Anyone get attached?

[Member 671655]

Compassion, empathy and care need not be at odds with homesteading. The book animals make us human helped me go deeper on this subject. Just because we rely on something for food doesn’t mean we can’t care and connect with it while it’s alive. CX live fast and die young and ironically are some of the sweetest most zen creatures. I do grow attached to them. I’ve been vegan as well as gone through phases of eating mostly meat… I don’t think eating meat makes you a murderer, especially if you grow it yourself and take care in the process. In eastern medicine it’s said the spirit or shen radiates from the eyes, CX have amazing eyes. I’ve raised hundreds of CX and enjoy spending time with them, there’s something about their presence that you can sense from their gaze, it’s very peaceful. If you give them a chance they will get comfortable with you and want to “hang out” and chill. Their biology on the other hand is something like 10 x that of a typical bird and if you don’t harvest them them young, things go south, they will suffer… it feels like a mercy killing honestly. Sure, you can extend their life by starving them, but that’s trading one suffering for another. It took a while for me to reconcile all this. They are the most efficient converter of grain to meat. They essentially have the smallest most efficient biological footprint environmentally in terms of a source of meat, 2.5 lbs of grain to a pound of meat vs cattle which are more like 18 lbs of grain to a pound of meat. Once you get the hang of how to raise and cull them humanely, they are pretty darn close to the perfect livestock, IMHO. I think it’s possible to allow oneself to get attached, up to a point, while keeping in mind the time limit of their rapid biological clock.

I totally understand. Teaching my kids this too, my fifteen year old is a butcher in training now and he has the most tender of hearts.