Makes me wonder whether she had access to books?? Or TV? I mean, seriously?
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It was the 60s. Not many documentaries on chickens at that point.
Most people donāt read books about agriculture unless they have an interest. It really is shocking.
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Please stopā¦.that has to be a joke!?!
I am a teacher and used to have a class bunny. A new family moved into our school, from New York City. The family was brought to my classroom and my rabbit was hopping around. The father of the new student asked āWhat is that?ā I was a bit shocked and I said itās a rabbit. He said āOh, we donāt have those in New York City.ā Have you never watched TV or seen a Cadberry commercial? How do you never open the book? It still baffles me to this day.
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When I moved in with my then-fiance (now long time ex DH), he had a calf in a pen on the property he rented. It was a joint venture with his next door neighbor. BF had two and a half acres (in the middle of Los Angeles!) and next door neighbor was on a typical suburban lot. Moo the calf was intact, and while he was really sweet when he was small, of course he started to grow into being a bull. His pen wasnāt very secure, so he got out frequently. I asked BF to call the slaughterer after Moo chased me around once too many times.
The slaughterer used a rifle to kill cattle, and he offered to let me do the shooting. I was very tempted, but I had only recently learned to shoot, and I was afraid I wouldnāt do it cleanly. So he shot Moo, and hung him in my pasture. I had two very upset horses (one mine, one boarder), but they got over it pretty quickly. However, my neighbors were horrified that we would do such a thing in such a visible place, as you could see our pasture from one road and another house.
A few months later, my parents came to dinner and were served steak. My mother said āWait, where is Moo?ā I pointed to her plate, and she walked out. I was surprised as my parents grew up during the Depression, and had said they were grateful to get decent protein wherever they could. She said she could no longer eat someone she had met. I told her if you get chased around and trampled a few times, itās easy to enjoy the steak later.
I havenāt had other meat animals and I would prefer not to do the slaughtering myself, but believe me, I wouldnāt hesitate if that were the best approach for my life at the time.
A few years later, I was getting divorced from my first husband and was extremely poor. I was only eating every two or three days due to lack of funds. I had a friend at the time who hunted deer and who was also in dire financial straits, and he said he would poach a deer out of season if I would lend him my truck to go hunting. We were so desperate, I said go ahead, and we lived on illegal venison the rest of that winter. Iām not so sure we would have survived otherwise.
Rebecca
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Iām glad I grew up in a place where there was no such thing as full care or training board. I had no idea that was even a thing until I moved to a more populated and wealthy area. Heck we barely even had coaches for many years. Iām sure I would have been a better rider with access to better training for me and horses who had at least a modicum of dressage training, but I wouldnāt be a better horse person.
The days of being dropped off at the barn in the morning and picked up at dinner time are long gone, and would probably a BOās worst nightmare now. But to me they were heaven.
At my teen years barn we only had stall muckers Mon-Fri so boarders were expected to do their own on weekends. Plus our gaggle of kids and teens would muck for friends who couldnāt come to the barn that day, and weād usually do the school horses as well, just for fun. Weād sweep and cobweb, clean the lounge, clean all the school tack, organize the school brushes, paint jump standards and polesā¦anything to justify being at the barn all day.
We were there for the colics, the injuries, the cast horses, the legs caught in fencing, the vet visits, the human falls and trips to the hospital, so we learned firsthand how to handle such emergencies. We eagerly put into practice all the things we learned during our āstable managementā lessons - something I donāt even think exists today.
We learned how to lunge, and how to bandage. How to identify common ailments like thrush, splints, abscesses and more. We pulled manes and braided and clipped, just for fun. We groomed filthy school ponies until they shone like new pennies.
In the summers I ran riding day camps at that barn and the gaggle of barn rats was invaluable - each one got assigned to a camper and a horse to supervise grooming and lead them in their mounted lessons until they were competent enough to steer and stop. None of these kids was paid; none asked to be paid. The reward was hanging out with horses and horse people all day.
We nearly froze to death on many days, got hurt more times than I can count, never remembered or had time to eat, and came home at the end of each day filthy, exhausted, starving, bruised and freezing or sun struck. And we came back the next day because we loved it.
To be fair, as a middle aged mom now, that type of barn environment is the opposite of what I want. I would hate a place filled with noise and kids having bare back races through the field, or having sleepovers in the lounge and riding their ponies at midnight. Which is why I board at a quiet, private, adult only barn. And yes, my horse is in full training so he gets ridden on weekdays when I canāt get there. But I hope such places still exist for kids and teens. I hope there are still barns like that where horse crazy kids can just be with horses as much as they want, for as long as they want.
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Iām not talking about agriculture or documentaries, I meant childrenās books where there were drawings of chickens, or other barnyard fowl like geese and ducks? Charlotteās Webā¦or something? I mean, most kids donāt see them wandering around their neighborhood but understand that they are birds.
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No, her family was not into books. They didnāt have childrenās books at home, which is what made her into a perpetual learner later in life. I know itās astounding, but itās not that uncommon in the US, even today. She didnāt come from wealth, and grew up in a city, went to Catholic school where the emphasis was on religion and learning to be a good wife. Having never actually seen a chicken, Iām sure she just didnāt make the connection that they were birds.
Did your copy of Charlotteās Web have pictures? Mine didnāt! Now Iām jealous. 
Must not have been a fan of westerns on the TV then, cause half of them had an obligatory flock of chickens just to scatter when the cowboys came in to town.
ETA, it IS Possible that she never knew what those wildly flapping things were and no one told her.
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I feel like if you grow up rural, you know from the start that there is lots you donāt know about cities and you stay alert to learn these things. But if you grow up poor in a city there is so much stuff in your immediate viewfinder that you tend not to think about rural areas. There are inner city kids in Baltimore that have never seen the ocean, maybe never get out of their neighbourhood. If your parents arenāt invested in early childhood education itās amazing what you can miss. I recall other kids in our suburbs in say grade 5 having a very shaky concept of where we were, what constituted city province country, what the border was (we lived an hours drive from the US border). We did car trips which gave me a sense of place. Most people didnāt travel much back then.
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I wish that school gardens were mandatory.
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No, that wouldnāt have been her style either. She was heavily into ballet and raising her 4 brothers because her mother worked. No time for television.
Again - it really isnāt that unusual that people would have different experiences than us growing up! 
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I canāt imagine a childhood without books to transport you to places and experiences that would otherwise have been accessible.
Everything I thought I knew about horses before I was actually allowed to take lessons came from a British horsey series written in the 1940s, I think.
I had never been to Asia or Africa but even as a child I knew what lions, hippos, elephants and zebras were. I had never been to Paris but knew what the Eiffel Tower looked like thanks to Madeline.
I lived in a big city and our ranching friends a few hours away had only cattle, but I still knew what a sheep looked like from nursery rhyme books like baa baa black sheep.
I have no trouble imagining growing up without TV back then, or being from a family that couldnāt afford trips to the zoo or to the movies. But libraries are free, and are usually found in every school, if transportation to a public library is an issue. They were such an integral part of my childhood; I feel bad for people who never experienced the wonder of living vicariously through a favourite childhood character.
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Isnāt it sad? It is why she was obsessed with reading to us as children and taking us to the library. She still goes and brings home bags of books It wasnāt the experience she was able to have so she gave it to us.
She didnāt have her first pet until she married my father. Pets were a luxury her family could not afford.
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Well, there were some. They werenāt great.
But it seems like most kids must read fairy tales or childrenās books in school that show pictures of animals by name. Most kids donāt grow up with pigs, but we all seem to know what they look like.
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āWe allā is entirely relative! See the educator above who was surprised a dad didnāt know what a rabbit was. Iāve had to educate people on the fact that horses donāt eat rabbits, and that chicken eggs are unfertilized ovum.
Itās not that rare. And Iām not sure whether you just donāt believe itās possibleā¦or what?
@Alterration, sorry to burst your bubble, but many eggs are fertilized. If you donāt incubate them, they donāt develop.
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Commercial eggs are infertile.
The only eggs you could buy that were fertilized (not the same as hatchable) would be from a farmer who runs a rooster with his laying hens. Which not every farmer does.
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I have a limited edition signed print of Madeline saying āPooh pooh!ā to the tiger in the zoo. I got it when I was eight years old. I think we were on St. Thomas and saw it in a shop. Iāve mostly had it hanging somewhere in my house ever since, except for a few years that my mother wanted to borrow it so she could hang it.
Itās one of my few prized possessions.
Rebecca
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Lol yes, if you have backyard chickens (which I did).
Commercial eggs donāt have a chance because there are no roosters.
Which is another thing people are surprised byā¦that you donāt need a rooster to have eggsā¦but you need one for chicks!
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