should i let my chickens die naturally?

[The Sheperds Wife]

Whew! I just read every comment of this thread! And I just remembered what the original question was. I let my chickens die naturally. Over the years I have had egg problems, sometimes the hen overcame and survived sometimes not. Some have been injured and lived on and some have died for no apparent reason. This is life. I really can't judge whether a chicken is suffering or not, I just assume they are which may not be correct. So I let them live out their lives. They die when it is their time.

 

[TheFarm41]

Hi. I basically agree with you. However, I was wondering. As a vegetarian, why is your line drawn at animals? Plants are genetically modified and grown in ways that really hurt the environment just like factory farmed animals. Plants have been proven to react to stimuli, and form symbiotic complex relationships with animals and other plants. Why is it totally fine to eat a Monsanto tomato, but not a cornish x or an egg? Or why do most people not think twice when they rip an apple from their mother tree and tear it's flesh with their teeth? Or dice an heirloom carrot into 100 pieces? I get really hung up on this. Because plants don't have a nervous system YOU can recognize they are morally free of guilt to eat? Or they don't make noise when you pick/kill them? Either way for one to eat something has to sacrifice its life. That is just the way it is. Whether it is a Waygu or a soy bean. Why is it acceptable to kill plants not animals

Welcome to Backyard Chickens

it’s a huge moral dilemma but they are here. Chickens hatch everyday for super layers that will lay 300 eggs a year. People in countries worldwide demand eggs. They are a great source of protein.

is it morally right? I don’t think “natural” animals should be bred to be super producers. No. I don’t believe we should be creating monkey- human hybrids for organ transplants or goats with epilepsy so people can have a laugh and get a tender cut of flesh.

It’s a huge tragedy few people think about. It’s also a huge movement that is probably impossible to stop. diminished land, resources and increasing population will increase the likelihood of more “unnatural” breedings of animals to create more moral fissures in our fabric of compassion and kindness. What I do is that I remove myself from that equation. I’m vegetarian and don’t breed for any of the popular ethically ruinous trends like dwarfism and epilepsy. You can protect your heart by not participating in these trends, opening your quarantined spaces to take in suffering animals when they present themselves and spreading kindness wherever you go.

I have been reading this thread and I am surprised that so many are bothered by the fact that living creatures die. All living things must die in order for other creatures to live, this includes you and me. Dying is Living.

Cruelty and abuse to any thing living, including the earth is not acceptable. I eat meat and plants, but only what we raise on our farm. We devote everything we have to ensuring our sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, veggies, fruit and nut trees, berries, water supply and our land are well cared for, happy and healthy. Killing a living thing is not the worst thing that can happen to it - allowing it to suffer while you look the other way is much worse.

Below is a poem I wrote about one of your boars.

Ode to Mr. Piggles
Mr. Piggles was a stout kune kune boar,
Only once - did Sara he try to gore,
All day long he would snort and grunt,
and in the pasture he would root and hunt.

He slept in the chicken coop at night
and by day would bask in the sunlight.
By his antics we were quite amused,
that poor ole bucket he did abuse.

Butcher day has come,
It is a job that must be done.
Please don’t be sad in the least,
He has provided an amazing feast!

 

[TOR]

hi!

since chickens would not lay that much eggs if they would be in the natural habitat is it moraly right to let them die because egg laying problem... 300 eggs a year is too much and it doesnt seem like it is fair to let them suffer from liver damage egg peritrosis etc.
what do you think?

Depends on what your end goal is. If it is having high performance egg layers than I would say cull them, make chicken soup. Then put new performance egg layers in the flock.

Now if the chicken was sick or suffering to the point of not surviving I would cull it, but than may not be fit to eat. Well because it is sick.

 

[Tilhana]

Plants don’t have feelings or consciousness. Please - don’t be ridiculous. What are we supposed to survive on, air and the lord? Makes no sense and this is completely irrelevant.

I think they were trying to make the point that it's hypocritical to say it's cruel to eat animals but fine to eat plants - the implication being we can eat both, not neither.

Also, who are we to say that plants don't have feelings or consciousness? We know some plants react to having their leaves eaten by releasing chemicals that make their leaves taste bad or even poisonous to deter insects from attacking them. That's clearly a will to live. Recent studies have established that some plants also communicate with others - even those of other species - through hormonal signaling; for example, some will react to that insect attack by releasing a hormone that warns other plants nearby, even those of other species, so that they can preemptively launch their own defenses. That's more pro-social behavior than many animals exhibit. And some trees have been observed to be capturing extra nurtients from the soil and funneling it towards their own offspring nearby. That's more parental care than many animals demonstrate.

Just saying, it's just as anthropocentric to say that plants don't have consciousness as it is to say that animals don't feel pain.

 

[Tilhana]

You bring up interesting points about not knowing if plants suffer or not. As a Buddhist, I can explain how I understand this. The first Buddhist precept which is not to take "the breath away" of living beings is explained as human and animal (including insects) but it is the intention behind the killing that qualifies the action as neutral, aversion-based, greed-based, or ignorance -based. The first, neutral intention is when, in full understanding one takes the life of say a mosquito in an area where Zika is causing tragic birth defects (or a police officer takes the life of an active shooter to save the lives of others). The latter three are far worse. Killing a human out of anger creates graver, karmically-charged results for the doer of the deed. This intention-based explanation is also scaled on the severity of the action. Cutting off a human's lifespan is more serious than cutting off the lifespan of an animal because a human has more potential to do good in the world or to Awaken. So killing a plant for food, like a lettuce, doesn't carry anywhere near the same consequences as killing a chicken for food. Killing a fruit, which doesn't kill the plant, carries even less karmic consequence. Buddhist monastics as I mentioned elsewhere cannot uproot a plant or take its fruit. They can't store food and must be offered their meals everyday. They can't cut open a fruit or vegetable either. The fruits and vegetables must be offered so that any viability of the fruit i(seed) is not wasted.

It's a complex subject and I don't pretend to be an expert. Offered in the spirit of community to explain another way of understanding

Interesting, and also sounds like a totally rational way of looking at it. I can certainly relate as I used to be a vegetarian and even now I feel more karmic responsibility when I eat a piece of meat than when I eat a salad, because I do think the animal probably has *more* capacity for suffering (though not the monopoly on it).

Not meaning to disrespect anyone's religion, but since you're making the arument about moral heirarchy, one thing I disagree with Buddhists about is the precept that monks shoudln't take life themselves but have to be offered food from others. I'm skeptical that you can shift your karmic footprint onto others like that. If there's some amount of evil (or maybe karmic responsibility is a more accurate term than "evil" imo) in killing a plant, then that weight should transfer to eating the plant, no matter who killed it. Is it acceptable to receive a lion pelt as a gift if if was killed by some trophy hunter instead of you? Is it morally neutral to eat shark fin soup at a wedding where you're a guest, as long as you didn't personally kill the shark? Is it less of a sin to receive and eat a chicken breast at a soup kitchen, especially if that meat came from a CAFO, than to raise a chicken, treat it well, then butcher it humanely so you can eat it? I think if you're sustaining yourself on food that comes from living things, you're taking on the full karmic weight of whatever you're eating, regardless of who killed it so you could do so.

 

[Tilhana]

Wouldn’t it just be simpler if we didn’t! lol, I keep waiting for the Jetsons capsules of food to be made. Lol

There's that Soylent stuff, which is pretty close. But if you are what you eat, would you really want to fill your body with "food" capsules made from chemicals synthesized in a lab, instead of real food from the Earth like every other living thing?

 

[Tilhana]

So what are we supposed to eat? Are you implying that, because plants react to stimuli, eating them is no different than eating animals? Plants don’t feel love like animals do. I’ve never had a rose bush light up and wave its branches when I arrive home. I eat plants for my health but surely you don’t equate the consciousness of plants to that of animals. By the way, study after study shows eating a plant-based diet reduces inflammation and disease in humans.

Maybe the rose bush just doesn't like you as much as your dog does. I'll bet it's lighting up for the bees that pass by

Those studies generally don't control for food quality, eg does the meat that the control group are eating come from corn-fed, antibiotic-treated, generally unhealthy animals, or from animals allowed to live on pasture eating what nature intended? They also don't control for the consumption of processed food, which includes such ingredients as nitrites, artificial hormones, pesticides, overly processed gluten, and glyphosate, which has been found to be very disruptive to the microbiome.

There are plenty of vegetarians who live off of pasta and potato chips and soy products full of preservatives and other lab-synthesized ingredients I can't pronounce, and there are vegans who develop bone problems and iron deficiencies as they age. Some people have found much better health on a purely meat-based diet. It's certainly not for everyone, but I think the argument that vegetarianism is healthier for everybody now has a great deal of evidence going against it, at least enough to compel us to reexamine the evidence we have for it and do more controlled research that accounts for all the elements of our diets that we KNOW cause problems.

 

[Araucana Nest]

Wouldn’t it just be simpler if we didn’t! lol, I keep waiting for the Jetsons capsules of food to be made. Lol

So much simpler in some ways

 

[Araucana Nest]

I disagree with Buddhists about is the precept that monks shoudln't take life themselves but have to be offered food from others. I'm skeptical that you can shift your karmic footprint onto others like that. If there's some amount of evil (or maybe karmic responsibility is a more accurate term than "evil" imo) in killing a plant, then that weight should transfer to eating the plant, no matter who killed it

Kamma is the Pali word for action. In Sanskrit it is Karma. The full phase you are speaking about is kammavipaka, or the fruition of action. Action = cause⇢effect. Once the killing is done, there is no more cow, no more animal to speak of it is just flesh. Eating it doesn't carry the same consequence, if any. I'm not sure (well, maybe dietary consequences). Monastics may not request meat or eat food they suspect contains flesh of an animal killed for them. They can't see or hear or suspect an animal was killed for them. They can't dig in the dirt, pick fruit, cut fruit with seeds, uproot a plant, and they must filter their water and return any living being found to the source. Raw meat can't be cooked in monastery kitchens or stored on monastery grounds. While some Buddhist schools are vegetarian or vegan, the Buddha never forbid the eating of meat, except within those guidelines for monastics and with the first precept for laypeople. - this could get a lot longer but I already lost my first draft that I was writing on my phone. it is very complex and I don't pretend to know more than what is helpful for me at this point.

I also believe that there is a point where one can understand an animal is clearly suffering and has little hope of recovery. I don't think that at that point to take the life of that animal would carry the same negative karmic effect because the intention is to relieve the suffering. Intention is the driver behind action/kamma. I don't let my animals suffer.

We are speaking of worldviews here and it is impossible to explain a worldview in a post, especially before coffee (if ever). If one can peek outside their own worldview for a while to try to understand the views of others, we would have far less discord in our world. I also appreciate we can exchange very different ideas in the spirit of communication.

 

[writerskramp]

Mercy killing is killing.. who is to say those final moments are not relished by the living.. you can't ask them after they're dead..