Rethinking how I want to proceed with my flocks

[Sussex19]

-Butchering pullets is harder. Both, making the decisions as to who to keep and who to butcher, and the emotions of butchering a laying chicken.

It helped me a bit that this one was only around 14 weeks old, so once the deed was done it just as well been very small cockerel.
Now that I have got that out of the way I think I will be able to do a laying one.

Thank you for all the thoughts!

 

[Morrigan]

There was no space left in my coop, and it was getting hard to keep them all fed, so I had to take over the role of predator. I don't know if this makes sense, but that is how I feel about it.

I wanted to add, that this is how I thought about it too. I created an ecosystem, and every ecosystem needs predators. I'd rather that predator be me than, say, a hawk or coyote.

 

[Chicken poppy]

When we first got chickens, the plan was to let the hens hatch eggs whenever they wanted, cull and eat the cockerels and sell the pullets. (except when we needed to keep some for more eggs)
The reason for selling the pullets rather than eating them is that I'm having a lot harder time with the concept of butchering pullets that could spend their lives laying eggs and raising chicks compared to the cockerels.
Since then I have processed quite a lot of cockerels and sold a pair of pullets. But now there is a possibility of Marek's in my flock, and I don't want to risk selling them.
So now I have got something like 5 or more pullets that are surplus to our needs. I'm thinking that I will have to process them, or else process some of the older hens and keep the pullets. Any ideas about how to decide which ones to keep, if you think its ok to process females (I know its silly how I feel about it, they are all chickens, after all) and what age would be best?
I'm thinking of waiting till they are laying, to get a feel of which ones are best to keep.

I don’t know anything about age to butcher or anything but i can tell you this, your feelings aren’t silly. I love my chickens and i have never had the “their just chickens” attitude. Mine sit on the couch if they want, they come in the house if they want, they do what they want and i spend hours with them. They even remembered what door led to a room they used to go into after a year!

Anyway, my point is, you can choose to, or choose to not, have an emotional bond with an animal. Its up to how you interact with them each day. Try your best to not look at them as you would a dog, but also look at them as more then a chicken, a world of both.


I hope this atleast made a little sense.

I can’t show any chickens at a tabletop or showmanship place cause i feel bad leaving them there, (you leave them for multiple days usually) but when i was trying to show and i bought a new chicken, i had to look at them as ONLY a show chicken. Nothing more. A reasonable amount of bonding so they let me handle them but not enough to make me feel guilty.

For the most part, it worked. I still didn’t do it though because of AI.

 

[Chicken poppy]

Best to get one tested to make sure what you are dealing with.


Yep, it's tougher to slaughter a female to eat the meat.
Any bird that is older than ~6mo is only good for soup, IMO.
I would definitely keep the pullets and slaughter the oldest hens.

Oh yeah. Even as a vegan theres times i think “This rooster would make a mighty fine stew crowing at 3 AM”

(I would never, but still, the roosters can be annoying.)

 

[Sussex19]

I don’t know anything about age to butcher or anything but i can tell you this, your feelings aren’t silly. I love my chickens and i have never had the “their just chickens” attitude. Mine sit on the couch if they want, they come in the house if they want, they do what they want and i spend hours with them. They even remembered what door led to a room they used to go into after a year!

Anyway, my point is, you can choose to, or choose to not, have an emotional bond with an animal. Its up to how you interact with them each day. Try your best to not look at them as you would a dog, but also look at them as more then a chicken, a world of both.


I hope this atleast made a little sense.

I can’t show any chickens at a tabletop or showmanship place cause i feel bad leaving them there, (you leave them for multiple days usually) but when i was trying to show and i bought a new chicken, i had to look at them as ONLY a show chicken. Nothing more. A reasonable amount of bonding so they let me handle them but not enough to make me feel guilty.

For the most part, it worked. I still didn’t do it though because of AI.

It definitely does make sense.

With the chickens, I try not to get an emotional bond, for a reason.
We have got a lot of animals, including a cat that is very special to me. When we got them, I had already lost a lot of pets, and wild animals that meant a lot to me, and I felt that if I got too involved with them, I might not cope.
While it doesn't mean that I care for them any less, it means that when I lose one I can just move on.
This also allows me to harvest them for meat, which I feel better eating if it comes from my own birds that had a very good life. The trouble was that the hens had become a bit more like pets, and I think my favorites are staying, but they can't all stay.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Merek's is not as quick nor lethal as Avian Influenza but with either there would not be a question as to having it in your flock.

Here's a quick write up on symptoms. What was and/or is the flock experiencing?

How do I know if my chicken has Marek's?
Usually the first sign is a chicken that goes lame. She's paralysed by the tumours growing on her nerves. The skin form shows up as enlarged feather follicles and white bumps on the skin that turn into brown scabs. The eye form turns the eye grey and the iris becomes misshapen.

 

[Sussex19]

Merek's is not as quick nor lethal as Avian Influenza but with either there would not be a question as to having it in your flock.

Here's a quick write up on symptoms. What was and/or is the flock experiencing?

How do I know if my chicken has Marek's?
Usually the first sign is a chicken that goes lame. She's paralysed by the tumours growing on her nerves. The skin form shows up as enlarged feather follicles and white bumps on the skin that turn into brown scabs. The eye form turns the eye grey and the iris becomes misshapen.

Its not Avian Influenza, because one doesn't get it in Australia, which is where I am located.

Here is a thread I had on it, https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/maraks.1557151/
Basically, a while back I had one hen and some cockerels go lame, the cockerels recovered, and the hen died a bit later one. More recently, one of my hens as gone blind in one eye.
In a way, I'm not that worried about whether it is or isn't, and as testing is out of the question in the moment there is not really any way to be sure.
If it is, it is a very mild form.
Thank you for your thoughts on it