Sawankhalok

This was a tough photo for me to take…

These are chicks and ducklings that this man was selling. I think they were being sold as pets. But the hard part was the fact that their wings were crudely clipped and some of the chicks were dyed different colors. Which means that they were probably held underwater in toxic dye, drowning…

Now, I am not the strictest vegetarian here in Thailand because I believe that in learning about other cultures that one must try to immerse as much as possible, which includes food, traditions, language, etc… But this was a hard one for me to accept and walk away from. I wanted to buy all the chicks and free them! But they were too young to be set free and would’ve died without their mothers.

So in my attempt to be anthropological, I swallowed my tender heart, took a photo, and walked away.

UPDATE: I found out later that they do not dunk the newly hatched chicks into dye, instead they inject dye into the egg’s embryo so that they are dyed upon hatching… This can kill the chick before it has hatched if the injection or the dye goes into the wrong part of the embryo.