I never was a Future Farmer. But I spent many summers on my grandparents’ farm. When it was time for a chicken dinner, we went out to the chicken coop and got a chicken. Live at first. Not so live later.
But I never got into a contest to see how many chickens I could dispatch in a day.
Anyway, I think part of my gentle objection to the hunt in the article is that I was always fond of cats. And I saw the great value of feral cats on a farm. There were rats in the barn, and rats in the corn bid. But not so many. The cats took care of that.
Rat terriers will kill far more rats than cats do.
They also don’t wind up ad a Toxoplasma Gondii vector.
“And I saw the great value of feral cats on a farm.”
You’re confusing barn cats with feral cats. Barn cats keep our barns relatively free of mice.
In short we have three categories of cats around here:
1. House cats which are pets. We’ve had a few over the years. They do not go outside.
2. Barn cats which are NOT pets. But they have the sense to leave the chickens, baby chicks, and other birds alone. Otherwise they get classed as feral and their days here become few.
3. Feral cats or abandoned cats. They show up and fight with our barn cats, get shot, and then get fed to our hogs being recycled into bacon.