How would you answer these newly-hatched chicks? What advice would you give them? Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best?
How would you answer these newly-hatched chicks? What advice would you give them? Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best?
As long as you’ve been hatched at a free range farm, and your owner gives you a huge amount of love, warmth and good nutritious food – you should live a long and productive life. If you are being bred for food, you will end up in a top class ‘green’ food establishment where both the chef and the diners will certainly believe you are tasty and chemical free. If you are going to be an egg deliverer then you will be loved by customers who love yellow/orange yolks of the free range kind and the user, the home cook and the food establishment will return weekly to purchase more of your delightful eggs…
But if you are destined for the battery farm, then I have no advice…
Cathy- that’s Priceless!
I don’t pay the price for organic food & not knowing if it’s truly organic either. But “foods prohibited in other countries are happily available in the U.S.” Then there’s the world clashes & terrorism. At least we don’t have the Black Plague. I guess I’ll just cross my fingers. Praying doesn’t work for me because I’m not religious. Those chicks won’t ever have a worry because they don’t have our worrying brains.
Only if you don’t listen to Chicken Little. 🙂
The answer is exactly the same that a goat gets when it is taken away from its mother by a buyer. You will get well fed and looked after and pampered. Till Bakhr-id morning.
better you were born a butterfly. even though your life would be shorter it would surely be sweeter.
anything remotely resembling food and that is an animal in this world is destined to eventual if not sooner…
suffering that is unspeakable and then finally the relief of wholesale slaughter.
sorry.
too dark?
but it is my despair. the way animals are treated.
my recurring nightmare is the factory farm.
and only just recently read where 50,000 pounds of beef had been recalled. yet again.
they lived a horrible life and died a horrible death to be thrown into the garbage?
despicable.
We, the public of NZ and probably some other countries, I know of China, have just been advised of a milk baby powder scare…
We, I guess collectively, always believe that primary products like milk will not be affected at the consumers end…that if something was wrong at the cow or processing end, it would be detected quickly – but seems not!
It’s Fonterra, our largest milk processing company which doesn’t have a great reputation as it is – being overly big and bold and scathing of anything else in the trade! Gov’t not happy either, because as a big exporter it puts NZ on a rather nasty track as such…words bandied: misinformation, not enough information and so on!
The chick on our right has an innocent wide-eyed look & is fluffier. The chick on left looks skeptical, not as full & healthy because he’s a worrier.
great observation bhb – I now have looked more carefully at their expressions and yep, they are definitely like human – individual 🙂 what say you Jean?
Nope you are ignorant, fragile and vulnerable.
Your fear may alert you to danger; listen to it.
There is a world to learn about, with some danger and enough joy to last you a life time.
Cathy,
I agree with bikehikebabe, your description of the chicks’ possibilities is priceless. 😀
bikehikebabe,
I drink a lot of milk, so I spend a lot for powdered organic milk. I also buy organic fruits and vegetables if they’re on the dirty dozen list — assuming they’re available and don’t look too bad. Otherwise I don’t worry about it.
I’m with you — I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. Our generation has been incredibly lucky. Let’s hope that luck holds out.
Mike,
That’s a great one! 😀
Rummuser,
That’s not a bad life if the death isn’t too painful.
tammy,
I’m not much of a meat eater, but we’re not vegetarians like you. I do spend extra money to buy eggs from cage-free hens, and I donate to the Humane Farming Association. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. It does make me feel better to know that the chickens that lay my eggs “live in open ‘community houses’ where they have feed, water, nests, roosting poles and plenty of area to exercise.”
Cathy,
The contaminated milk sounds as if it’s a crisis for all of NZ if China has stopped imports.
bkikehikebabe and Cathy,
Yes, that’s what it looked like to me, too. What happened is the display case at the Medical Center showed some kids’ pictures — yellow paint on blue construction paper, with beaks of orange construction paper and black ink for eyes and legs. This was the winner:
I saw it Wednesday when I was over there for a test, and I kept thinking about it. So Thursday evening I went over to take a picture of it. I played around with my version in Photoshop — when I saw the difference in personalities I added the caption and turned it into a blog post. It was fun.
Evan,
Hopefully the chicks will be as lucky as we have been!
aha, now I know why you needed our opinions…and do love where you acquired the basic picture from.
I buy some organic produce at times, but now always buy organic eggs because they really great looking and look like eggs my older brother used to farm when I was a kid!
Cathy,
I think the person who came up with the art project for the kids was brilliant. I’m still a little kid at heart, of course. 🙂
i love that! and that bhb noticed the difference in the little ones.
and i love all the comments from our community here!
we’re just a great bunch. LOL.
such a wide spread reaction.
i think of myself as an optimist but when it comes to animals i seem to lose my cool really fast!
i like evan’s reply.
a real metaphor for life.
and i do eat eggs and drink milk. and occasionally eat fish.
so i’m not a real vegetarian i guess. but like you… only free range eggs. and the milk is from a local dairy that treats their cows well. you can even visit it.
your art work is wonderful monk! it makes me happy.
tammy,
Thank you. You make me happy!
Thinking of the picture as a metaphor for life, what advice would you have for a wide-eyed innocent on how to survive in this world and still be happy?
watch out for big chickens and fast highways.
stay away from both.
nevah evah evah give up.
and always follow your bliss.
tammy,
I’m glad you mentioned big chickens. My family had chickens when I was little, and one of them had a bloody head because of the pecking order. Here’s one article on how farmers handle situations like that. And here’s a cute one about how a backyard farmer got the old friendly pecking order back after a dog attack had changed everything. The new order was nasty and the author says he wasn’t mature enough to let it continue. Hurray for immaturity!
WOW!
those were really interesting posts about chickens.
i liked the last one especially. when he said “eating nikki” … i figured she’d be dead for sure!
once we had banty hens and roosters. i guess you should say bantam.
those were some MEAN little roosters. they didn’t like me!
tammy,
Fortunately we didn’t have any roosters. How old were you when you had them, and for how long?
i was seven. it was my job to gather eggs. i hated it.
thankfully it only lasted one year! we moved to the mountains of colorado and my father lost his zeal for “farming” LOL.
he was a horseman though. so our horse went with us.
then we began having to move too much with his job.
he wound up giving her to a church orphanage because he couldn’t bear to sell her. she was his pride and joy.
she lived out her life giving little children happiness. she had a good long life. they used to send him pictures and reports of her. she was a registered golden palomino with white mane and tale. beautiful!
tammy, I love your comment.
tammy,
Thanks. I was wondering because I knew you moved around a lot. That’s great about the end of the chickens, but too bad in a way about the horse. That was good of them to keep your father informed. It must have helped a lot.