Episode 41 Chickens

Explicit content warning

08/29/09 • -1 min

Episode
Chickens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken
Hello and welcome to another quality episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about things that live in my backyard.
My intro was from over population is a myth .com . I'd mentioned overpopulation as being a danger in an earlier episode, perhaps I were wrong, going to over population is a myth.com doesnt take very long, so why not?
My father recently bought home some chickens, two hens and a rooster. Im against having pets, but having spent time with these lovely birds, I'd find it hard to send these chickens on their way. I've never really liked cats or dogs, I find them noisy and messy, but birds and insects have always been very dear to me.
I'll read from wikipedia,
"Chickens are omnivores.[9] In the wild, they often scratch at the soil to search for seeds, insects and even larger animals such as lizards or young mice[10].
Chickens may live for five to eleven years, depending on the breed.[11] In commercial intensive farming, a meat chicken generally lives only six weeks before slaughter.[12] A free range or organic meat chicken will usually be slaughtered at about 14 weeks. Hens of special laying breeds may produce as many as 300 eggs a year. After 12 months, the hen's egg-laying ability starts to decline, and commercial laying hens are then slaughtered and used in baby foods, pet foods, pies and other processed foods.[13] The world's oldest chicken, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, died of heart failure when she was 16 years old.[14]
"
At the back of this house, there are a few brick sheds, a glasshouse and a chicken coup are the main ones. If you go to my flickr account, which I'll link to on my blog, jaywontdart.blogspot.com , you can see photos and even videos of the chickens and where they are living. I'll play the audio from the videos in this episode, but its much better if you see the chickens for yourself! I tried to record the noises they make by taking my laptop into the chicken coup, it was a little difficult, I didnt want to get smeared chicken poo on my PowerBook, but I somewhat pulled it off. They are very quiet, but you can make them out, they often make little noises to talk to each other, they like to stay near each other at all times.
This is one clip I made of the chickens talking to each other.
Here I am feeding the rooster grain, he pecks food from your hand.
Having just been moved here, they are still very nervous about where they now live. The chickens stay together at all times, and I think they must be very scared of us. I try and be as nice as I can to them, I call out before I go into the chicken coop, so I can get them used to my voice, so they know to expect someone to come crashing through the door that had been close for the previous hours. I feed them grain and chicken mash, and put water in a large saucer for them to drink from, although I still havnt seen them drink yet.
The hens in particular are extra scared, boy chickens, roosters, and girl chickens, hens, are very different from each other, its kind of like the 1950's, where women stayed at home and raised the children, while the men were police, chasing bad guys and protecting the community. The hens seem almost petrified if they are ever out of sight of the rooster, they really need him to lead them. I think this is because they trust him so much, and they are so very nervous at the moment, having just been bought here, I hope if future they will confidently walk further away from him.
On my flickr account, you can see this video, where I give a little tour of where these chickens live.
Looking up chicken care websites, many start off saying that chickens are lovely animals to keep as pets, and then once they get to a suitable size, you kill them for meat! Cripes! One site had a indepth tutorial on how to kill them, how to pull their guts out right. On the site, the ads were to do with
Grisley "related resources" panel
"
Related Resources
Meat Electric Grinder Meat Rib Brat Lamb Chop Lamb Eel Meat Grinder Oyster Wings Ostrich Brain Crabs Sushi"
I was reminded of a podcast episode debating veganism and a standard diet including animal byproducts. In this debate, the person who eats animal products defends it because he sees chickens as very stupid animals. This is from the Debate Hour podcast, which you can find a few free episodes on iTunes by searching for "debate hour".
What a load of rubbish, chickens are very much living, feeling animals. I do notice that they move oddly, every move a chicken makes is a jerk, they dont move smoothly, they whirr and click, as if they have gears with cogs inside their bodies, they have to stop at certain points, as the cogs catch. This looks pretty odd, the way they jerk so much, but its endearing, not something to hate them about. Its a bird thing. Chickens definitely care about each other, as I said, the hens really want to s...

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Episode 40 Don Gorske: Big Mac Lover

Episode 40
Don Gorske Big Mac Guy
Hello and welcome to Episode 40 of Jay Wont darts podcast. My intro was from King Of the Hill.
This episode is about Don Gorske, I'll start by reading from Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia
"Don Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin is an American "Big Mac enthusiast" who has eaten over 23,000 Big Mac hamburgers in his lifetime,[1] winning a place in the 2006 Guinness Book of Records in the process. He claims the Big Mac constitutes 90% of his total solid food intake. He is featured in the documentaries Super Size Me (2004) and Don Gorske: Mac Daddy (2005). He is the author of 22,477 Big Macs (2008).
History
Gorske claims that after getting his first car, the first place he went was to McDonald's on May 17, 1972[1] he purchased and ate three Big Macs at lunch time. He then returned two more times that day to consume a total of nine Big Macs the same day he discovered the sandwich. He further claims to have eaten 265 Big Macs in the following month, an average of 8.5 Big Macs per day. If true, this would be equivalent to over 4,600 calories and 247 grams of fat daily, for a total of 143,100 calories and 16.9 pounds of fat in one month. He also claims to drink almost nothing but Coca-Cola and, according to Super Size Me, he rarely eats the fries. At first, Don kept all the boxes of Big Macs he ate in the back of his car.
In 2003, Don Gorske ate 741 Big Macs, an average of 2.03 Big Macs per day.
On August 17, 2008, Gorske ate his 23,000th Big Mac at his favorite McDonald's restaurant in Fond du Lac.[1] He claims that since he ate his first Big Mac, there have only been eight different days in which he did not eat a single Big Mac. One of these days was the day his mother died, and he did not eat a Big Mac to respect her request.[1] Other days included a "Snow Day" when McDonalds was unable to open due to snow, a Thanksgiving, days he was traveling and could not find a McDonalds, and various days Gorske had to stay at work past midnight. Gorske has since started keeping an "emergency stash" of Big Macs in his freezer for emergencies and snow days.[4] Don Gorske also records when and where he eats his Big Macs in a notebook that he carries with him all of the time. Gorske has kept every burger receipt in a box.[1]
"
Now, I want to mention a major reason why I chose to do an episode about Don Gorske. The guy eats all that fastfood, he says it makes up 90% of his food intake, so he basically eats just 2 burgers a day, along with liquids. The guy looks damn thin, he looks quite a lot like a hippie, if you imagine a hippie with "John Lennon" style round glasses, and brown hair in a bowlcut style, although he has a ponytail at the back. I'm mentioning Don because hes evidence that fast food is a sure cause of obesity, I really dont like hearing people who complain that big companies have forced everyone worldwide to become fat and lazy. I think what people eat is their own responsibility, although I have read books such as Fast Food Nation, and have watched Super Size Me, I'll play clips from that movie later. I do see a definite link between eating fatty foods and becoming fat yourself, but I really dont think its fair to blame mcdonalds when you choose to eat there 3 times a day. Don Gorske is a very quirky case, and I'd love him to go Vegan, but he sure isnt unhealthly from what I can tell, or from his health statistics that he tells people. I mention this because large animal welfare groups like PETA advertise going vegetarian as a way to lose weight, they often use the fact that vegetarians and vegans generally are slim, as if the only way you can be NOT FAT is if you dont eat animal products, apparently they have never seen Don Gorske.
I left this part out of the Wikipedia article, because I wanted you to think he weighed a metric ton.
"Gorske is 6 foot 2 inches tall, 185 pounds, and claims a cholesterol level of 140."
Im interrupting here, for every other country in the world, hes about 1.8 metres tall and weighs 83kg's. That makes his Body Mass Index, BMI, about 23.8, almost 24. A BMI is not amazingly accurate, very muscular people can be reported as being obese, for example, but its the best way to somewhat compare weights of people, to roughly group them as underweight for their height, average for their height, or overweight for their height.
Reading from the site I used to calculate Dons BMI,
• Underweight = <18.5
• Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
• Overweight = 25-29.9
• Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater
At just under 24 he would be on the heavier side of a normal weight for his height, normal being 18.5 to 24.9 . He looks quite thin, so he could have a lot of dense muscle, he definitely doesn't look like he has a double chin or a fat belly.
Back to wikipedia,
"His claimed average daily consumption of two Big Macs amounts to 1,080 calories, according to the nutritional information published by McDonald's[2]; t...

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Episode 42 Anti Smacking Bill Fallout

Episode 42 Anti Smacking Bill Fallout
Hello and welcome to episode 42 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about being one of the Invercargill 1915. I'll explain that later. My intro was a youtube video called Flight of the Hummingbird, I just ordered the book, about doing whatever you can, no matter how small, to make the world a better place.
Its been over for a while now, I'd decided to hold off covering the results of the Anti Smacking Bill Referendum, in hope that an answer would come at the end of it. So far, nothing has changed, the referendum has been for nothing.
To go over the Anti Smacking Bill again quickly, Sue Bradford, an MP of the minor Green Party proposed a bill, that the defense of "reasonable force for the purpose of correction"could be used by parents charged with assaulting their children. This was very upsetting to many parents who believed in physical discipline of their children, they were for smacking, and saw the law as taking away their right as parents to smack their children. The bill went into law 2007, a petition was to be held in 2009 once enough signatures were reached.
Ok, so that was simplified, but it gets us to this year at least. The question being asked was "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"
People have been very confused about what this actually means, and people against physical discipline have said that the question is very loaded, its designed to make you vote NO, that a smack is part of good parental correction, not something that parents should be recieve a lethal injection over. I totally agree, I think the question is over the top, its literally saying that something good parents do could now be turned into a "criminal offense", making good parents equal to murderers. I think a question like "do you think physical discipline of children is acceptable" would have been much better, although I guess people for smacking could say that "physical discipline" sounds scary, and that they would prefer smacking. I dont like the word smacking, because I see it as another loaded thing, in NZ, smacking generally means a light slap on the hand or the bottom of a child, people who believe in smacking dont agree that its violent, they see it as a correction thing and quite acceptable. The word smacking is a way of hiding the violent aspect of hitting another person, I think, so I'd prefer not to use the word "smacking". "Prime Minister John Key said of the question [The question] "could have been written by Dr Seuss - this isn't Green Eggs and Ham, this is yes means no and no means yes, but we're all meant to understand what the referendum means. I think it's ridiculous myself."
The referendum went ahead, and most of the country seemed very angry their right to smack their children was being taken away, most polls had about 80 percent support for smacking. I'll mention that people FOR the law change say that you could still smack your children, but others focus on moving away from physical discipline, so even I am confused as to whether smacking is banned or not banned! Sue Bradford, who came up with the bill, has been quoted mentioning "this doesnt make smacking illegal" but also "this makes smacking illegal" type comments, so who really knows what the bill means. For this episode, Im focusing on the "anti smacking bill" as meaning its against smacking full stop, as its physical discipline, and thats what the bill is focused on.
Most of this episode will be clips.
The first things I'll play will be people asking you to vote for their side in the referendum. I'll play two, this is Sue Bradford who wrote the law change, and Deborah Morris-Travers of Barnardos, a New Zealand child welfare group.
Here I have a radio debate I quite liked, remember, the Yes side is essentially against smacking, the No side is for smacking.
People generally were for smacking still, most polls were somewhere over 80 percent FOR smacking children, so thats a No vote. It became clear that the referendum would go the No voters side, allowing parents to physically discipline their children. This was mentioned in this news piece while the votes were being checked.
Things were not looking good for my side, against smacking, a Yes voter. Overwhelmingly , the final results of the nine million dollar referendum, that took place two years after the law was changed to supposedly ban smacking, were 87.6 percent voting No, for smacking, just amazing, absolutely overwhelmingly for smacking. Thats basically 9 out of 10 New Zealanders, who voted in this referendum. Voter turnout was 54%.
Just over 1.6 million votes were cast, about 1.3 million were for smacking. The places most against smacking, were Auckland and Wellington, the two largest cities in New Zealand, both had about 30 percent of people against smacking, only about 70 percent for smacking, which is VERY high compared to the rest of the country, where ...