Have you had an experience with your chickens that made you sick? ...

[gtaus]

I tried to do this myself - I didn't want to burden my husband, I just couldn't bring the axe down. I didn't feel confident I could do the method you mentioned either.

Like I said, I learned how to kill and butcher some animals before I ever learned how to care for them. In that respect, grandpa used to go duck and goose hunting. When a bird was shot, they were often injured but not yet dead. Out in the field, you wrung the neck of the bird to kill it and prevent further suffering.

I had no problem wringing the neck of my sick chicken to end its suffering immediately. It's fast and effective for both you and the bird.

We consider them pet and egg providers - and are emotionally invested, even though we know the birds are fragile and expendable - and are really here to provide.

It's more difficult to put down a pet. I can understand that. Even though my hens are not pets, a person does get emotionally invested in an animal you have taken care of for years. I try to keep an emotional distance from my hens knowing that they don't live long. But they are well taken care of and have a good life until the end.

We would not get meat chickens unless we had a butcher to manage that portion - I know my limits.

Yeah, I got meat chickens first because I wanted to know if I could butcher them after 10 weeks. Frankly, it was more work than I thought it would be. I only had 50 meat chickens, but it was a lot of work to butcher and pluck the birds without a machine plucker. We only had meat chickens for 1 year. Since then, it's been just laying hens.

In theory, I would want to butcher my hens after a couple of years when their egg production drops down to a level so low that it does not make economic sense to carry them any longer. But, so far, I have had a few chickens die from some sickness. I won't butcher a sick chicken. They just get tossed out in the tall grass and returned to nature.

You might want to consider getting some meat chickens that you will butcher at 10 weeks. I think you find that if you raise some chickens with the notion that they will be food in 10 weeks, you would not treat them as pets, you will have an emotional distance from them from the start, and the act of butchering them would be easier to perform.

Once you have the butchering skills for meat chickens, you could use that same skill set on butchering laying hens at the end of their life. You might be more attached to the laying hens, but at least you could fall back on your skill set to butcher the chickens and maybe put your emotions in check for a while.

It sounds like you know your current limits, but you can expand them. You don't have to accept being stuck where you are. Especially if your goal is to have chickens to provide both eggs now and meat in the future. I wish you the best.

 

[Red Mangrove]

I am leaning this way - but it seems so wasteful to toss 3-4 dozen eggs...

My chickens and dogs both eagerly gobble down questionable eggs. Chickens are in fact shameless cannibals

 

[NatJ]

I am leaning this way - but it seems so wasteful to toss 3-4 dozen eggs...

You could mark all new eggs (maybe write the date on them with a pencil), and let the other ones just sit in the refrigerator for a few more days to see how you feel then. Marking the new eggs means you will not mix them up with the ones you distrust, so you don't feel you need to throw them out too.

You could cook some eggs for the dog and the chickens, then watch them enjoy the eggs. Watching their enjoyment may change how you feel, or it may not. Feelings are hard to predict. Depending on how you feel after that, you could cook more eggs for the animals the next day, or you might feel like trying some yourself, or you might not do anything with eggs the next day.

But you certainly can take it one day at a time, rather than needing to make a final decision about all the eggs right away. I find all-at-once decisions difficult, but doing things in small bits is often easier for me (like dealing with a few eggs, then waiting for the next day to decide about a few more.) I cannot predict what will work for you, just offering a few ideas that you can try, or change, or ignore.

 

[Red Mangrove]

You could cook some eggs for the dog and the chickens, then watch them enjoy the eggs. Watching their enjoyment may change how you feel, or it may not. Feelings are hard to predict. Depending on how you feel after that, you could cook more eggs for the animals the next day, or you might feel like trying some yourself, or you might not do anything with eggs the next day.

Why cook them? As a man that's drank 37 eggs at one time before it seems silly to cook eggs for carrion-eating predators

 

[NatJ]

Why cook them? As a man that's drank 37 eggs at one time before it seems silly to cook eggs for carrion-eating predators

When I have doubts about eggs, I prefer to cook them before feeding them to animals. It makes me feel better, because I know cooking kills at least some germs. You could say it's a matter of how I feel, not a matter of what logically makes sense. Because OP is dealing with feelings, I was suggesting some things that would help my feelings, in hopes of that some idea might help their feelings too.

In this case, whatever works well for OP is the best choice, whether that is cooking the eggs for the animals, or feeding the eggs raw to the animals, or just plain throwing them out, or preparing the eggs for people, or something else that no-one has thought of yet-- any of them could be a reasonable choice if it works for OP.