I see what you did there.
I have a friend whose family raised their own bed cattle. Yeah, they labeled their beef with the name of the animal it was from. He said he could taste the difference.
Did you do that deliberately?
Back on topic, things might have been different Back In The Day, when nearly everyone needed to be involved in food production, and so it was essential to ingrain children with the proper mindset to be able to raise animals for slaughter. Nowadays, though, only a tiny fraction of the population needs to be farmers. This girl developed an emotional connection with the animal that she was supposed to be preparing for slaughter… OK, so maybe that means she’s unsuited to be a farmer. And so she doesn’t become a farmer, and that’s no problem, because we’ll have all the farmers we need, with or without her. Let her (or more accurately, her mom) pay for the goat, keep the girl from getting involved in any more 4H activities, because that’s clearly not for her, and move on.
She could be a vegetable farmer, or a wool farmer, even. She might even be able to farm chickens or rabbits for meat.
I see no good at all in killing her pet goat.
How does the experience of other people apply to the girl in question? Is she not living in the real world?
The horror of the situation is the inflexibility of the adults in charge.
Nevermind. It was covered.
DesertWife said she had an uncle that raised cows and that she’d had more than one named after her. I innocently thought they were dairy cows so they’d have at least a few years on this mortal coil but she said no, they were Black Angus.
“But them’s eatin’ cows!”
“They sure were.”
I don’t know if she got any packages with her name on it.
I couldn’t not have done it even if I wanted to. Does that count as deliberately?
The post I was responding to was about the general practices of 4-H fostering food animals, and so was my post. I agree that this case was a clusterfuck.
Probably correct. So does that make it a general 4-H issue, or a problem with the participants in this particular case? It sounded to me that @ASL_v2.0 was arguing that no child should ever be in the situation of raising an animal for food, because a significant number of them will come to regard the animal as a pet and suffer emotional anguish as a result. If I mis-read that, I withdraw my comment.
Do tell. Kaylasmom’s first guide dog’s puppy raisers were very attached to Misty Dawn, and stayed in contact and came to visit so often, kaylasmom had to ask her to ease back on the visits. Her second dog’s puppy raiser was a teenaged boy who was so heartbroken about “losing” Cassidy that he didn’t even want to meet kaylasmom at the graduation ceremony.
And her third dog only lasted a few years in harness before she had to be retired back to her puppy raiser (who had come around monthly, which I’m sure had nothing to do with Glory’s training not sticking).
She provided a quote on the police actions:
No child should ever be in the position of raising an animal for food for the first time, without having the opportunity to back out of the arrangement while sparing the animal in exchange for restitution. It was irresponsible at best (in the case of the mother) and cruel at worst (in the case of the 4-H people who insisted on following through) to put a child in this position without accounting for the possibility that the child might realize that raising an animal for slaughter is not something she can bring herself to do.
Is it common that a judge can resolve a situation like this without charges being filed, evidence collected, etc.? If it was a stereo, could the judge’s order allow the sheriff’s to search Bob’s house and, if they find it, return it directly to Alice? It doesn’t need to be entered as evidence awaiting a court date?
I’ve heard that called a failed foster, which is usually considered a success.
Not if the car belongs to someone else.
I should have tempered my response to just the 4H group involved and not the entire organization which I would imagine is a good group of people doing good things.
If her parents decided she didn’t need that experience (maybe she’d try in a future year, maybe farming isn’t for her) it’s pretty fucked up for the 4H guy to decide “nah, I know better”.
Since it’s been awhile since this was attributed correctly: it was the (female) head of the county fair who seems to have made the decision not to allow the goat to be purchased by the family, a decision in which 4-H was not, apparently, involved. While I was never involved in 4-H myself (I was allergic to everything as a child), they have been getting a fair amount of undeserved stick in this thread.
Assuming it was a bid process and the winner accepted payment from the parents then it’s an additional business transaction beyond the original event.
A learning experience.