July 22nd, 2017
Free range vs Caged?
When we were in the black Hmong hilltribe village a few days ago, one thing we noticed was all the animals roaming free. Chickens, dogs, ducks, water buffalo, everything. Dong explained a couple things to me about this. First, That they allow all their animals to roam free because they always come home for food. No kidding? Even chicks know their home and will return every night no matter how far they strayed. Secondly and mostly amazing to me is that the KNOW all their animals by how they look. So if a water buffalo or a rooster is in the wrong place, they know by looking at it, it isn’t theirs and they don’t feed it. They can tell the difference between two chickens, like we can tell our dogs and cats apart. This is amazing to me. I think all cows and chickens look alike.
So as we are wandering into the neighboring village to Dong’s we see rows of chickens in cages with grated bases and propped over the drainage canal.
Seems like a very opposed philosophy to what I just observed and was told. I ask Dong about this and she says “Those are Vietnamese chickens brought here by Vietnamese people for sale to kill for food.” She seemed to accept it, but did say it was not how the hilltribes treat their animals. So maybe they use the caged animals to kill and sell to tourists, but keep the free range animals to use for their own consumption? Not sure. Clearly I should have asked more questions, but I was just surprised to see the difference.
