Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs

Hey guys! The following is from the desk/brain of Todd McElmurry Uber Supporter and frequent commenter of everything Rick. Want to voice your comments too? Start by joining Rick’s world! You don’t have to be an Uber like Todd here, but you can comment any time by clicking on the comic and heading over to the website.

And now Todd’s thoughts:

Hey Rick, don’t worry too much about them worms, Chickens are actually just lucky enough to find them, they (the chickens) are not very smart animals, thank goodness they taste good otherwise what a waste.  Not to mention if that worm can at least get half of itself away from that chicken it’ll live on to be eaten another day.  Maybe one day the worms will unite and rise up against the foul that have kept them living in fear.

Back in High School during my summers I switched between working on an Ostrich Ranch and working for Bo Pilgrim at some of his chicken houses collecting eggs and sorting them.  Let me tell ya, when it comes to birds no matter the size they are all a bit pea brained and better on your plate than alive.

I’ll get into the Ostrich Ranch story another day, but here’s a teaser.  I got kicked, pecked, and eventually let go due to drugs…not mine, but the owners.  OK, on to the chicken house stories.

These houses are about 120 yards long and about 40 to 60 feet wide, with plats (Pallets connected end to end the length of the house, 2 runs on each side) that run the length of the houses with hanging water troughs down the middle ever so often, and nests propped up on either side for the chickens to lay their eggs in.  The nests dump out onto a conveyor belt that is hidden underneath, and allows for you to stand in a room at the end of the house, turn on the belt and just wait for the eggs to come to ya.   Sounds easy enough, and it would be if chickens had any intelligence.   Since they don’t, about every hour I’d have to walk the plats and collect the eggs that the chickens laid just any where they could, as well as clean out the water troughs cause evidently these birds heard a rumor about indoor pluming and figured that their water troughs are were they were suppose to do their business.

The hunt for the eggs was like easter every hour, you’d find them on top of the hutch that their nests are in, in the middle of the floor amongst all the other chickens, even in their water troughs.   As you walked you’d also have to look for ill or dead birds, cause for some reason if another chicken becomes ill or dies the remaining chickens think it’s their job to peck it to pieces…literally to pieces.  This was a regular day to day thing, and every hour the egg hunts were on.

We would put food in the same location each time, and there would still be chickens that spent their day in day out routine scratching around at the ground.  So we’d have to move the food dispensers ever so many hours just so they would eat, cause once it was emptied and they moved on half of them would never return to the food dispenser again, so we’d have to fill it and take it to them.

So the next time you feel bad about eating poultry of any kind, just remember that you’re doing this bird a favor by eating it.