I am a member of a meet up group where there are a lot of people like you are describing. In general I do not give the tiniest hoot what they do with their chickens, but recently there was a whole long thread about a hen that had ascites and the owner took it to the vet to be drained, hand fed foods, added all kinds of junk to the food and water, and all the time I was biting my tongue not to scream "Just put that poor bird out of her misery!!!" The people who were supporting the torture of a dying bird were the same people who got all snippy with me and others about DIY chicken butchering. People grabbing their pearls in shock over my giving the chickens I eat a good life right up until the day they day, but supporting prolonging the miserable death of a terminally ill hen stuns me.
I must admit, I WAS one of those people ya'll are talking about until my hen started laying internally... I started researching about it, & read on how to drain their abdomen. The story ended the same, pretty soon the draining became no longer effective & chicken succumbed to the illness. So after reading others' stories and searching for OTs' advice on chicken keeping, it just didn't make sense to prolong the inevitable. & taking care of an injured or sick bird takes a lot of time away from other things, especially if you have little ones that need attention. I'm so thankful for BYC, because if I didn't read through these forums for advice she probably would still be suffering because I "didn't know what to do" (when really, they KNOW they're just in DENIAL). Yes, it was very hard to let go, but it was in the hen's best interest. The other one (the rooster) was aggressive, & according to my husband, loud and annoying (DUH it's a rooster!) he just wanted to bury him, I said "NO WAY! You're going to throw away money invested in this bird!" Which is why I'm here, because this thread has prepared me to take this next step.