Managing a herd of Chickens
Not long ago, a subscriber to the, now defunct, Utah DWR forum made the comment that the DWR could not manage a herd of chickens. I wondered if they could manage a herd of sheep. Managing sheep isn’t all that different from managing mule deer ( I have seen both some pretty wild sheep and some pretty tame mule deer ). Deer and sheep have quite a bit in common. They eat about the same stuff. They stress out when encountering unfamiliar humans and predators. They have about the same number of young over about the same life span. One male can cover about the same number of females. And, so on.
I don’t know which is easier – managing a herd of sheep or a herd of chickens. Chickens are pretty stupid. But, what I do know is that there are folks who have successfully managed both for quite a few years. So what is the matter with our wildlife agencies? Could they manage a herd of anything? For one thing, most of them don’t view it as part of their job to manage a herd of anything. For another, they have such a educational bias, that they can’t see the forest for the trees.
If you and I had a herd of sheep, and our joint livlihoods depended on the management of that herd, and we turned our herd over to one of the state agencies – wouldn’t we go belly up? Why is that? The agencies are unwilling ( once upon a time they may have been willing ) to do what it takes to manage a herd. If a herd can manage itself, then fine, but the agencies will not manage a herd. Their management of wild chickens (grouse/quail), is as good an example of poor herd management as is their management of mule deer.
If we employed a good sheep herder to manage our herd of sheep, we would have a hard time convincing him that allowing the sheep to be killed by predators would have no impact on the herd. Yet, that is exactly what the agencies believe. The agencies have the crazy notion that if the lions and coyotes don’t kill the deer something else will, and therefore, the lions and coyotes are having no impact.
The owner of a herd of sheep “saves” his surplus sheep for slaugter and for human consumption. He is unwilling to give them to predators. He realizes that sheep are capable of producing an annual surplus and he wants to use that surplus profitably. A concept known as maximum sustainable yield, is a fundamental principle once studied and used by wildlife biologists. Basically, this concept is to maximize your surplus while maintaining your base. Our agencies have strayed about as far from this principle as they can get, but they are still trying to get farther from it than they already are. They are moving steadily toward zero yield.
Abandonment of the principle of “maximum sustainable yield” is a primary reason why modern wildlife agencies cannot ( or will not ) manage a herd of sheep, deer, or chickens. Throw in the lack of interest or motivation, and you’ve got what you’ve got.
