From: Robyn Stott <rodstott@a...>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 21:48:19 +1000
Subject: Re: [GZG] [SPAM] Re: Shipping sheep [TOBECLASSIFIED] [SEC=PERSONAL]
From: "Roger Burton West" <roger@firedrake.org> > On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 03:53:31PM +1000, Robyn Stott wrote: The idea would be to ship chickens to a nearby colony then import the eggs to various stations.... Keeping chickens on deep space stations may not be practical. After all, you would need them in a spinner station to have gravity (to control where they lay eggs, and to reduce the mess, after all chickens are messy. Also you would need to keep then like battery hens (space is at a premium) - which animal liberation activists would oppose. Chickens smell, and could overload elements of the ships environmental systems, and besides, who would be poor crewman assigned to clean out the cages. Having chickens to get eggs may be a nice idea, but it may not be practical. It would be easier to stick to hydroponics, or vat grown protien. One option for fresh meat (and not eggs) on stations was mentioned in book Etan of Athos by Louis Bjold McMasters. In it she mentioned the space stations air recycling used algae tanks. To control the algae tanks they bred newts which ate the algae keeping it under control. When the newts started getting to big, or to many, they would cull the newts for food, reestablising the algae newt balance. Of course Bio-control was very big on Kine Station and could be worse than the police.