THE Urban cowboy
Usual duration 1-2 years....(or less)
They will annoy the neighbors and because they didn't bother to read the rules ( or think the rules are made for other people)
will fight the City hall, and complain bitterly when they have to "re-home" their chickens.
THE KEEner
3-5 years,
Just discovered poultry, pick the most obscure and hard to find breeds, scour the country side, buy and sell indiscriminately, get some internet knowledge gathered accidentally and then the enthusiasm expires usually at the same time as the exotic stock that by now succumbed to some equally exotic disease.
THE LIFer
The KEEner sometimes evolves in to a LIFEr, if along the way she/he purchases a couple of books and manages the initial enthusiasm long enough to make some Long Term decisions and develops a true fondness for 2 or 3 breeds.
LIFer may last 10-15 years or until life interferes one way or another.
Sometimes the few very special LIFers will develop in to that rare kind of species,
THE TRUE FANCIER
THEY are the life long breeders who make it possible for others to enter the hobby, because they keep the breeds going over the long term and they become Judges and mentor the multitudes in hope that one day they too will make a transition from one stage to the next.
Without them there would no hobby and the Heritage breeds would have disappeared long time ago.
We are all indebted to them.
Please note this is a work of fiction, so any resemblance to you personally is purely fictional.
Then there is DH and me! The REE-tirEEs (or maybe we are late LIFers) who now have a small farm to do the DIY thing on a larger scale than we could in the city. Because when we were first married, we couldn't afford the property needed. And because we both had jobs in the city, we couldn't just pack up and move.
