Keep you children away from Chooks

When I was little I had some chickens. Eventually they grew into chooks and went into the chook pen with the others. Now I understand why I am not able to find a chook pen anywhere in my suburb. With all these diseases around I can understand why the local council has banned chooks, ducks, geese, and pigeons. I am now it is for my own protection and that of my family and fellow urban dwellers. I'm not sure if crocs are actually banned in my suburb but everything else either is or is planned to be. Somewhere I have a video of the aftermath of an Emu suicide on my bull bar and the kids carrying out an autopsy. The diseases they have no doubt been in contact with would make me an antihero on tv. I guess the same goes for our dog, cat, rabbit, the bloody doves, maggies, parrots, willy wagtails etc that have taken up rsidence on our property. You know some moron here in WA is actually taking the Main Roads Dept to court for damages for hitting a roo with his vehicle on the hwy - insufficient signd - and yes it was in the country. Now if only I can get a chook to infect my kids (i'm not silly - no way is anything going to get me) and somehow get on tv with tracy and hit a roo on my way to the studio I can most probably sue everyone including the seat cover manufacturer. What is all this rambling about - stuffed if I know but at least if I get sick or do something that is my responsiblity it is just that - my responsibility, no one elses. rgds

I'm surprised I made it through my childhood as I used to live in the chook house as a kid. It was my job to dig out the lovely poo and distribute it over the vege garden. Then when the chooks wouldn't cough up the goods i'd wring their necks for christmas dinner. Talk about child abuse but it was fun and hey I didn't end up a mass murderer.I may be mad but I'm not crazy
BEAM ME UP SCOTTY
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Hooroo
Ray

Andrew and Jen, no doubt it is all being raised again and best be forgotten but we do increase the risks as you say. The MVEncephalitis and/or Ross River Fever if indeed we go camping in parts of Australia we are increasing risk for they are mosquito borne.

If your dog goes to a sheep paddock beware of Hydatid worm which forms a cyst in humans, or sheep again. Kids or you. I am not going to go to all the zoonoses or diseases that can be transferred to humans, but there are many and some potentially fatal.

Don't forget that it is now wrong for farmers to get kids ( even their grand kids ) to do so many things without a parental permission and a police check now, even to the extent of feeding the chooks as you mention. Nanny State Victoria we are!Regards

JohnR - Not enough of the right travelling, some here..... some over there.......

I thought comedy was illegal now,
Santa definitely is in some schools!

How come there hasn't been any agro yet on this topic...........
Speaking of cut and pasting, I like your "We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing"
Happy 2004 one and all.

Aw Geez Fellas

I'm glad I'm not growing up now. We didn't know anything about all this stuff when we grew up. We had a great time. Guess I'm a little bit cautious with my kids with some things but that generally only involves other people.

No wonder we are a sick race these days. We are "protected" from all sorts of evil, but perhaps that's evil in it's self.

A mate of my old Mum had a young'un and wouldn't let him go outside or let you inside if you had a cold. Poor little bugger, first time he got near a cold bug it knocked him flat. Could be a moral to be learnt there.

Cheers
Nomad

Well I must be a slack mum [or is that grandmum - I'm confused, obviously my great age is causing memory probs]...Tegan and Callum feed next door's chooks and handle them, we've had the geese and turkeys from up the road free range in our front yard, and both T & C run about freely down the back with a 70kg+ dog and another that is about 25kgs...and both the kids and the dogs love it....and they also feed the pony...next I'll be in trouble coz they're breathing fresh air....as my mother inlaw keeps telling me in her scottish brogue "you've got to eat a peck o dirt before you die" and my kids have eaten stacks...ahahhaha...

LynLife - Live it , Love it !

BUGGER , what a dangerous world we live in ,think I will invest in a plastic bubble for my grand children before a mad chook , mossie ,dog ,crock,or general nutter gets them,not to mention Volvo drivers LOLTelfer mines rd camp
Peter York 4x4

Funny, a while back they linked the Increase in asthma to the increasingly sterile environments kids grow up in. Apparently back in the old day's the dirt and dust helped kids build an immunity to some of the nasties.
Cheers,
Justin

Hmm, how times have changed. One of my folks favourite stories about us kids growing up relates to my oldest brother and how as a youngster he used to love playing in the dirt/poo/god-knows-what-else concoction found in the chook pen. At every opportunity he'd disappear up to the chook pen and get covered from head to foot in the stuff. Mum even reckoned he was eating it!!! She spoke to the family doctor about it and he basically said "Don't worry about - it won't kill him." To be fair to the doc, my brother is now 48 so it was a long time ago and obviously it didn't kill him (although perhaps it did do some damage which would explain a lot, LOL).

Having said all that, I have been concerned about my neighbours recent addition of a chook pen in the very back corner of their standard residential size block. They live on a corner block so their back fence is our side fence. The result is that whilst their chook pen is as far from their house as they can put it, it's right at the side of our house - literally 1.5 metres from our car port, 3 metres from our back patio entertainment area and 8 metres from our back door. Honestly, I'm not happy about this arrangement mainly due to the close proximity and the inevitable smell once the pen has been there awhile. The mozzie issue also worries me as there are containers of horrible green water lying around providing a perfect breeding habitat (due to the estuary, marshes and rivers around which our town is built we already have a major mozzie problem with the council regularly conducting aereal drops of insecticides in some areas. We have also had a Ross River virus outbreak this summer). My neighbours are not the kind of people who will clean out the pen, water or feed containers regularly so I'm quite sure my concerns are not unfounded. I know our council by-laws ban the keeping of chooks in suburbs such as ours but it's not my style to dob so for now, we have adopted a wait and see attitude.

In the meantime, perhaps I should ban my son from patting and feeding the animals from the farm animal petting zoo that comes to the local fairs etc. The chooks and ducks always seem to be a favourite with the kids...Tongue firmly in cheek.

:o) MelissaPetrol 4.5L GU Patrol &
Camprite TL8 offroad camper
http://members.westnet.com.au/flatdog

BOOOOOk,Boooooook, I am glad I live in a chook house with the girls, with only one rooster in our whole little world. He is so content, and loves us all equally. He has been faithful to us all, never had an affair, so we are all STD and AIDS free. Living in perfect healthy harmony. We are fed extremely well, wormed and waited on with fine grain and brews from our slaves kitchen. In return, we push out an egg or two, just so none of us are taken away. Our house is clean with lovely straw for comfort. Although, I tell you sumthin, its those humans you have to watch, they come into our house and never wipe their feet, and whats more, pick up our poo, we leave it there to bury in our next scratch, but the filthy humans......... they cart it away. I don't know, I am yet to find on what goes on in the outside world, thats if I can get past the hard heart in the human house. Gertrude.Looking forward to the cruise and snooze years.........Retirement