Coming up on the weekend, and I thought I'd leave all with this little odd tidbit, for humors sake..

Never feel bad when you see the ads downing how your store bought chickens were raised. I live in the NW and am familiar with these places, my best friend lives across a country road from one (oh yeah, it stinks to high heavens in the summer).

We should always strive to force big agriculture and animal raising operations for better conditions. No doubt. However, we now have six "broiler" chicks we are raising for meat, and let me tell you some things about these "poor birds".

Number one, they are lacking heavily in the intelligence department, BIG TIME! We have egg laying hens and chicks and there is a marked difference in intelligence. We handle both the same amount, yet the broiler chicks act as though we never have and squeel, squeek and squawk terribly, the egg laying chicks do little chirps and are ok with it all.

Broilers smell and do nothing more than eat and, well you know what. One got out early this morning from it's brooder box, all over the shed they are in, and the whole floor it seemed was covered in the "you-know-what", as well as the shelf where the brooder box sits.

They will be overtly hot and just sit there and suffer, instead of getting up to get a drink and some air to their bodies, barnyard chickens will do what it takes to stay cool and hydrated.

So knowing what I know, I no longer feel too bad about their fates. They simply were not bred for their brains, just their bodies (lol....sick joke, I know), besides, they smell to high heaven and I am almost to a point where eating them seems unappealing.....might change my mind once they get home from the "processors"!

Like the locavores say "know your food source", I know mine and know that living too long would be suffering for these creatures. No matter, for those animal rights people out there, while our stupid chickens are being raised for meat, they are treated with the utmost care and concern over their well being, after all, we can't eat them if they are sickly!!