Roughly translated it means the best way to intimidate a big rival is to destroy a smaller one.
But what happens after that? One man in China appears to have just found out.
*****
Before anybody calls bullshit about the flashlight, check this shit out:
Back in the mid 1960s, my Grandpa Bud ran a chicken ranch on Tully Road between Hughson and Keyes, CA. That road had a dozen or more chicken ranches on it, all owned by Foster Farms, a huge poultry processor then and still is even today. When you entered the road at both Keyes and Grayson Roads, there were big signs telling drivers to turn their headlights off and drive with only parking lights.
I can remember twice when drivers ignored those signs and flashed the chicken houses with their headlights and let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. We'd hear an eruption of squawking and we'd run to whichever chicken house it was coming from. Inside the house, there would be a thousand or more chickens piling up on top of each other in the far corner. Sheer fucking panic. The ones on the bottom would die from suffocation and the ones on top would die from the heat coming off the lamps mounted on the walls, and because I'm the youngest, lightest, and most expendable, my job was climbing that growing pile of chickens, trying to pull them away from the lamps so they wouldn't catch fire and burn the whole fucking place down.
So yeah, thousands of dollars worth of dead birds over a light suddenly flashing in their chicken house.
And by the way, if you go to Google Earth you can still see the remnants of the chicken houses, 10 of them and each about 250 feet long. Address is 5831 Tully Road, Hughson CA. That's our little farmhouse there just south of the houses and near the road.
I didn't think a chicken ranch actually had chickens. I thought that was just another name for whore house.
ReplyDeleteYou're thinking Nevada.
DeleteI agree with the lighting and chickens issue. We had to mark the poultry farms on our low level maps during helo flight school in South Alabama. Farms were everywhere and they would indeed panic and hogpile killing hundreds.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall any issues with aircraft, but now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen a poultry ranch near an airport.
DeleteI flew with an older man who, in a firm, angry voice, told me to never fly over a chicken ranch.
DeleteHe was 3rd gen chicken rancher and related stories like what Kenny said here but caused by low flying aircraft.
So it was ironic that on that very flight while he was talking we were headed directly toward a poultry house. I gently banked while maybe a mile distant. Suddenly, no warning, he took the controls to steepen the bank until we were nearly knifed edge. He glared at me for not banking steep enough. MF, NO ONE! takes my plane unless allowed. I laugh about it now.
We had some turkeys when I was a kid. Thunderstorm scared them all into a corner and suffocated half of them.
ReplyDeleteWe have a turkey farm in my area. They don't seem to have a problem with lights or anything else. But they do smell worse than a pig farm. There are 3 barns next to each other, about 200 feet long or so, and probably 60-80 feet wide. In the summer, when the turkeys are almost ready to be moved to processing, it is especially bad.
ReplyDeleteYou can tell when they have just moved the turkeys out, there are feathers and mud every where. I don't drive past the place anymore, since I no longer live in my hometown or work here in my current city, hence no commute. But it was so bad that at times I took an alternate route even if it meant longer commute times.
I raised chickens for several years. I switched to turkeys. Hoo wee, never again.
DeleteA friend did have a large pig farm. It was bad. But I agree with you about turkeys smelling worse.
My mother and daddy bought a small farm with three poultry houses on the place in 1968. I was four. In 1974 we built three new chicken houses (40'X300') giving us a total of five. In 1978 my daddy bought a small farm a half a mile down the road that had four houses on it, giving us a total of nine houses and the capacity to raise approximately 130,000 chickens every six -eight weeks (we usually staggered ours to split up work and some equipment). I worked around chickens until I moved away at age 20. Everything Ken is telling you about the way chickens react to light (and many other things) is true. Noise, light, sudden movement (something falling). and the birds will pile up trying to run away. They will keep climbing atop each other and until there is a giant wedge of chickens narrow at the end and thick against the wall where that is stopping them. Our side walls were wood 4.5' high and it was chicken wire from the top of the wall to the ceiling for ventilation. Many times I've seen birds above the wood and on the end walls that were app. 10' high, I've seen chickens get spooked pile up 6'-7' high. Once we had a temporary divider rolled up at the halfway mark of the length of the house that fell without warning. It made a huge noise, sudden movement and a cloud of dust rolled away from it. I was pretty young and there was a hired man helping me that day. When the chickens spooked and ran to the walls of the house, the hired man thought and acted quickly. He fired up a chainsaw that was in the back of his truck just outside the door, ran back in, and proceeded to wade into the chickens revving the engine of the saw scaring them away from their doom. I don't think we lost any that day, but I've known of growers losing over a thousand due to scares (i.e. thunderstorms) and ultimately suffocation.
ReplyDeleteThe Central Valley in California doesn't have many thunderstorms, so we never had a pile-up because of that, not while I was staying with my grandparents, anyway.
DeleteToo bad my granddad never heard of the chainsaw trick - might've saved him some money.