People ever give you a hard time about...

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

Livestock is not pets.

I agree 100%. When people question beyond that I just tell them to do some research on the conditions inside a chicken or turkey house, hog farm. Here in Eastern NC you don't have to go far to see all three in person if you want. Then look up all the meat recalls etc etc this year. That does a pretty good job of opening their eyes.

Steve in NC​

 

[Dar]

I would LOVE to have the courage, strength, and skills to be able to process my own birds!

Hats off to everyone who does it!

I am to afraid to do it
I do not have the inner strength to do it
I do not have the skills to do it

If we would band together and have a "culling" party... I am soooooo in for that then i can learn...

 

[meriruka]

I get just the opposite grief. "You have all that poultry and you don't eat any of it?"
It doesn't bother me coming from my country neighbors, that's a way of life here and I know to them it's odd.
What bothers me is when I hear this from some of my longtime city friends. These are people who have never killed & eaten anything themselves. So of course, I invite them to come visit and promise to cook up any bird they choose to kill & clean. So far, no takers.

I can't imagine what would make them think that after years of being vegetarian and buying all my food from the store, I would suddenly
wake up and go grab an ax and a bird and have no problem fixing it for dinner. It may sound silly, but I think it's irresponsible to just go take a life without knowing what you are doing, the same way you don't just grab a gun and take pot shots at deer hoping you'll get lucky & kill one. All of the people here who hunt have had years of training and practice and they don't waste anything. I respect that and that's the way I want to be with my chickens, so I'm learning & working up to it. I've learned how to put down sick chicks & birds with ether and I put down an injured turkey with an ax for the first time a month ago. I practiced with the ax, chopping sticks until my aim was good. When it was time, I got it right on the first try. I saved the breast meat and buried the rest, and shook for two hours. Someday I will reach a point where I'm proficient and comfortable.

I think it's a shame that some people take their food for granted, the same way some Americans don't realize what a good life they have in this country.

 

[HLAC]

I get the opposite too. When I told my friends that I got some chickens, they pretty much all asked when the BBQ was scheduled. LOL.
When I had a pet chicken, everyone asked if I was going to eat her. I'm not sure they believed me when I said it was just a pet.

I do plan on getting some meat chickens. I can't disappoint my friends.

 

[zowieyellowflame]

When I was 4 yrs old, my dad asked me if I wanted chicken (my favorite) for supper. I said yes. so he handed me a knife and I went to it.... or tried. Our house was on supports, I remember chasing the chickens under the supported house....
I never caught one but I still have the same feelings....... I enjoy my pets and I enjoy eating chicken.
This is my first yr as an adult of having chickens. I cant have a bunch of roosters running around, even though they are as sweet in behavior as a hen....
Last weekend we ate our first rooster. Umm, well, he was tasty! I felt a bit weird, but expected this for the first one...... I was able to get past this feeling and enjoy. tonight we are having "oreo" soup. Yup, several were named.
I have people that live in the city, wanting to buy our free range birds for meat and I am feeling that I want to keep them all for myself! lol
When it is killing time, I rehersed, in my head..... "I eat chicken everyday. These chickens enjoyed their life". Enough said.

 

[protodon]

I don't know why I didn't start this topic, I get a lot of grief from people about killing my own chickens for food. I mainly do it because I have too many roosters. But then I prefer my own chicken grown and raised by me and actually cared for than what you get from the supermarket. I know my chickens were happy from day 1 of their lives. I can't say that about commercial chickens. When I try to explain that to people they don't want to hear it. I actually have a friend that criticizes me incessantly about the fact that I process my own chickens but eats plenty of chicken. She also believes that KFC chicken is not real chicken but instead it is grown in a lab, with the bone it!!! If we had that sort of technology I'm pretty sure the world would be a very different place. The ignorance astounds me! The irony of this is that my friend is also a teacher!

But generally if I tell someone I process my own chickens I usually get "eeew" my reply is usually, "do you eat chicken? So what's the problem?" People just want believe that their food magically appears in the air all hermetically sealed having never come from something that was once alive. These people should be given a strict diet of rice cakes until they can appreciate where food really comes from.

 

[Amyable]

Quote:
That would be even more disgusting than factory chicken.

Quote:
Amen! The ignorance and hypocracy astounds me. I take solace in the fact that I have the skills to feed my family without a grocery store, if need be. We are already the family oddballs on DH's side because of our rural lifestyle; I can just imagine when we start butchering our own birds.

 

[Imp]

People just want believe that their food magically appears in the air all hermetically sealed

That's where I get my food.

Imp- When I got my first 3 hens the neighbors named them Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.​

 

[Sunny Side Up]

Quote:
Nope, not until they can explain where rice comes from and how it's grown.

 

[chooniecat]

I also don't like to hear someone talk about not wanting to know where their food comes from or people that can't imagin eating something you've raised(don't get any of the last one but it would bother me to hear it) but it also bothers me to hear the constant differential of pets vs livestock. I understand I will not eat my cats and dogs but they are considered "food' in some countries andthat shouldn't mean they can be brutalized like they are in those countries. livestock is also mistreated in this country and that is WHY I raise/eat my own. I appear to be an extreme outsider here on that one.