People come up to me and ask, \u201cRandy, should we have a baby or get an animal?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ve raised three human beings and a variety of other species, so am something of an expert. \u00a0Kids or pets?\u00a0 Either can bring you joy and satisfaction.\u00a0 A lot of inanimate objects can for a lot less work.\u00a0 But we\u2019re going to ignore that here.<\/p>\n
At various times, we\u2019ve had cats, dogs, horses, chickens, ducks, geese, a hamster, a guinea pig, a gerbil, a gecko, pot bellied pigs, pygmy goats, a hedgehog, two girls, and a boy.\u00a0 Currently, we are down to a cat, two geese, and an occasional grandkid.\u00a0 We think coyotes got some of them.\u00a0 The animals, I mean, not the kids.<\/p>\n
Right up front, you should know children are going to cost more.\u00a0 You can run a budget on an animal quickly: feed, vet bills, pet carrier.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to give you some final numbers on what a child costs.\u00a0 We\u2019re still working on that.<\/p>\n
A clear advantage to a pet is that you can return it if it doesn\u2019t work out.\u00a0 Or give them away on Craigslist.\u00a0 Once you bring that baby home, you own it.\u00a0 Sure, there is a short amount of fun that goes into making a baby.\u00a0 But that\u2019s about twenty minutes.\u00a0 Twenty minutes of fun in proportion to eighteen years of commitment is a ratio of 20 to 9,460,000.\u00a0 Think about it.<\/p>\n
Since kids and pets are in fact animate objects, you\u2019re going to have to feed them.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier to feed animals.\u00a0 Steve\u2019s Feed (now Springfield Creamery Co-op) always had what we needed: cat food, dog food, horse feed, chicken feed, etc.\u00a0 Steve had something in the warehouse to feed anything that Noah had on the boat.\u00a0 Okay, he did have to special order in penguin feed that one time.<\/p>\n
Children are more complicated, nutritionally speaking.\u00a0 They need variety.\u00a0 You can\u2019t just reach for a bag of Purina Natural Select Human Food every morning.\u00a0 Plus, they can be fussy.\u00a0 Animals aren\u2019t fussy. \u00a0The gecko was excited whenever a mealworm showed up in his tank. \u00a0He didn\u2019t look at us and say, \u201cMealworms? \u00a0Again?\u201d<\/p>\n
Animals don\u2019t badger you for junk food either.\u00a0 Kids will spend November eating Halloween candy and December eating Christmas candy if you let them.\u00a0 So you have to hide the candy. \u00a0Or at least eat all the good stuff.\u00a0 For sure the Snickers and Kit Kats.<\/p>\n
Children and pets both need to be vaccinated.\u00a0 Neither likes it especially, but veterinarians are gentler than doctors.\u00a0 An advantage cats and dogs have over children is there are no knuckleheads on YouTube telling you that vaccinations cause afflictions like liberal thought and chronic socialism.\u00a0 The good news is kids don\u2019t get distemper, whatever that is.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they do get every cold and flu bug going through daycare and bring it home to pass to you.<\/p>\n
Another common trait that children and pets share are certain bodily functions.\u00a0 These are commonly referred to as p** and p**p.\u00a0 (I checked the Journal Stylebook, and the use of p** and p**p is discouraged.\u00a0 But I think you get my drift.)<\/p>\n
There is no way to sugar coat two or three years of diapers.\u00a0 Here\u2019s where having a good and useful spouse can make all the difference.\u00a0 Still, there will come a time when child is particularly reeksome, and you will look at your spouse and realize both of you just now thought of some pressing task that can\u2019t be put off.\u00a0 Marriages are made or broken in just such moments as these.<\/p>\n
Cats have litter boxes which aren\u2019t exactly pleasant.\u00a0 Dogs can be trained to go outside.\u00a0 You might be tempted to do that with your toddler.\u00a0 House-breaking a kid would save on diapers for sure.\u00a0 But you\u2019d still have to pick up after them with a p**p scoop.\u00a0 (Or should it be p**p sc**p?)\u00a0 Hamsters, horses, chickens, etc. only need to be mucked out every so often.\u00a0 You can wait till you\u2019re in the proper mood for that duty.<\/p>\n
At some point, a child will be marched off to school to learn things like algebra and all the stuff you knew once but forgot.\u00a0 Depending on how long your kid stretches out this school-thing, it can be quite costly.\u00a0 Here, animals have a distinct advantage.\u00a0 They have instincts.\u00a0 There will be times when your kid is a teenager, you\u2019re going to wish he had some of those.\u00a0 Or even the brains that God gave an earthworm.<\/p>\n
There is really nothing comparable to the human teen years in the animal world.\u00a0 Oh, there are days you might wonder why your hamster did something stupid like getting his food dish stuck in the wheel.\u00a0 Teenagers do stupid stuff every day.\u00a0 Animals also don\u2019t talk back to you while they roll their eyes.\u00a0 Geckos roll their eyes to moisten them, but they mean no malice.\u00a0 And they won\u2019t follow an eye-roll with \u201cDA-AD!\u201d<\/p>\n
You won\u2019t have to teach your pet how to drive a car.\u00a0 That could add years to your life in reduced stress.\u00a0 An animal is not going to start bugging you to get them a cell phone when they\u2019re eight years old.\u00a0 You aren\u2019t going to have to listen to a whiny gerbil say, \u201cI\u2019m the only gerbil in my grade without a phone!\u201d<\/p>\n
As I said, we have a grandkid now, and that is fun.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an advantage for having children vs. getting a pet: a grandkid might even look a little like you.\u00a0 If your guinea pig looks like you, that\u2019s not a good sign.\u00a0 It probably means you should get a haircut or drop a few pounds.<\/p>\n
In an attempt to answer once and for all the important question of whether it is better to have a child or get an animal, I have graphed out all the positives and negatives of each option.\u00a0 You can see that at our website babyorpet-smackdown.com.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A comprehensive consideration of all the factors leads to a clear conclusion: get chickens.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always loved chickens and am not surprised to see them come out on top.<\/p>\n
That said, a lot of you are going to have a baby anyway.\u00a0 And once you get past the drool and spit-up and diapers, they can be highly entertaining.\u00a0 One point heavily in the favor of having a child is snuggling with them before bedtime while reading a book.\u00a0 You can sort of do this with a dog.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not something I\u2019d even try with a chicken.<\/p>\n
A final point in favor of children is they might visit you when you\u2019re old and in the nursing home.\u00a0 If your chicken comes to see you, staff might not let them in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People come up to me and ask, \u201cRandy, should we have a baby or get an animal?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ve raised three human beings and a variety of other species, so am something of an expert. \u00a0Kids or pets?\u00a0 Either can bring you joy and satisfaction.\u00a0 A lot of inanimate objects can for a lot less work.\u00a0 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 16:15:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113268,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113267\/revisions\/113268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}