BYC and BYH mentioned in Foxfire Article

[Bear Foot Farm]

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/...ooks_are_modern_diyers_just_play_acting_.html

on the online forum [/B]BackYardHerds.com. The author began by pinning the rabbit’s neck under the handle of a broom, trying to hold its body steady as it thrashed. Then she grabbed its hind legs and jerked upward to snap the vertebra and sever the carotid artery.

It didn’t work. “When I picked him back up he was breathing funny and obviously still alive,” she wrote. So she started bashing the rabbit in the back of the neck with a hammer. The rabbit clung to life. Finally the writer called her husband, who took up the hammer and killed the rabbit.

The experience left her deeply shaken. “For 2 months I have been very matter-of-fact about the idea of these rabbits being a food-source. I have even enjoyed the shocked looks on the faces of friends and family when I tell them I will be doing the slaughtering,” she wrote. “But the idea that he may have suffered by my naive, newbie hand ... that makes me want to cry.”

The trauma of the first kill echoes around BackYardHerds and its sister site for chicken-keepers, BackyardChickens.com. Squeamish would-be chicken dispatchers suggest administering herbal muscle relaxants, bonking the chicken on the head with a board, gassing the chicken with CO2, covering its head with a sock to avoid eye contact, or hiring someone off Craigslist to kill it for you. Some of those who succeed are left sickened. “Going to go drink some wine until their eyes stop haunting me,” wrote one poster immediately after the slaughter.

These unsettled DIYers are operating in a particularly weird moral environment, caught between ideal and reality. On the one hand, there’s the locavore lust for authenticity that promises that slaughtering your own food will be an adventure in self-discovery. On the other hand, we have developed a complex ethical and emotional connection with animals that makes us really uncomfortable with their pain, even if we tell ourselves it’s less than if the animal had spent its life in a factory farm.

 

[Kaitie09]

This article makes it seem like we are all stupid. The forum mention is just one of thousands, and most of the replies there are against the C02, and other methods. They forgot to mention the thousands of forum posts that give step by steps to humanely slaughter and animal. I've raised meat chickens, and although I did feel bad for them, I was happy to know they had a good life. The first one we slaughtered may have suffered a little, but we took that as collateral damage, and the rest did not suffer at all.

I hate how articles take the bad, and make it seem like we are all the same.

 

[mulewagon]

Well yeah, people do have trouble doing things the first time

What a revelation! Wow, and people raised on farms knew more about farming than people who weren't. Who would have thought?

 

[kstaven]

I hate how articles take the bad, and make it seem like we are all the same.

And it is our own fault as a society that this has become the norm and the way many businesses gain readership. Sensationalism and stereotypes sell better than truth. Drives me crazy but it is all too true.

 

[SillyChicken]

I don't think people on here are doing it just for Nostalgia. Some people can be a bit over the top when it comes to their birds, but that's their prerogative and I certainly wouldn't chastise them for it.

There are certainly benefits in growing your own meat and veggies for both health and economic reasons. I think people on here are smart enough to realize that and I don't think this is just a passing fad. This came across to me like the author is a total farm snob.

Lets face it, unless you're a totally heartless person without a conscience, killing any animal is not easy. Especially, if you never have before. For some people who grew up with it, like I did, killing properly is easier, because I was raised that way. But, I still feel remorse for the animals loss. I always have a moment of silence after I kill a deer or rabbit. But for someone who wasn't raised with it... it's not that easy, and unfortunately takes practice and mistakes to get it right, or as close to right as killing something can be.

I think they were a little harsh toward the members here.