Geez...I know I might have to cull someday and meant to ask about methods. I'm a big believer in the last loving act we have to do as caretakers to our loving companions...I've had dogs for the last 13 years as constant company. Pugs, Chihuahuas, and now a rat terrier mix puppy. I owe them a last loving act. I'm obligated. I'll have a vet do it though.
All my chicks so far have been raised by the hens and I've had some losses...but now I have 26 eggs in the incubator. The others were the hen's responsibility but these are mine. And I might have to cull an injured grown chicken some day. I know they are meat, but I'm not gonna be able to just take a hatchet to them.
I have pairs of big heavy Gingher scissors sharp as razor blades, but I'm pretty sure I'd not be able to decapitate a chick. I just don't have it in me.
I thought about the freezer, but reading this today that doesn't sound as kind as the just slowly and easily dying as I thought.
I guess I could make some box contraption to hook to my Blazer's exhaust...how long does that take? How long in the box? It is some sort of a nightmare thought that I'd half kill one, and it would recover, and I'd have to rekill it. Ever read The Plague Dogs?
It would probably be more merciful to just put it in a zip lock freezer bag, wrap that in a towel, tuck it under the wheel, and run over it. I might be able to do that.
Where I live you can buy all the syringes and needles you want at the Farmer's Co-op. I might be able to do that... But what do I put in it? I'm not into putting various things into one and trying to see if they work. Plague Dogs again.
When I was a teenager...like fifty years ago...my Dad used to go to the drug store and buy ether by the two pound can. He used it to start heavy equipment in the cold CT winters...he was an excavating contractor. We had to use Dial shampoo because it came in perfect orange squirt bottles that he'd put the ether in to squirt in carburetors. The stuff is unbelieveley flammable/explosive. So I doubt it is for sale at drug stores anymore. He used it too to put animals down. Easy, soak a rag with it, put it in a closed box. But I'm not sure if I could even get the stuff, that there is any safe way to store it. He kept it in an old safe in his workshop.
I had a vet when I lived in NC that I could ask these questions...but I don't have the same relationship with the fancy, expensive hospital I take the dogs to here in TN. And I'm not about to spend fifty bucks to take a chick to the vet to have 'put to sleep'...
What do you guys do?
