it comes out in the form of shit. And you need to deal with this, because chooks shit a metric ton of the stuff. If you dislike 'getting dirty', my dears, chook keeping is not for you.
ps. The hole that the egg comes out of is also the hole that the poop comes out of. And they're not always particular where they lay; if they've crapped where they're laying, you're going to have a poop-smeared egg.
YEAH BUT WHAT'S YOUR BONAFIDES FOR CHOOK KEEPING? WHY SHOULD WE LISTEN TO YOU?
I've kept chickens in my backyard (and frontyard) for the last three years in Sydney suburbia - 600sqm of property with 2 laying chickens - an Isa Brown and a Leghorn. I am by no means an expert at chicken keeping, but I have learned things along the way, and learned to learn things along the way, too. I started with more than the basic "have chicken, get eggs" knowledge, but not even half as much as I know now. However, I was lucky enough to start from the solid base of "these chickens are not just for eggs, they are living creatures who it is my responsibility to give a good life". And from there I built up.
That's not complete, there are some sections which I haven't filled in. But I decided not to go so hardcore in the end. The actual version is a bit nicer, but I don't pull punches.
--
After a weekend or two not coming over, B2 is still coming over during the week. She really doesn't do isolation. *sigh*