The General Chat Thread (2016-2022)

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morning glory said:
How can you square this with the fact you are vegetarian? But perhaps you aren't vegetarian 'on principal' but for heath reasons? I know I couldn't do it and I'm not even vegetarian!
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The rooster side of life is a hard one. I do not see the point of raising a rooster that is going to have no life. The best it could hope for is a confined space in a sanctuary where it would have a patch of earth of its own. if its lucky it may have access to one hen. They would share a space approximately 2-3m by 2-3m for the rest of their life. That size is actually large. There will be no grass because they will long since have killed it. It will have a chook house of its own and posture and try to fight any other rivals through a fence. It will have rivals on all sides due to the nature of being a rooster and not being wanted. What kind of life is that? Even raising any potential roosters that are bure breeds that are wanted and rare breeds risks that kind of life if I can't sell it to a breeder. I would simply rather it not exist in the first place. That is the reality and it is a hard one that many people can not and do not get their head around. They simply ignore it and leave others to deal with it. People willing enough to section off every area of land they have access to and keep them in the smallest possible and feasible area because there are so very many of them needing homes. I see too many adverts, rooster, free to a good home, rooster home needed urgently - free. etc. and very few of them find homes.

I deal with it because it is very little different from putting down an injured animal at the side of the road. I can not understand people who will not help end suffering of an animal. Vegans who stand of a snail injuring it only then to sit and glue its shell back together? I'm sorry, but if I hit an animal whilst driving, I will and do stop the car, I do find that animal/bird and I make sure that if its injuries are serious enough that it is going to die from them, it is killed immediately. Perhaps I have lived too long in pain myself? I don't know. But the one things I can not understand are people who are meat eaters and can not deal with the death of an animal when they have just caused it. The number of times I have had to despatch a bird (usually a pheasant) or a rabbit or even a deer on one occasion when someone (usually a big burly guy) has just hit it, stopped and is now unable to kill it despite the fact it is clearly suffering and in pain and has terminal injuries... perhaps it is where we choose to live - by which I mean the locations, and the fact that we are often travelling the roads at dawn and dusk. One such road in our second to last place was that bad we used to actually keep an axe in the boot of the car. I am practical. I have not a vegetarian for health reasons, in fact it was actually and hen and chick experiment at school that pushed me into being vegetarian in the first place. I can face the reality where a lot of people can't. I can butcher a wild animal if I want to. I choose not to. I choose not to eat those products. Too many meat eaters don't even want to know what they eat or how it is produced. I simply don't understand that. I also don't understand some vegans and their way of thinking either.

I deal with it the same way that I deal with second hand wool. Why should I dispose of a woollen garment I purchased 25 years ago that is still going strong just because it is not ethically vegetarian let alone vegan. Please tell me how it is either, or even environmentally friendly to dispose (and this is what some want to happen, so as to stop others from using the item) of these woollen tops just because they supposedly no longer fit into being ethically my lifestyle. My lifestyle includes being environmentally friendly, recycling, reusing and repurposing. I don't buy new unless really needed. I hate having to use the car and for decades I haven't unless completely necessary. I have cycled and walked tens of thousands of miles instead of driving them. I grow my own veg and whilst I can't hope to meet all my needs, I can and have often grown most of it.

But at the same point, I also don't understand why as humans we have to live in suffering either. Why we are so darn squeamish about ending life of any type including our own when the outcome is only 1 option and suffering and pain is the only thing that is going to happen between now and the very definite chest infection or pneumonia that kills most in the end. If there is only one outcome and no hope, only pain, why are we so darn set of preserving life that we can not see there is nothing there to preserve? Well I'm sorry, but I feel the same applies here as well and I would rather ensure that the pour thing is despatched quickly and painlessly than for it to stand the chance of ending up being used in cock fighting because I raised it and had to give it away to a total stranger. And yes, I hear about this all the time being on various forums and have a couple of friends who are breeders. Can I have 6 or 7 roosters please? what do you want that many for? How many hens do you have? What ratio hens to roosters do you have? and they can't come back with the correct answers because they aren't planning on keeping those roosters alive. They may eat them, they may let their dogs kill them and eat them. They may be releasing them and hunting them, using them for target practice (it happens) or they may just be raising them to fight to the death for sport. No, I'm actually more responsible than that and vegetarian or not, I have a responsibility to prevent their suffering unnecessarily and if I can't do so, I should not be keeping chooks in the first place.

People have no idea what happens to them. They would rather pretend that there wasn't a problem in the first place and live between walls of concrete watching a make believe world on TV, ignoring reality outside of the city boundaries. I can be vegetarian, or veggan (vegan plus eggs which is what I am) and not be inhuman. I can be veggan and kill injured animals and prevent their suffering. I can be veggan and be responsible for the animals I raise.

Sorry rant over. You touched a raw nerve.
 
Don't hold back @SatNavSaysStraightOn, tell us how you really feel! ☺ it may seem hypocritical coming from a meat eater but I agree with much of what you say. People have become too disconnected from the sources and production methods of what they buy. Not to mention being brainwashed into a constant state of needing to buy and consume, and the effect that has on driving down costs (i.e. standards) throughout the supply chain.
 
All year long it is virtually impossible to find anyone willing to cut the grass for money. Today there must be ten of the villagers with whipper-snappers trimming the grass verges for free.
 
sidevalve said:
Might have such in Texas and maybe even Australia but we don't in the UK [OK a few crows etc] with the density of traffic here anything that pays too much attention to road kill usually joins it.
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I was referring to the carrion birds like buzzards.
 
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