Kill or cull

[BlakesFarm]

Ive seen it posted several times...

Whats the difference between the two?

Does cull mean kill the chicken and eat it?

.

 

[GAchick]

It can. Cull simply means to remove whatever is undesirable from the rest. How you cull is up to you. Kill and eat, or sell, or give away.... all considered culling.

 

[ekemily]

Cull means removing an animal from a herd/flock because it has undesirable characteristics. It generally implies killing, so it can't pass on its genetics.
Some people use the term "cull" when they're talking about simply removing an animal and selling it or giving it away. However, the term "cull" usually means the animal is killed.
Killing is just killing for whatever purpose.... food, sport, or the roo simply looked at me kinda funny.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Cull means to remove a chicken from the flock. Whether you kill, sell or give it away is up to you. The reason people kill their culls most of the time, is because they're most often chickens no one else will want, either. So, killing and eating them seems to be the best option for them. The vast majority of culls are excess roosters, followed by mean roosters or maybe hens that aren't laying well.

 

[dianaross77]

There are a lot of serious breeders that use the word cull to describe taking an animal out of their breeding program like everyone else said. But a lot of them sell their culls.

 

[yelim]

1.To pick out from others; select.
2.To gather; collect.
3.To remove rejected members or parts from (a herd, for example).

Something picked out from others, especially something rejected because of inferior quality.

 

[DutchieWannabe]

funny, I figured it was just peeps saying "cull" cause its sounds less harsh than "kill". esp. on a forum where many love their chickens like family.... good to know there is an actual definition

 

[Illia]

To kill is always to cull. To cull is not always to kill.

Cull simply means to remove from the genepool/flock. You can sell it, put it in another pen, give it away, or kill it.

To kill it is to actually end its life.

 

[ekemily]

thought you might be interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling

 

[Davaroo]

...To cull is not always to kill. wink
Cull simply means to remove from the genepool/flock. You can sell it, put it in another pen, give it away, or kill it.

This is pretty good. Cull is defined thus:

"cull"
–verb (used with object)
1. to choose; select; pick.
2. to gather the choice things or parts from.
3. to collect; gather; pluck.

–noun
4. act of culling.
5. something culled, especially something picked out and put aside as inferior.

Origin:
1300–50; Middle English coilen, cuilen, cullen < Anglo-French, Old French cuillir < Latin colligere to gather; see collect1


Culling has traditionally meant to kill the undesirable birds in a flock. There is a good reason for this.

Back when chickens weren't pets, but kept you and your family alive, it was important that undesirable traits like egg eating or deformities were kept out of the flock genetics.
Flocks were localized, and so new blood was most often a local thing, too... if it was available at all. The transport of live chicks from all corners of the nation, which we take for granted today, did not begin until the very early 20th century. Until then, the chickens in your valley were pretty much all you had to pick from.

Without culling for elimination, aka killing, a flock with "issues" could soon spoil the lot. No one cried about their "babies" when that happened - they went hungry.
So culling-as-killing was practiced to remove the possibility of bad genetics getting around and hurting everyone.