Skinny Jeans, Chickens and Bloodsport

Alas, it looks as if the once red-hot backyard chicken fad is losing ground amongst the Michael Pollan-inspired urban pioneer set, because chickens are, well, a big pain in the ass.  And they don't accessorize well, either.

From this story on nbcnews.com 
 
Despite visions of quaint coops, happy birds and cheap eggs, the growing trend of raising backyard chickens in urban settings is backfiring, critics say, as disillusioned city dwellers dump unwanted fowl on animal shelters and sanctuaries. Hundreds of chickens, sometimes dozens at a time, are being abandoned each year at the nation’s shelters from California to New York as some hipster farmers discover that hens lay eggs for two years, but can live for a good decade longer, and that actually raising the birds can be noisy, messy, labor-intensive and expensive.

"...It’s the same scenario at the Chicken Run Rescue in Minneapolis, Minn., where owner Mary Britton Clouse has tracked a steady climb in surrendered birds from fewer than 50 in 2001 to nearly 500 in 2012. She traces that rise to the so-called “locavore” movement, which spiked in popularity in 2008 as advocates urged people to eat more food grown and processed close to home.

“It’s the stupid foodies,” said Britton Clouse, 60, who admits she speaks frankly. “We’re just sick to death of it.” People entranced by a “misplaced rural nostalgia” are buying chickens from the same hatcheries that supply the nation's largest poultry producers and rearing them without proper space, food or veterinary care, she said.

Because chickens are notoriously hard to sex, some backyard farmers wind up with roosters, which are often culled and killed because they can be noisy, aggressive and illegal, and, of course, they don’t lay eggs at all. In addition to the noise, many urban farmers are surprised that chickens attract pests like rats, and predators including foxes, raccoons, hawks, and even neighborhood dogs. When they get sick or hurt, they need care that can run into the hundreds of dollars, boosting the price of that home-grown egg far beyond even the most expensive grocery store brand.

Enthusiasts who start out with good intentions frequently wind up posting messages like this one delivered to Britton-Clouse last month: “One of our hens grew up into a rooster and our neighbors are starting to complain. Do you know someone who might take him?” “People don’t know what they’re doing,” Britton Clouse said. “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.”

But Ludlow, the backyard chicken enthusiast, said that “it’s very rare” that people make such mistakes or underestimate how difficult it is to raise chickens. “While we definitely want to see more education around the lifespan and laying lifespan of chickens, we find that most people become so attached to their hens as pets, that even though they planned to eat or cull their hens at the end of their laying life, they decide to keep their girls around even without laying eggs,” he said. Coston, the Farm Sanctuary shelter director, said she wished that were true. Most people don’t realize that chickens are funny, with quirky habits and affectionate personalities as distinct as any other pet’s. 

A few thoughts...

It may be easy for the more smug among us to scoff and sneer at those naive, sensitive fools who become attached to the livestock, as it were. I'm not one of them. You're currently reading a dude who has three pigeons in his coop right now, pigeons that were among a large lot purchased for the sole purpose of dog training, but for a variety of reasons (daddy, I like the white one!) have become de facto pets. They eat my feed, crap, mess their water, take up space and basically serve as living, breathing mockeries of why I built the damn coop in the first place, which was to serve as a holding pen for the feral barn pigeons I trap for training the dogs. Others have come and gone, but those three sit there like Macbeth's witches, cooing and laughing at me.

The truth is, it's natural to grow attached to the animals you raise. In fact, the only two animals I can recall feeling not the least bit of remorse for as they were led to the freezer was a pair of monstrous pigs that haunted my childhood like a pair of porcine Freddy Kruegers. I'm quite convinced those two were waiting for the right time to eat me as I fed them, and the day they were loaded up and sent to the butcher I made it a point to tell them I couldn't wait for them to get back home, all wrapped up nicely. Yeah, fuck you, Wilbur.

Having said that, however, if you're going to raise chickens (or anything) for food, you've got to be pragmatic about such things. Chickens only go so far as a cool example of your hip, idiosyncratic personality or as an environmental or socio-cultural statement. Beyond that, they become simply eggs and meat. And responsibility.  

And that's the basic problem I have with much of the locavore/slow food/urban self-reliance movement. Not the movement itself, which I admire and support, but rather many of the stupid fuckwits who comprise it. I'm all for knowing where your food comes from, and in playing a larger, better-informed individual part in obtaining said food. The less power and influence wielded by the Monsantos and Cargills and ADMs of the world the better. 

The problem, it seems, comes when people realize that actually doing so takes some effort, and forces you to make the kind of honest and sometimes painful decisions you never have to make in a supermarket, at least in regard to animals.

This applies, I believe, even more so to hunting, which has enjoyed something of a foodie-related rise in popularity these past few years. Which I think is great. I really do. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that, to me, anyway, more than a bit of the current urban hipster foodie interest in hunting/gathering (and much of what's been written on the subject) has the definite chicken-like whiff of faddishnes and zeitgeist-hopping swirling about it. 

Not for everyone, of course. I'm sure, and thankful for the fact that there are many out there for whom an introduction to hunting has been a fundamentally transformative experience, one they'll continue for the rest of their lives. And I for one would love to see more weird, eccentric, laid-back, gun-toting hippies in the woods to help balance out the inordinate number of rednecks (and I say that with one foot firmly planted in each camp...) tearing about on those goddamned four-wheelers, invoking Jesus and tossing beer cans.

But I simply don't buy into the argument, espoused (fervently) by many in the industry, that hunting's recent popularity is sustainable and/or permanent. Everything, but especially Groupthink, is cyclical, and fickle. This isn't a movement. Hunting is not the next big thing, it's simply a modestly popular now thing, and for many, many people currently intrigued by and/or flirting with bloodsport, it'll eventually be a discarded and forgotten thing. Like a bunch of unwanted chickens. 

And I'm cool with that, too. Doesn't bother me in the least. The (probably) relatively few people who are meant to find hunting will find it. The people who aren't will move on to the next Search For Deep Meaning and I'll start scoring some A. solitude in the woods (and hopefully water. Damn duck commanders...) and B. some sweet, barely-used gear in the thrift shops. And that is a win-win...