How important is an odor?

[stevej37]

I have lived in both a large city and a very rural farm area.
It takes some getting used to....but I much prefer the rural life.

[Steve Carlton]

[stevej37]

Plus...we have these near-by.
Anaerobic Digesters.

[masraum]

Living in a rural setting, smells that I've noticed, fire/smoke, skunk, very occasionally cow/cow patty.

Something else that I notice when we mow and things are growing is some really nice herbal scents. We have something that grows on our land that smells really good when you mow. I have no idea what it is. We also have a few spots with a bunch of wild onion/garlic.

[masraum]

I have a friend that used to live in Oxnard Cali. Apparently there was a chicken farm that she could smell that wasn't very pleasant.

When we lived near downtown Houston, I used to drive, cycle, walk past this bridge (pretty much daily) and during the summer when the wind was right, you smelled the guano from the ~250,000 bats.
https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/bats/bat-watching-sites/waugh-drive-bridge.phtml

[thingmon]

SE Houston... Could be very important. We have various chemicals, depending on wind direction. Some pretty serious ones...

Generally, though it really isn't bad considering the amount of them that are handled, processed, manufactured, etc... around here.

Air pollution regs are pretty strict. And TCEQ uses FLIR cameras on various aircraft to detect leaks... Pretty interesting tech.

[john70t]

I've heard it's closely tied to memory recollection.
If you kennel a dog, leave a stinky t-shirt to calm them.
And of course getting close to a potential partner is one way to determine compatibility. Entire flower industries are based on it.

Computer mnfr's have made odor machines to increase immersion but that is still a long way off to do right.

[TimT]

I walked out of a Marriott hotel this morning in Brunswick , NJ... and smelled skunk...

Where I was was not really a rural area

Three guys had sparked up a blunt near the bottom of exit of the hotel..

[stevej37]

^^^ I thought you were going to say it was from the hotel using a cleaning product.

I've been in stores and hotels that have over-used lysol-like cleaning products in the entries and it makes me nauseous.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by masraum

I have a friend that used to live in Oxnard Cali. Apparently there was a chicken farm that she could smell that wasn't very pleasant.

There is no Oxnard in Cali.

Cali, city, capital of Valle del Cauca departamento, western Colombia. It lies on both sides of the Cali River at an elevation of 3,327 feet (1,014 metres), in the subtropical intermontane Cauca Valley.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

I get rural odor. Specifically- chicken farms.
I also get urban odors

For urban odors, in a good way, sometimes the smell of various foods wafting through the streets. I can taste the bacon cooking at a nearby restaurant every day.

Urban odors are complemented by urban sounds. A reverse beep goes off on a garbage truck.

Likewise rotting food from "Dempster Dumpsters" can be a little challenging.

I'll focus on the fresh bacon!

[gwmac]

Grandma lived accross the street from an egg farm, smell wasnt that bad but the flies were!
A pig farm on the other hand, thats tuff!!

[stevej37]

The egg farms now are huge and carefully controlled. (around here anyways)
I drove past Herbrucks Eggs today on the way back from the airport. This egg farm is supposed to be the largest in the mid-west with over 10 million laying hens.

There was no noticeable smell.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Oh gawd! Last time I went in one, it was ammonia excrement and random dead chicken smell that no amount of side wall mounted industrial fans could eradicate.

[Tobra]

Smell tickles the primitive part of your brain, stirs memories

Uncle Jack would not eat chicken cooked over a fire with its skin. He thought it looked and smelled too much like what a burned body did, memories from when he was a lad. I can see how that might affect a teenager. The charred skin and fat that you get over an open flame is about the best way to fix chicken, if you ask me. Fortunately, USN generally cooks with steam heat, so it did not come up much.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Another one that gets me a milking refinery. A cousin had one. I went in on an early morning tour in the heat of summer. Something about the warm fresh milk and cowshi*** in a hot high humidity environment hit me the wrong way at 4:30 in the A.M. .

[stevej37]

Today's chicken laying farms are very careful with bio-security. Nobody, other than suited and cleaned workers can enter the coops.
Any truck that delivers feed for the barns must be scrubbed down before driving on the property.
With millions of hens packed in together..one wrong germ from a diff farm can wipe them out.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Originally Posted by stevej37

Today's chicken laying farms are very careful with bio-security. Nobody, other than suited and cleaned workers can enter the coops.
Any truck that delivers feed for the barns must be scrubbed down before driving on the property.
With millions of hens packed in together..one wrong germ from a diff farm can wipe them out.

Interesting. My memories were 40+ years ago. And like smells do- linger!

[ramonesfreak]

On 9/11 at about 8:30 am I went into a deli to order an egg and cheese on a roll and I recall as I walked through the door thinking how the place smelled exactly like my elementary school cafeteria that I hadn’t thought about in 25 years. Now when I think of 9/11 the first thing I think about is that smell and my elementary school cafeteria. Then for months after, all I could smell around the city was this chemical electrical burning smell lingering….occasionally when I’m driving around I’ll smell that smell from who knows where and it brings me right back there.

[stevej37]

The older chicken farms had cages of laying hens suspended from the roof of the building. The manure would drop into a conveyor for disposal.

The trouble with that set-up was when a thunderstorm would come and all the hens would jump at the same time and when landing would take all the cages down.

I was in on a few rescue jobs when this happened. Crawl around the broken cages and pull the hens out and place them on a loading belt into a truck. From there they were destined for a soup can.

A couple hours of this and the chicken ***** was in your skin and clothes....fun times.