humans & chickens

Two families in Louisiana in the 1960s had chickens. One family had half a dozen colorful hens and a rooster or two.  Though the yard was not fenced, the chickens stayed in the yard during the day, pecking among the grasses with their beaks for food - I assumed bugs and seeds and sometimes little snakes. Their droppings went straight to the ground (as with most animals living on land). The grasses were thick and healthy; the droppings were spread out enough they were not noticed. There was a coop where the chickens stayed at night. The other family 
had a clever cage of chicken wire in a barn with a compartment for each hen and access to chicken feed and a common water trough. The chicken wire floors sloped a bit, and when the hen laid an egg, it rolled out of the compartment to a rim out side the compartments where they could be easily gathered by a family member. The droppings fell through the wire onto a wood surface with a drain; the surface was regularly hosed clean. There were only hens, about a dozen domestic, solid whites, no roosters. The chickens remained in the compartments in the barn at all times.

These contrasts in how humans and other life species relate to each other come to mind often - and I go back to my childhood for insight about how we coexist. Nature and science go hand in hand sometimes; sometimes nature and science are at odds with one another.