Just Butchered My Cornish X. Now I Feel Terrible.

[naznaz11]

i made a thread earlier about what to do after butchering my cornish x. see link below

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/about-to-butcher-cornish-x-need-help.1475243/

this was my very first time butchering a chicken, i have cleaned and processed fish and clams before and never felt bad, but this time i feel so terrible.

i am pro gun, pro hunting, but damn, this hits me hard. i am a fully grown man and aint some social justice warrior or special snowflake.

anyone else on here felt the same after killing their chicken??

here is a pic. it weighs a little over 8 lbs in the bag. he is 12 weeks old.

it must have weighed about 10 lbs before removing the skin, organ, feathers and other body parts.

 

[Tre3hugger]

Looks like you are at least 1/4 snowflake. Sorry about it. lol

But seriously being "pro gun" or "pro hunt" doesn't mean you don't have feelings. You raised this animal and then took its life to sustain yours. That is a serious deed and it is completely ok to have some feelings about it.

Personally, I love and appreciate every animal I raise for meat. Chickens and rabbits. I thank them them for their sustenance. The day I feel nothing when I kill an animal is the day I should probably stop doing it.

 

[sourland]

Your feelings are normal and healthy.

 

[Bryce Thomas]

Idk about meat birds or anything, but im in FFA. FFA stands for Future Farmers of America In FFA we raise: Pigs, goats, sheep, cows, rabbits and chickens. At the end of the year all animals go to the fair. There are different ways for showing for each animal. You have to train your animal to pose. After fair all the animals besides rabbits and chickens go to market which means slaughter for markets in the US like frys or walgreens meat section or anything. Pigs, cows, sheep, lambs always have to go for slaughter. You can choose to sell your chicken or rabbit, if you dont you get to keep it. Sometimes a buyer will buy an animal then give it back to the animal raiser just to give them the money to help the kid out. FFA is for high school students, im a sophmore. So what does this have to do with your problem? Don't get attached. I always tell freshmen that want in "Raise all you want, but if its not a rabbit or chicken don't you ever get emotionally attached, because that animal was designed to be shot and killed for its meat for you to eat." (I raise silkies because im smart, I know I get to see my birbies happy and healthy while kids watch their animals die and processed into meat, I'm smart because I know I get to keep mine all 4 years)

1:do NOT name slaughter chickens
2:do NOT try to love slaughter chickens
3:do NOT play with slaughter chickens
4:try your best to not care or think about your slaughter chickens, remember that ornamental and layer hens and breeding roosters are more pet-like, and slaughter chickens are for MEAT ONLY

Once the newcomers learn that they don't even shed a tear herding their animal they worked on and trained with all year as they heard it onto the slaughter truck

Might sound morbid, but this is what we do. I hope I helped you not be as attached to the slaughter birds from now on! Also from the picture I see its named NazNaz and you put a date on when it was killed. Its a meat hen, not a pet hen. If you care and love to meat hens/animals, when you kill it, its more like throwing a funeral when you just killed your dog then eating the dead dog. Never name the meat hen, ever!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm not going to make a comment about people going soft. That's not what this is about. Nor should it be read that way. There are no victims here.

Response to processing a chicken (or any animal) that you have raised yourself is sort of like handedness - it relates to how you are wired, though it can be trained to some extent. Sit down, unpack your feelings, give 'em a good look over. Some, perhaps most, of what you feel is honest. But some portion is a learned response to modern societal expectations, I suspect you will find. Those you can cast aside as an obstruction to what needs doing.

Of course, how you raise your birds has some effect on the stregth of any emotional attachment as well - its nature and nuture both, given force by experience. SOme people can't have birds underfoot without forming those attachments, or in their laps, or name them, or whatever. If you are going to continue to have chickens, particularly if you hatch chickens (as I do, every three weeks - 6 hatched in the last 24 hours +/-), you are going to have to find a management method (including culling/butchering) that works for you - or you should give serious thought to abandoning your chicken keeping hobby.

"When the need arises - and it does - you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don't farm it out - that doesn't make it nicer, it makes it worse." - Robert A. Heinlein

I happen to be a pretty lousy human being - its how I'm wired. People like me are needed in the tribe (much less than we used to be). For butchering, for science, for when pragmatism is required. OTOH, without people who feel intensely, who empathize well with others, its quite likely the family, the tribe, never would have grown into society.

Takes all kinds.

 

[Disintegration]

I'll probably never raise animals for meat because I'll become way too attatched, but I can understand why it would be a bit upsetting to do so. It's okay to have feelings about your animals, ESPECIALLY the ones that you raise for food yourself. You get attatched to them because you've seen them grow since they were young. It doesn't make you a "snowflake" at all. It shows that you're a good human.

 

[Molpet]

Yeah the first one is the hardest. I thought since I grew up hunting it wouldn't be that bad.
The first one every year is hard, but not as bad.

I agree, don't name them and don't play with your food

 

[yakitori]

In the end we're all just human

 

[cassie]

This may or may not help. First of all, you need to know I am a wuss. I butchered my first chicken because there was no choice. Nobody else was home and wouldn't be for several days. It was a large (dressed out over 10 pounds) Cornish X and it couldn't walk. It was either butcher it then or let it die and then throw that nice fat roaster in the dumpster. I chose the former. Now, after printing out how to process a chicken I followed the steps one by one. I just did it. I didn't think about it at all. We also had a rule we followed religiously. We never ate pets, and we never made pets out of food so I didn't have a personal attachment to that chicken.

It might help to keep in mind that Cornish X are not long lived. You can either butcher them and use the meat or you can let them die on their own (which in most cases is sooner rather than later) and put them in the dumpster. This last is a waste. In any event the chicken you butchered was in all likelihood not going to last many more weeks.

 

[WonkierZulu]

The problem is getting attached. I try not to other chickens isn't the problem it's your own that you raise. I bet he will be delicious though.