It may be because it's raining, but I feel frustrated today. So I am going to give you a wonderful little rant. I KNOW, yay..
Here's my issue. Lifestyle Bloggers who post about their dreams of having a "little farm".
Then they get chickens. They get chickens and take sweet little Instagram photos of their little hippy babies holding them and cuddling with them and giving them little kisses. Sigh. Would you allow Little Rainbow Skye to play with a piece of raw chicken? No? Why not? Because when you allow her/him to snuggle with a live chicken you are doing just that. LIVE chickens spread Salmonella. Here, don't listen to me...listen to the CDC.
http://www.cdc.gov/Features/SalmonellaBabyBirds/
Your child could get seriously ill, possibly fatally ill. But you've got some pretty good blog fodder, so there's that.
Oh and be prepared for the mess. You can sigh over all the darling hen house pictures on Pinterest (the one with the upholstered chair and curtains?) but chickens are nasty and smelly and kind of gross. Their eggs are not perfect little packages of protein. They are perfect little shit-covered packages of protein.
And be sure to watch for predators and your dog.
The next step they say they want to take is to get a goat or two. A goat. A goat. Maybe two. Goats are herd animals. If you get one goat, that goat will be miserable. And I don't care if little Flower Forest Rain-Thumper will spend every waking minute with the one goat. You have to have TWO goats. And now that you have your two goats, what the heck are you going to do with them? Oh, you don't want to castrate the male, because OMG-NATURE? Good choice. Be prepared for the smell. Be prepared to explain to little Flower why the widdle-sweetie pie goatie-umpkins is pleasuring himself on the fence post. Have you ever seen a goat penis? Yeah, that's something you never forget.
Oh, you are going to breed your goats and milk them. Good. That's wonderful (no, really it is). But please realize that to keep goats in milk you will be bringing more goats into the world. How will you handle that? Give the babies away, sell them, kill them? Also things go wrong. Are you ready to help deliver a goat? Are you ready to deliver a stillborn goat? Are you ready to repair a prolapse? Are you ready to put your pet goat out of it's misery due to internal injuries? Most normal vets don't do house calls.
You don't just get some animals on Craigs List and put them in a flowered field and walk away in your prairie skirt and fringy moccasins.
Ok, there. I feel better.
Lisa
Can I just say.... AMEN!! People do the same thing with horses. "Let's get Sally a two year old colt, and they can grow up together!" Problem is, they leave the 2 year old colt intact, and he isn't trained, and they don't send him to a trainer, he just becomes a wild, mean, raging horsey hormones bundle of dangerous dynamite. Then they get a mare because "Ooohhh, foals are so CUTE! Let's have a foal!" And then the world is filled with unfortunately bred, untrained, dangerous horses kept in less than adequate circumstances and kept by well meaning but completely ignorant folks who had no business having a horse in the back yard in the first place. If you want your kid to ride horses, take her to a barn and get riding lessons for two years and then see where you stand on the buying a horse impulse.
ReplyDeleteAnd I concur: chickens are a pain in the butt. Messy and destructive. Nothing cutesy about them at all. Except when they're little yellow fluff balls for about the first two weeks, maybe.
I KNOW. I know I said I was better, but this has been eating at me all day. I used to read a blog where the woman got a herd of free sheep on Craigs list because she saw some in OMG England and they were so cute dotting the landscape. After a few died and the mothers gave birth in the fields she decided to just let the herd die off because it was too hard. I have NEVER gone back to her blog. Horses, sheep, goats, chickens, heck even a kitten--make sure you are in it for the long haul and you KNOW EVERYTHING about what it takes to care for this animal before you bring it home. AND sometimes I think blogging is causing these backyard "farmers" to take on these animals because people see the pretty pictures and want to do the same thing. Argggh. Ok, now I feel better. No, no I don't. Idiots.
ReplyDeleteYep, chickens are nasty stinky messy arogant selfish creatures for sure. And yes, people can get sick and get diseases from handling chickens and breathing the air when they are cleaning out the coops. It gets into the lungs eventually. And they are full of little creepy crawly critters too that can be transferred to the little kiddos by handling them. Like lice and mites. Shoot, I don't make friends with my flock of chickens. I had to put them all in chicken jail for the gardening season because they will totally destroy everything I have done. Like all my sweat and hard work mulching all my veggies. Even tilling. They think it's all just for them. And ripe tomatoes! For them too. And red bell peppers! Yep, they love them too. So this year I am getting the ripe tomatoes and peppers. And grapes. I don't feel bad at all. Nope.
ReplyDeleteYes, people who want all these cute little farm critters need to go WORK on a farm first. For about a year. Most people are not cut out for this lifestyle.
I know.
ReplyDeleteI have chickens all over the place.
Wild ones. I actually like them. Don't shoot me, and don't shoot them.
I eat eggs, you don't?
I'm a dream killer too. A teacher was talking in the staff room about wanting to get chickens. He said that he didn't want to end up with any roosters though and someone suggested he get some older pullets but noooooo he wanted his kids to have the baby chicks. I suggested he get the sex-linked varieties but nooooo that wasn't the kind he wanted. Then he went on about how he wanted them to free range around his yard. By this time I was fed up with him and told this germaphobe that come the first rain they'd be free ranging on his porch leaving behind poop and feathers for all his girls to step in.
ReplyDeleteHe hates me.