Monday, December 17, 2012

What NOT to get the amateur farmer in your life for Christmas...

I'm all for spoiling one's pets.  God knows, Gypsy the Feline Dictator gets raw chicken and the expensive brand of dry food every day to eat, and her litter box is lined with the pricey flushable kind of litter.

Okay, so the litter is really for my benefit, not hers.  I don't want to be running out to the rubbish bin with a vaguely odorous plastic baggie every time she goes in for a scratch around.

But still, I like to think that as far as owners go, I'm a good one!  Hell, she even had her own couch up until the recent redecoration of my living room (and don't even get me started on the filthy looks I got for tossing it away).  So I think I'm justified in saying that Nieman Marcus have officially lost the plot if they think anyone is actually going to drop a hundred grand on a luxury chicken coop!

I know, right?

Call me crazy, but that seems a little exorbitant for something which could previously be made with some chicken wire and a couple of sheets of corrugated iron!  I'm all for ensuring our feathered friends are well cared for and comfy in their homes, but it seems to me that if it's going to actually cost more than a reasonably priced kit home for a family of four, it's probably too much.

Assuming that the average chicken lays 350 eggs in its lifetime, and that a dozen eggs would set you back about $4 in a supermarket, the poultry palace would have to home 857 chickens before it would have paid for itself!  And that's just to cover the cost of the coop, it doesn't take feed, time, vet costs, etc, into consideration.

Truth be told, I'm not even sure whether a chicken would want to live in that place.  It was apparently modelled after Le Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette's house in Versailles.  I can't help but think that the French of that era were a little too fond of chopping heads off for any self respecting chicken to feel completely comfortable in it.

By the way, don't forget to go enter my Silly Season Giveaway for an e-copy of Xanthe Walter's new novel "Ricochet"!

39 comments:

  1. And there we have it in a nutshell. Stupidity!

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    1. LOL! Very true. Some people just have too much money, I think.

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  2. Nice angle with the chopping the heads off bit. And as for the posh chicken coop, what's that saying? Oh yes -- "a fool and his money are soon parted."

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  3. Gee, I hope NM will take it back and give me a refund.

    It seemed like such a good idea.

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  4. I think this is intended for people with chickens who live in the city. Those on the farm couldn't care less but in town you need to show off how much you love your pets. The new status symbol. Or, maybe try and hide the fact they are chickens. I'm pretty sure it's legal as long as there isn't a rooster.

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    1. lots of cities will let you keep chickens these days, but you're right - no roosters. We can have up to 6 hens in the city I live in as long as an inspector can approve your chicken coop beforehand. That said - I can't imagine, even if I was super rich, that I would put a ton of care into the aesthetics of a building made to get continually pooped on. New coat of paint? sure. But that's about my limit.

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    2. Probably it's aimed at stars who are doing the whole "Hobby Farm" thing and think nothing of dropping a hundred grand on something like this.

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  5. geeeeeeeeeeez... just thinking of what else i could spend a hundred g's on. take care, slu

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    1. It is ridiculous, isn't it! I'm pretty sure I could find something better to spend it on too. Maybe that diamond studded ivory back scratcher I've been hankering for.

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    2. Even your back scratcher has been superseded now you have Miss Pinky in your life.

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  6. Will they guarantee delivery by Christmas? My chickens are already running through my house looking for their presents--& they didn't even get ME anything last year!!

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  7. Your kitty had her own couch? How do I register to become adopted by you?

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    1. LOL! It's not like she has her own room or anything ... that's the cockatiel.

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  8. I think that's God's way of telling you you have too damn much money. ;)

    S

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    1. Or maybe the way to make sure you don't keep all that money :P

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  9. Conspicuous consumption at its finest. Why donate funds to a reasonable cause when you can ensure chickens live in proper aesthetics they don't appreciate?
    This gives a bad name to my new line of dog auto-massagers. So what if my invention gives a red-rocket-reach-around? This is the luxury good pets deserve!

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  10. The Mister and I are actually in the midst of preparing to keep our own backyard chickens. It's a lot of little things to check off the list, but nothing super expensive by any means. All that said, if someone wanted to take the building of a coop off that list as a Christmas present, I wouldn't turn down a 100-grand coop. ...Or realistically I would take the 100 grand coop and sell it so that I could just continue buying organic eggs without having to go pluck them from beneath a feathered butt.

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    1. LOL! Good point. I wonder how much you'd be able to flog it off for on Ebay.

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  11. A luxury coop - to fill with poop...? Why you'd have to be looped!

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    1. It does seem a bit extreme, $100K for a place for chickens to crap.

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  12. Wow, your cat sounds very spoiled. FYI, from experience, don't ever let your cat catch you looking at other cats on the internet. That almost never goes well.

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  13. If someone gave us a coop like that, our family would move in and let the chickens have the house.

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    1. I'm pretty sure it's nicer than my fibro shack, you might be onto something!

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  14. It's funny how we humans think animals really care about high quality bedding. I can spend $50 on a fluffy silk-lined cat bed for my cat... and she'll end up sleeping in the cardboard box it came in.

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    1. I bought Gypsy the Feline Dictator a rather expensive scratching post, but she won't even look at it and insists on using the backs of my wicker dining chairs.

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  15. Here I was thinking I'd seen it all.... wtf?!?! lols

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    1. I guess even rich people want free range, organic googie eggs for their breakfast. I just think $100K is a bit extreme. What next, diamond studded water dishes?

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  16. The French were and are all too fond of chopping many things off.
    Good job I have an inexhaustible supply of daily duck eggs. Pity I don't like them.

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    1. Perhaps you can barter them for hens eggs! Surely one duck egg is worth two hens eggs.

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  17. Ohh, that will go nicely with the half-million dollar Goat Taj Mahal I have planned to sell.

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  18. I don't know if Nieman Marcus knows this about chickens... But... They like to poop on things... A lot...

    Hugs!

    Valerie

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  19. Surely chickens of a class worthy of this accommodation will use the gold plated loo that comes as part of the set up?

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