STS and chickens

Last night I had one of my recurring dreams. I discovered a barn full of chicks and chickens that were being terribly neglected: many of the chicks were dying or dead, and the chickens' feathers were matted and torn. Broken or frozen eggs lay buried in mounds of long-neglected bedding straw.

I spent a long time walking around the barn, gathering up the viable eggs, feeding the chickens that were still alive, and collecting the chicks and chickens that had died.

As I said, this is a recurring dream.  I have had it during the years I was working on Poultry Science, Chicken Culture, and I have usually understood it as a signal that I was neglecting my writing, or another message from deep in my own unconscious (and like all such messages, overdetermined.)

What happens if I follow my own advice, though, and consider that dream as an augury giving me early warning of the endangered state of interdisciplinary programs like our own STS program.  I've learned through keeping chickens that they do indeed come home to roost.  And yet what if the roost itself, and the building that shelters it and the chickens roosting there, have been abandoned?