We, chicken keepers and I think people in general, have lost touch with the purpose of death through predation and maybe death in general. It's all fallen out of balance.
In our attempts to make life safe for the creatures we keep we often not only make matters worse but upset what should be a natural balance.
It's a complicated topic on which people, depending on their culture and their own sensibilities, often with no logic or rationality, have vastly different views.
As an example, I could not have managed attempting to keep free range chickens in Catalonia, with all my views of freedom to reproduce and freedom of movement without the aid of predators. It wouldn't have taken many hatchings before the population became completely unmanageable.
A further problem is the view that we own the lives of the creatures we keep and a threat to those lives, or the taking of those lives by others becomes a personal affront. There is nothing personal in natural predation. It's just other creatures trying to eat and survive much as we do.
Sometimes it's the view that we own lives and are responsible for them that compounds the problem. Lock creatures up in a prison for their own safety and our own peace of mind and have a predator break into that prison is often more devastating than having a predator pick off one or two free rangers.
It is a complicated topic which I try not to over simplify but predation is necessary if any sort of natural balance is to be maintained.
The above is part of the reason I don't do the sorry for your loss type posts.
The poster may in a few cases have lost a friend but mostly they've lost a possession. It's the dead creature that's lost something, their life and my empathy goes to their relatives.
Not very well expressed I'm sorry to write and not a view shared by most here.
