Selfsufficientish.com

Yes I know, I can get advice and chat about hens here but does anyone know of a hen keepers' forum that ISN'T full of people who gush over how they've "rescued" battery hens, written poems about them, have them sitting on their laps watching telly.........you get the idea. I swear if I see one more poem to a chicken off lay or ode to a poor lost soul (when one of them does what they do best and falls off the perch) I'll throw up all over my keyboard!

Sorry, not in a charitable mood this morning.

Lynne

funny that, before I found ISH I was looking round a few hen forums. I wanted to join in and get some advice as we are hoping to get out coop set up by the end of the summer, but haviong read a few posts I thought I might get linched if I actually mentioned we were hoping to use the birds for the table!!

I joined one where I got some abuse from a member, as i was not prepared to tell my four year old the whole truth about battery chickens. I will when she is older, but I personally believe four is too young. Not a nice woman at all

I stumbled across a great one that I delve in and out of, but it is American, I think they have members all over but it is a huge forum and mostly USA... and naturally I can't remember what it is called just now... I'll get back to you.... oooo... I think it is 'backyard chickens'.

There is also the 'practical poultry' forum, but I found that a bit to commercially minded for me... but that was before I had the girls.


Sunflower gal, I am always as honest as I can be with LO (2 and 9 months) but sometimes find it difficult e to skirt around the issues without lying. I just tell her we treat our animals with respect and some people don't treat their chickens very nicely.
But, hey, it's up to you what you tell her, and when she is old enough you can tell her the full story (by which point it may have been outlawed)

Ann Pan

Thats what I told my dd1, she questioned this and I explained that people use them to make money. Also about the small cages. That they peck each other, so she understood why some of them where naked. I explained that they had had very hard lives, and thats why we must be very kind to them.
I too try to tell my dds the truth about everything, but I think that sometimes you have to shelter them from some of the harder facts until they are a little older. Ie dd1 knows where meat comes from, that we kill animals to eat them. Dh wanted to let her watch the Jamie Oliver programme where they killed the pigs, I drew the line at that. When she is a little older I will not have a problem.
This woman did not like my views, and thought that all children should be told the whole story. She thought that her children would grow up to have a better respect of animals than mine, because of this. Each to their own I guess!!
Lets hope that it is outlawed, and soon.

Nikki

I'm with you 100%, E knows that sausages come from pigs and that if you eat sausages you don't have that pig anymore... and she knows that the chicken you eat is the same as the chickens in the garden... and mince is cow meat... but that is pretty much where I have drawn the line. I do try to be matter of fact about it and when she asks a question about it I answer as truthfully but simply as possible.

But.. I don't think it is right to rub your kids face in the misery and pain in the world until they are old enough to understand and cope with it.

As you say though, each to their own.

http://www.coturnixcorner.com/forum/

The above is a Quail forum which were very helpful to me with quail, and there is lots of chicken stuff too.

The people who run it / moderate it are, how shall we say, rather proud of their forum, and woe betide you if you post anything in the wrong section, IT WILL BE MOVED!

boboff wrote:The people who run it / moderate it are, how shall we say, rather proud of their forum, and woe betide you if you post anything in the wrong section, IT WILL BE MOVED!

Oh dear that's what I do here!

Millymollymandy wrote:

boboff wrote:The people who run it / moderate it are, how shall we say, rather proud of their forum, and woe betide you if you post anything in the wrong section, IT WILL BE MOVED!

Oh dear that's what I do here!

That's a moderator's job. No arguments from me here.

I'm just really bored with people thinking I'm cruel because me hens don't have names, the only reason the one that died was buried rather than going on the compost heap was because she'd had a cough and might be diseased and I called the two that wandered off to live with next door's cockerel floozies rather than being traumatised by their loss. Then again, this is the woman who's had a dog called Dog (when we got him, an 18 month old Pyrenean who was on his way to be put down because his owners had got a new job with tied accommodation and couldn't take him) and currently has a cat called Nameless. Maybe I'm not the best person to ask

Incidentally, my boys have always known that meat is dead animals, although the first time I took them into a proper butcher's and they saw half a cow hanging up, they were a bit surprised by it. Still, it reminds me of the time, when my eldest was about 4, that we were in some random supermarket doing some shopping and we were asking them did they want cow or pig or chicken or sheep for dinner. A woman came up to us and asked if we would mind not talking about meat as if it was animals because her daughter (clearly at least junior school age) didn't know where meat came from! Even our ds was surprised by that one.

But they watched the HFW and JO programmes about chickens and the JO programme about pigs. Then again, they're now 10 and nearly 13 so I figure they can handle it. They care for the hens we have, and the youngest's school has chickens, goats ducks and rabbits which all the boys are responsible for and know that they're not something to get sentimental about. And today, they're so proud of themselves because their National Beekeepers' Assocation memberships arrived in the post.

That's my boys!
Lynne

finally persuaded dh to let us have chickens he is at this very moment turning our shed into a chicken coup with a large run,and i`m going down to the mart to look at the chickens there,not to buy today of course but when the coup is finished and secure as foxy loxy is about,fed by my neighbour no less,still i quite like him,he`s very pretty to look at and stands and stares at us if we see him on the road when we are out walking,the kids may not feel the same if he gets our chicks but we are going to do a good job in not letting him,i`m so excited,worse than the kids

I was born in the country, the local butcher had a slaughter-house behind his shop and we'd see animals literally going from field to butcher (probably totally illegal now) so it was hard not to know from a young age. I still eat meat - though not a vast amount, but I do think that knowing at least gave me some idea of exactly what I was doing. For a lot of people a trip to the countryside to look at the pretty spring lambs one day and buying a joint of meat from ASDA the next are connected in only a very abstract way.
I admit my chickens have names, it happened naturally and it makes life easier, for example when it's OH's turn to go to the lottie to feed them it's far less hassle to say 'Check on Rosie, she was looking a bit under the weather earlier', than it is to try and describe the hen I mean - especially as they're Rhode Island Reds, so not much obvious difference from one to the other.
When we first got internet access (fairly recently in comparison to most) and I was getting rather excited at the thought of all that information which was suddenly to become available to me, my sister-in-law said 'It's amazing what you CAN'T find out on the internet'. I didn't understand what she meant until it came to trying to access info about chickens where sites are roughly split between the 'soft and fluffy' forums and breeders wanting to sell you their stock. Try and find useful information on a specific breed, for example, and there's just nothing there.

I found this forum http://forum.backyardpoultry.com very useful when I got started with chickens. Plenty of practical advice.
I only give my hens names if I can tell them apart - might be time to do some leg banding, so I can separate the generations :)