Your Chick-Hatching Event

From: Karen Davis
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2023 12:27 PM
To: dfausnaugh@oberlinlibrary.org
Subject: Your Chick-Hatching Event

June 8, 2023

Attention: David Fausnaugh, Director

Oberlin Public Library

Oberlin, Ohio

Via Email: dfausnaugh@oberlinlibrary.org

Dear Mr. Fausnaugh:

I am writing to request that you choose not to repeat your chick-hatching event in 2024. This type of event, while it might briefly bring visitors to the library, does not teach good lessons. As you experienced in 2022 and again this year, the number of chicks hatched with deformities or who die in the shell is high, and the inability to find good homes for the male birds means that you are bringing defenseless, motherless beings into a world in which they suffer and die for a mere “15 minutes” of library “fame.” Treating living creatures this way is wrong.

The rinky-dink little white plastic incubator in which the embryos developed, followed by a comfortless metal cage, is not only a travesty of a mother hen’s care; the incubator isn’t even close to an agribusiness incubator as a mechanism for hatching viable chicks.

We understand that this botched and depressing enterprise was an attempt to interest people in visiting the library and supporting it, but there are many ways to engage people without making chickens or any animal suffer deformity, pain, and slaughter for a few passive glances.

Most adults, and most likely you yourself, know little or nothing about chickens beyond a few industry-sponsored clichés, whereas I have been giving a home to abandoned, abused, and neglected chickens of all ages and kinds since 1985 through our chicken sanctuary in rural Virginia. Like all sanctuaries, we receive emails and phone calls from backyard chicken-keepers, school teachers and others who thought hatching chicks mechanically would be a lark, only to discover what your library has discovered. So let this be a learning experience, please.

The project, even if well-intended, is unkind, inhumane, and utterly needless. I respectfully urge you not to repeat it. There is enough misery in the world already without adding more.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to good news.

Sincerely,

Karen Davis, PhD, President

United Poultry Concerns

PO Box 150

Machipongo, VA 23405

Tel: 757-678-7875

Email: Karen@upc-online.org

Website: https://www.upc-online.org

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Help Us Shut Down Oberlin Public Library's CRUEL Chick Hatching Events!