Gosh are there ever a few phrases that raise a person's hackles and "in my humble opinion" or even just "in my opinion" gets close to number one. Another personal least favorite is "I'm not trying to offend..." oh - but you are. Never fear about that one. Nothing has made these types of phrases more awkward, uncomfortable and anger inducing than social media.
There are some things, as an animal lover, you just cannot post about on social media. It's sad that every time before I share something I have to think to myself, "Is this going to start a fight?" There are several topics I try to avoid at all costs. Social media for me isn't' a time to start political or religious arguments. I try to keep my social media about sharing joy and fun. But even sharing posts or pictures about how we care for our own animals can start an all out vicious debate.
The horse community is sharply divided on several topics: blanket vs don't blanket. Stall vs pasture. Shavings vs pellets. Slant vs straight load. Snaffles, shanks, saddles, feed, buckets, you name it - we can fight about it. There are some things I will almost never post about. One is the blanket debate and the other is turn out because my horses haven't seen the inside of a stall since our last horse show and some view that as abuse. But I had no idea how crazy chicken people can be.
I guess that isn't fair. I knew and understand that many of us chicken people are a bit crazy. But I didn't realize that it extended past our obsessive hoarding of these beautiful pets. A cold snap lasting days into weeks showed me differently. On the chicken pages that I follow, people went CRAZY over heat vs no heat in the coop. Comments ranged from how some of us who don't heat are sadistic chicken killers to people bringing their chickens into their houses were going to kill their chickens with the shock to their systems. If that isn't bad enough, I learned that you do not share a picture of your poor hen after an attack without having several people LOSE THEIR MINDS about the fact that yes, you free range your birds and yes, predators happen.
A few days ago my much loved Cherry was attacked by something. We found a few drops of blood, a few missing feathers and a very cold Cherry not doing well in the snow. I brought her in, cleaned her up, tried unsuccessfully to get her to drink and warmed her the best I could. I took her picture and shared looking for positive thoughts on a chicken page I enjoy and was told I needed to completely cover the area where my chickens run with netting or strings. Strings people. My chickens range over roughly 6 acres. They wanted me to pen them up OR run strings to keep the hawks/eagles out of the entire area they can range. Umm... come again? Or I could buy 1,000 pinwheels to hang from every tree and fence post. Our place would have definitely been colorful?!
I love my birds to pieces. I shed real tears for Cherry. Especially since after all my cuddling, I found her lifeless the next morning. I had a lot of hopes to make more golden seabrights this summer with her and Mango and she was my only seabright hen. But I'm also a realist. We have chickens for functional reasons besides eggs and pets. Chickens are also extremely successful at eating bugs and breaking apart the piles of manure to wash away in the summer. Those piles are found over the 6 acres of pasture and I sure as heck can't hang netting over all 6 acres. We will do our best to protect our flock, but sometimes you have to be reasonable.
I ended up deleting that post. I'm not sure I will post in there again unless it is a "just for fun here's a picture of my chickens" kind of post. I did have a few people private message me to say they get it and they free range too. Predators happen. They suck. We have "relocated" a few that we have managed to "catch". But they happen. For now, I'm sitting her in awe and appreciation of a random stranger from that board who has offered me a new seabright hen. We cannot wait to meet our new girl and hope to bring her home a few other friends too. So I guess it wasn't a complete loss! I guess I'll keep my chicken abusing killing practices to myself from now on though.
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