Hard Questions For Me

[breege]

Well EggSighted4Life sell the eggs came as a second idea for the family. We got the chickens in the first place because the eggs in the grocery stores were so disgusting we could not eat them. So my dad did some research into good egg laying chickens and found the red sexlinks. Well little did we know just how good of a layer they are or the fact (or at least for our chickens) that after 2 years of laying they start getting sick and pass on fast. We tried to sell of the excess eggs to people that my sister and dad worked with. I never personal got involved in that part so I'm not sure if we made enough to cover the chickens cost or at the very least their feed.

If you're going to get involved in heritage breeds, you've a fair amount of work ahead of you.
Culling birds doesn't always mean killing.
If you're raising heritage birds, you want the gene pool as hardy as possible, but you'll always have that "one" that's special, that's fine, especially if she's laying, as long as you don't breed her.
Then there's the ones that you need to grow out some to make a decision, especially if you're evaluating cockerels as replacements.
Then, there are the ones that aren't quite SOP, but nonetheless really nice good birds. The eggs from these birds sell just as well. You just cannot sell their eggs as hatching eggs

All of these can often be sold as "pet" quality as opposed to "show" or "breeder" quality.

 

[Dbendell]

If the chicken is ill and could infect the rest of the flock, why wouldn't you cull it? If you don't want to end the chicken's life yourself, you could ask a vet to euthanize it.
The humane thing to do is to cull the chicken, not leave it to suffer and die on its own.

 

[suelon99]

Culling is difficult for sure, whether it is chickens or cattle, such as we have. We have let cats die naturally and we have put them down with a shotgun-not pretty either way but definitely more humane to do it quickly. We have actually resuscitated a calf and a cow and they were fine afterwards but that is NOT the norm. We have had to cull a sick chicken or two; I have had sickly chicks that I had to pull up my bootstraps and wring their necks to end their suffering...at least for them! Death is never an easy thing and not usually clean and neat, on a farm it is part of the cycle of life sadly.

 

[Elmien]

And there in is the problem for me. I don't think that I can kill them, but I don't want them to suffer either. My mom laughs at me with the chickens, she calls them my feathered dogs as they will immediately get excited when they hear my heavy step on the front porch. I know that the next flock I get will most likely result in the same thing, where they get super excited and playful when they see me and I view them more as a part of the family than just a bag of feathers. So before I get another flock I was hoping someone had another method of idea of how to treat this particular problem, or maybe I just need to steel myself for what may have to be done anyway. If that is my only option then that really sucks but having them suffer needlessly sucks just as bad.

When I have a sick hen I take her to a vet. If they are unable to help her I have her euthanised.