Processing Day Support Group ~ HELP us through the Emotions PLEASE!

[Amina]

I would like to view them more as livestock but am having trouble doing so. :/

Thanks for the story about your buff orpington, Coralietg. I have searched and searched online and whatever is going on with my barred rock must be pretty uncommon... seems like no one else has had a hen laying solely wind eggs. So I really have no clue what's wrong with her or what to expect. The only thing I know is that it might be getting worse, with them becoming deformed and making a mess.

 

[Tomtommom]

I would like to view them more as livestock but am having trouble doing so. :/

Thanks for the story about your buff orpington, Coralietg. I have searched and searched online and whatever is going on with my barred rock must be pretty uncommon... seems like no one else has had a hen laying solely wind eggs. So I really have no clue what's wrong with her or what to expect. The only thing I know is that it might be getting worse, with them becoming deformed and making a mess.

If it helps, laying deformed eggs could cause her pain and suffering down the line. Sometimes dispatching a bird is easier when we know we do it for their comfort. Honestly... it almost sounds like she already has some sort of blockage, where the yolk does not come out, but the rest of the system still makes eggs. You may be doing her a favor in the end.

 

[Amina]

Thanks for the encouragement. It does help.

 

[NCBantam22]

Consider The Following:
Treat them like livestock not people
Don't Name Them
Don't get attached or tame them
Remember they led a better life than their factory farmed cousins
The Process:
Capture animal
Dispatch them with a sharp knife or .22 rifle using shorts or snakeshot
Process the animal
Cook
Thank God for the meal
Eat
Go to toilet
Poop

 

[katbriar]

Amina- I wonder if you'll just get to where you know it's time, and while it may be hard you'll know it's the better choice to cull her.

I think your mind knows that it doesn't mean you don't care for her or that you've given up on her or that it makes you a less compassionate person. It's just a hard thing for a tender heart to envision doing.

Have you seen the post on here about taking on difficulty so the chicken doesn't have as much? It really spoke to me. I'll see if I can find it.

Good for you for thinking and feeling and being conscious of the struggle. That's what most people who are trying to figure out the best thing (for them) do.

 

[Tomtommom]

Consider The Following:
Treat them like livestock not people
Don't Name Them
Don't get attached or tame them
Remember they led a better life than their factory farmed cousins
The Process:
Capture animal
Dispatch them with a sharp knife or .22 rifle using shorts or snakeshot
Process the animal
Cook
Thank God for the meal
Eat
Go to toilet
Poop

That's a bit of a weird thing to say in a thread for processing support... but ok.

For some people it's harder than others. Totally ok and totally understandable.

I have only named a few of my birds: one because she annoys me greatly, one because she's the baby of the bunch and two because I happen to like them and earned their keep by being daily layers and very easy going birds. The others, meh, they're chickens.

Having birds that are tame enough not to flip out when you pick them up make for much easier keeping. I don't cuddle my chickens.. an occasional pat on the back (hey, I'm the rooster!) is perfectly ok.

There's more than one way of keeping chickens. There's a middleground between regarding them as disposable egg machines and cute flooffy egg laying dogs that just want the be cuddled and coddled. *shrug* just my two cents.

 

[katbriar]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Elke Beck


This is not supposed to be easy; taking a life is a solemn thing. For me I do not want to ever get so calloused that I do not feel sad about taking a life. I want my meat chickens to have a lot of good days and one bad day.

My brother, who is a scientist, has a theory of conservation of difficulty. The theory goes that in any situation there is a certain amount of difficulty. You can move the difficulty around, but you cannot eliminate it. For example, anyone who had a computer in the 80's knows how hard it was to use a computer. You had to learn a lot about programming in order to use simple programs. Now computers are pretty simple to use because the designers and programmers have taken the difficulty away from the user and hidden it behind the scenes. So today you can fire up your computer and go directly to your desktop instead of start from the C prompt. To bring this back to chickens, if you are going to eat meat, then there is a certain amount of difficulty in the situation. Factory farms have allowed people to ignore that difficulty by raising chickens in conditions that are horrible and that do not respect the nature of the chicken -- the difficulty has been shifted from the people eating them to the chickens. I see the sadness and discomfort I suffer from killing chickens that I have carefully raised as my taking some of the difficulty on myself.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense."

I know this post is from the perspective of raising birds for meat, but I think it can be applied more broadly to any flock.

 

[Beekissed]

Consider The Following:
Treat them like livestock not people
Don't Name Them
Don't get attached or tame them
Remember they led a better life than their factory farmed cousins
The Process:
Capture animal
Dispatch them with a sharp knife or .22 rifle using shorts or snakeshot
Process the animal
Cook
Thank God for the meal
Eat
Go to toilet
Poop

I love your brevity!! AND your thoroughness....ahem.

I agree with all but one on that list...I still name the birds if they have earned a name and, though I don't get too attached to kill them, I don't allow detachment either. I treat all the animals the same, be they destined for meat or laying and then meat.

 

[Beekissed]

Does anybody have advice on making the decision to cull a bird? I've got 4 chickens, and one is a three year old barred rock who mostly (maybe exclusively?) lays wind eggs. Some of the wind eggs are poorly formed, and end up making a mess in my nest boxes. I believe she's got to go. But she is pretty friendly and lets me pet her, which is making this decision harder. To make it harder still, I am an ex-vegan. I totally avoid factory farmed animal products, so I am basically just eating eggs from our hens at this point in time. I have not eaten meat since 2005, so there is the added decision of whether to eat her or give her away.

I am really struggling with this decision. Any thoughts? Encouraging words? Thanks!

Yes...I would lovingly cull her before she HAS to be culled due to laying issues. Those wind eggs are hard to have and they have to strain to get them out. This can lead to prolapse and even more pain. Due to her age, increasing laying problems and discomfort is surely coming down the road for her. I held off on an old favored hen of mine and she was 7 yrs old when she finally stopped laying regularly but I held on because she was an old friend. It was a mistake. She started having discomfort and couldn't pass an egg...when I killed her she had several egg tumors inside of her and one in her oviduct that she could not pass.

I shouldn't have waited until she was hurting before I gave my good old friend a quick death. I was pretty ashamed of myself for it because I usually am pretty strict about killing them as soon as they are no longer laying regularly or if they are showing signs of abnormal laying. Her last egg was a triple yolk egg and that should have been my first red flag.

Here's Fanny's egg tumors....the large one was in the oviduct and the others were attached to her intestines and other organs.

 

[Amina]

Thanks everyone! What you're all saying is really helpful and totally makes sense. I very much appreciate all the encouragement and support! If I can get past this mental block that I have, I would like to one day sell eggs on a small scale. I believe that would be doing a lot of good, because I have had so many friends and co-workers want to buy eggs from us, people who would otherwise eat factory farmed eggs from hens that lived a miserable life. Yes it would require slaughter of the birds on occasion, but overall it would be better for both the chickens and the humans. I wouldn't be trying to make a ton of money from it, but for my idea to be viable, I would have to at least break even.

I already don't really cuddle my chickens, but I interact with them enough that they aren't scared of me. They will go back into their run on command, they will eat from my hand, and if they squat for me, I scratch their backs. It seems like the ideal would be if I could fully enjoy them (by interacting with them about like I currently do) and then still manage to part with them when the time comes.

"I still name the birds if they have earned a name and, though I don't get too attached to kill them, I don't allow detachment either."
That is *exactly* how I want to be with my birds. Enjoy each of them, value them, and then kill them when it needs to be done. Thanks for the pictures of the egg tumors, too. I would not be surprised if I find something similar inside of this hen. And if you think about it... prey animals are very good at hiding pain. I bet chickens are especially good at it, since any sign of weakness will result in merciless pecking from flock members. So just because she doesn't act like she's in pain doesn't mean that she isn't experiencing pain.