Re: Sick Black Rock

wafflycat wrote:

"A_ L _P" <hay_hell_pea@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:48570AC6.6060904@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Excuse top-posting - I have left the whole post because I think it is so important. Jill, you are going to get SO flamed for this! Thank you for having the guts to say it.

Reluctantly I agree with everything you have said. On the basis of my much smaller amount of experience and observation it is all too true.

Humans have out-bred the resources. Humans being resourceful have then found work-arounds - famine relief, intensive food production etc - to allow ourselves to keep on increasing our numbers and escalating our demands for an ever-rising standard of "necessities". Since culling humans is just not on except as a by-product of war, the battery chicken system is only one of our "necessary evils" and there will be more and more as time and ingenuity advance.

The loss of other breeds, be they plant or animal, is dangerous for our future. This is well recognized and addressed by the seed banks of which the most far-sighted appears to be the one in the natural deep freeze in the north of Norway. But we cannot do that with chickens or sheep, which leaves us vulnerable to pandemics within the dominant strains.

Jill, your plea for people to continue breeding the birds that have particular strengths to withstand various conditions demonstrates the value of detachment *as well as* compassion, for all keepers of animals. It's a hard balance to keep in real life, heart *and* head, dealing with present misery *and* forestalling errors-in-waiting.

A L P


Jill did the straw man of, in effect, if you have ex-batts then somehow, you're doing down other breeds, which is crap. It's no different to someone having a moggie as a pet as opposed to a purebreed Siamese cat. Nor is saving some ex-batts and not liking the battery system somehow mean that you're against feeding folk. If someone has ex-batts then it doesn't mean they don't give a stuff about other breeds of poultry.

I don't think she said that at all, not the way I read it anyway but then I wasn't feeling defensive to start with. I can see her point of view, that some people's energies and resources are going into what may often be kind impulses without enough understanding to recognise that battery birds don't have the "know-how" or the stamina for what would to humans seem to be the best thing: freedom. From what you said about the way you keep yours it seems that they have a good balance of shelter and freedom to range around. You may not have seen the down-side of what happens when people's compassion is greater than their understanding of the needs of birds, and lets face it, ex-battery chooks are not the same as barnyard birds. It's like if you or I were whirled up like Dorothy and dropped down in the middle of a huge expanse of goodness knows where, no familiar sights, no idea how one is supposed to negotiate this vast space and find the necessaries of life. I had a couple of ex-factory chooks some years ago, poor looking things with long toe-nails that had to be clipped before they could scratch in the deep litter. They stood around looking bewildered, had to be placed in front of the food and water. It didn't take long before they had found out about the joys of scratching and dust-bathing but until they did I hate to think how they'd have managed if I'd just put them into a big open pen and expected them to find their way into the house at night and find food from a hopper - they truly didn't have any survival skills, poor things.

And it's not that we can't love and care for ex-batts and old breeds, but Jill's point was as I understood it the very obvious one, that few if any of us have unlimited space and money resources. So what I think she was on about was, why not give that love and chance of a great life to the old breeds that as well as being fascinating and delightful - as are IMO any chooks, but I may be prejudiced (!) - carry genes that we may need in the future. Remember the potato famine? No, not personally, I'm sure you aren't THAT old! I mean, potatoes being the one vital crop at the time in Ireland, when the virus attacked the crop the people starved. We need genetic diversity to combat viruses and parasites etc that may attack our present food sources including poultry and eggs. The way to keep our options open is for people who have the luxury of being able to put private efforts into chickens as a hobby rather than as a commercial business, to keep and breed and improve the strains of birds that have their own unique characteristics. This can be one's investment in the future... alas despite appreciating the wisdom of this I am personally crazy about my patchwork-quilt collection of this, that and the other - the most genetically mixed up collection of chooks you could find in a long day's march!

A L P
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