Looking to buy a few egg laying hen chicks STT

It's quite interesting that people that have just moved here and do not know the rules and regulations, think it is perfectly okay to break them as long as it suits their needs. Hopefully, I will make the move from a place that has been my home all of my life and 13 generations of my family's lives within the next couple of years. This place has become unrecgonizable to me as have the attitudes such as that shown above by Ca. Dreamers. No, I will leave OT behind to spead her good cheer and sanity to the likes of Ca. Dreamers. I notice they are no longer in Ca. y'all have a good day!;)

A&A: I guess my post lost something in translation. What I meant is that there are areas of conversation on this board (heck, on every board!) that are controversial and that elicit strong feelings. You happened to fall into one of them. As I said, don't take it personally.

Only on this board can a conversation about having a chicken, reap such venom and over reactions from people.

My stew pot has always been feral chicken control. To think people will eat the pesticide-laden crap on store shelves masquerading as "food", but are afraid of feral roosters and pigs.

My stew pot has always been feral chicken control. To think people will eat the pesticide-laden crap on store shelves masquerading as "food", but are afraid of feral roosters and pigs.

Where in this thread has anyone mentioned being "afraid of feral roosters and pigs"?

My stew pot has always been feral chicken control. To think people will eat the pesticide-laden crap on store shelves masquerading as "food", but are afraid of feral roosters and pigs.

I think it's funny when people complain about having too many chickens running around and no idea how to control them. They're chickens, eat them. Personally, I don't eat meat, but some folks are only able to eat chicken, not A chicken. Between the chickens and the mongoose, I don't know why people ever buy meat in the store. That stuff is nasty and backed with cruelty and chemicals.

Leos is always talking about ways to keep fresh chicken stocked at his restaurant.....

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-no-one-tells-you-about-living-farm/

#4. Let There Be No Misunderstanding About This: Chickens Are Rapists

114848.jpg?v=1Let me explain how the mating cycle of a free range chicken works. A hen struts around, darting her beak into the ground and ejecting terrible amounts of black and white acrylic paint from her ass. It's everything the world's most retarded animal could ask for. Here's the downside: If she does this anywhere near a rooster, he stops what he's doing and stalks her. With the stealth of a jungle cat and the romance of a running start, he leaps onto her and pelvic blasts her for one explosive, squawking second. The female chicken will hate this.

The rooster does this to every chicken every day, and none of them have ever wanted it. Chickens are these stupid little fat squirting things that look like a pillow fight when they try to fly, and the only thing they can do with any elegance is violent sexual assault and pantomiming the shame they feel afterward. Consider that the next time you're a vegetarian and you're wondering why everyone thinks you're an asshole.

114847.jpg?v=1After being furiously impregnated against her will, the hen lays her egg and sits on it as often as she can for 22 days. This is usually cut short by about 22 days when a farmer or his disinterested children yank the egg out from under her. To do this, one simply pries the fluttering, pecking hen out of her coop. If you don't use a stick for this, congratulations, your bloody arm is now ground zero for a brand new chimeric disease that they'll name after you. Egg collecting is both annoying and disgusting and often leads to the discovery that the chicken you're fighting isn't sitting on anything at all. To make matters worse, my dad's **** of a second wife cooked like a chemical toilet accident, and handing her a basket of rape eggs only added to the misery of the world.

If a chicken manages to outsmart you by disguising its egg as an egg-sized pile of feces for 22 days, and it will, this of course hatches into a chick. If the chick grows up to be your second or second millionth hen, fine. If it grows up to be your second rooster, you're in trouble. Determining its sex is easy. You simply pinch its body until its anal vent protrudes and check it for bumps. Both sexes have bumps, so unless you're a specialist in this field, all you are right now is a pervert killing a baby chicken anus first.

If you screw up and get a second male chicken, the competition to be the top rapist drives them all insane. Roosters have a biological aversion to sloppy seconds, and any time one bones any amount less than 100 percent of the nearby ladies, it becomes a feral, unpredictable attack bird. So to sum up: Each time you see the words "free range," you're about to eat something that was sexually assaulted by one rooster every day of its life and regular assaulted by all the others. Enjoy!

Here's a good article I came across this morning and something to consider.
I am not attempting to resurect this thread as I think it's run its course.

Hipster Farmers Abandoning Backyard Chickens by the Hundreds

The idea of raising backyard chickens sounded pretty nifty to a lot of people, once upon a time. They could have fresh eggs and feel good about not contributing to the horrifying life of battery caged hens.

It was actually kind of fun, having a teeny tiny farm in the back yard. For a while. Then, for a lot of people, reality set in. Backyard chickens need care and they’re only egg layers for a while, not forever. Oops.

“People don’t know what they’re doing,” Mary Britton Clouse, owner of Minneapolis rescue organization Chicken Run Rescue told NBC News. “And you’ve got this whole culture of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing teaching every other idiot out there.”

According to Clouse, Chicken Run Rescue took in about 50 abandoned chickens in 2001. They got almost 500 in 2012.

Of course, not everyone with backyard chickens abandons them. We’re talking here about a certain subset of people who really didn’t think this idea through very well. Some critics point to “urban hipsters” who were caught up in the locavore movement and then (oh, snap!) found chicken raising to be actual, hard work.

Keeping backyard chickens is no walk in the park:

Costs: Startup costs for a good coop, security, maintenance, cleaning supplies, insulation, cooling systems and so on can climb to $4,000. Annual costs for things like permits, nutritional supplements, bedding, food, utilities and more are about $280 per bird. Hens also need veterinary care that can cost $300 per bird per year.

Maintenance: Chicken coops need to be kept clean and livable. Chicken poop must be removed. The litter must be replaced. Watering equipment has to be cleansed regularly. Feed bins must be refilled. Every so often, just about everything in the coop needs to be disassembled and sanitized.

How many people who are motivated to “save money” by raising chickens for the eggs are likely to want to spend this time and money caring for their birds?

In addition to all this work, there are two specific problems causing the chicken dumping phenomenon – one involving roosters, the other involving hens.

The Rooster Problem

In a growing number of (stateside) neighborhoods, it’s legal to keep egg-laying hens, but roosters are prohibited. They’re just too darn loud. That cock-a-doodle-dooing is just too much for neighbors to take.

Unfortunately, when people order chicks over the Internet (yes, that’s a thing now), they often get both boys and girls because it can be hard to tell which is which at that age. Sometimes, according to Chicken Run Rescue’s web site, male chicks are intentionally included in these shipments as “live packing material” that the buyer can dispose of in any way he or she chooses.

When the boys grow old enough to crow, often they’re sent packing to the nearest shelter, dumped in another location or they become Sunday dinner. No one knows what else to do with them. (Note by Alana33: It seems animal shelters in the VI do not accept roosters.)

“We probably get 400 or 500 roosters each year at just one of our sanctuaries,” Farm Sanctuary‘s National Shelter Director, Susie Coston, told NBC News.

The Hen Problem

Would-be urban farmers don’t always understand that chickens don’t lay eggs through their entire life span. For the most part, a hen’s egg laying period peaks at around 18 months of age. They lay eggs for about two years.

Compare that to the normal healthy chicken life span of between 12 and 14 years. How many frugal money saving backyard farmers want chickens as pets for eight or nine years after the eggs have stopped coming? Not so many, apparently.

“They’re put on Craigslist all the time when they don’t lay any more,” according to Coston. “They’re dumped all the time.”

@ Alana-Same irresponsibility applies to all pets.. cats, dogs, birds, snakes...Unfortunately, We have far too many unwanted pets due to irresponsible owners. However, the difference with chickens is it is perfectly acceptable to eat them.
The chicken issue obviously hits a nerve with you.
I'm done.

Chicken Rescue!?!??! This is definitely a first world problem.

Step 1. Catch Chicken
Step 2. Harvest Chicken
Step 3. Pluck and Clean Chicken
Step 3.5 (optional) fry up the organ meat and give it to the dog reinforcing his view you are a two-legged god.
Step 4. Cook Chicken low and slow for maximum yumminess.

Ingredients

1 whole retired chicken
unrefined sea salt
ground black pepper (as needed)
2 leeks (white and light green parts only, sliced thin)
2 bay leafs
1 yellow onion (peeled and chopped fine)
6 carrots (scraped and sliced into rounds 1/4-inch thick)
6 celery ribs (sliced 1/4-inch thick)
1 lb potatoes (peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces)
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

Instructions

Rinse the chicken, inside and out, then pat it dry and season it well with unrefined sea salt and ground black pepper.
Place the chicken in a big heavy pot with leeks and bay leafs then cover with water. Cook on low for twelve hours.
Add chopped onion, carrots, celery and potatoes to the pot and continue cooking on low for an additional six to eight hours.
Stir in parsley, pick out large bones and serve.

You should add Keep and feed chicken prior to eating to purge said fowl from whatever it has ingested in the wild (such as eating dead carcasses) and pray that cooking gets rid of whatever parasites it may have picked up. Yum! Enjoy!

The chicken for the oven has to come from somewhere... and free range is probably more healthy than the genetically engineered ones laden with carcinogenic compounds bought in the grocery store... just sayin'

Free range is completely different from feral fowl.

Or...y'all could just stop eating chickens!

A&A: Did you ever imagine so many views for this thread??

Nope. Still shocked and disappointed that this thread about chickens got more angry responses than my post about 2 cruise ship passengers bags stolen from my car. Sad.

Nope. Still shocked and disappointed that this thread about chickens got more angry responses than my post about 2 cruise ship passengers bags stolen from my car. Sad.

Living ain't easy if continued shock and disappointment ensues from reading some passionate input to a discussion!

I think livin is quite easy, sorry you find it a challenge. Perhaps I decide to not get my panties in a bunch over chickens.

I don't find it a challenge in context. I was referring to your own words and said, it ain't easy, "if continued shock and disappointment ensues from reading some passionate input to a discussion."

Oldtart on the attack!