If you don't want to slaughter it yourself, you could give it to someone else to do it for you. But if you don't want to do that either, you'll have to feed a special diet. They have short lifespans though, and even on a special diet it's not gonna live long and most likely will suffer health issues at some point.
I hate the fact that it won’t live to long. My brother decided he wanted it to be his and I just don’t want to see him all sad once it eventually passes and/or gets slaughtered
So I was attached to this grand vision I had for his life in our flock, but really, truly, his life served its purpose. We lost him, but his hens live on. And in his own small little duckie mind, that is fundamentally what he would have wanted.
It's hard. My H was helping with a pretty big butcher day and he had some different feelings about it. For one thing, I think about the purpose of the bird and the intentions for its precious life. Some birds are meat birds. Some are layers. Not every chick that hatches out will be female. Somewhere along the line, males are giving their lives in place of the females. At least meat birds, that is their destiny, if you will.
For him, he felt bad butchering some of the layers because for whatever reason they were being processed when they were probably still laying. That just felt wrong to him. I honestly think a few younger hens were processed by mistake instead of just the older ones, but anyway.
You can grow him up for however many weeks, give him the best life possible, and thank him not only for the food he will provide you and your family, but for all the joy along the way.
I know that's part of why I was so affected by the loss of our drake. He was taken. I'm sure we would have eaten him eventually - but he was OURS - and he was taken by a predator, and taken too soon. You could also argue, ducks are prey animals and they are not meant to live long, ...but in our vision for his life, he was going to be a papa of many baby dux. Perhaps even a big ole grandpapa drake.
So not to change the subject or whatever, I hope my point is coming across. I think there is the natural order of things, and there is the sometimes anthropomorphic version we compose of our animals' lives, and sometimes it can be helpful to do some searching to sort out which is which. (((Hugs)))
I would tell him well in advance, so he has time to get used to the idea. For most people, being surprised is worse than knowing in advance that the chicken will be dying young.
