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I made the mistake of buying chickens as livestock. I fell in love with the day-old chicks the moment we got into the car to take them home. Plan was that 1/3 w
by tomcam 2y ago
I made the mistake of buying chickens as livestock. I fell in love with the day-old chicks the moment we got into the car to take them home. Plan was that 1/3 would become food, 1/3 would die of disease, and the remainder would lay eggs. Unfortunately I lost my taste for chicken. We lost 1/3 due to predators, not disease, despite building a $20,000 chicken run. I was depressed for months. And I have been through some heinous shit in my long life.
They make lovely sounds and they live next to my office so working at home is delightful. They are endlessly silly. They are manipulative. They are dignified and stupid. Their plumage is a miracle of biology. They aren’t particularly friendly. I have no clue why I adore them.
Had no idea that such stupid little dinosaurs would change my life so dramatically.
- globular-toast 2y agoA lot more people would be veggie if they had to kill the animals themselves. You just wouldn't do it unless you were really hungry, which I doubt anyone on this forum has experienced even once.
- margor 2y agoSorry to break your bubble, but this is how people normally live on countrysides / small villages, at least in my country. Killing livestock animals is everyday thing and no one bats an eye. Hell, even killing new born kittens / puppies is considered by some normal thing, if they breed uncontrolled (even if they could just... castrate / neuter them [not sure which is the right word for it, I'm not native]). After all how is it different from a full grown chicken, other than the fact you don't normally eat cats/dogs?
- actionfromafar 2y agoWhy would any of that refute "a lot more would be vegetarian"?
- yurishimo 2y agoBecause there are plenty of people who don't kill/eat certain animals but do slaughter other animals. This person in the thread described their new love for chickens, but I have a good feeling that they probably still eat beef or pork. But the "solution" to the vegan problem cannot be to surround everyone with farm animals, because when that was true for most people (100+ years ago), everyone ate meat that they killed themselves. I think any good person can understand and empathize with the modern day practices of factory farming and meat production, but the solutions coming from vegans are also untenable in the face of human history. We can move away from unethical farming practices without removing meat from our diets and ignoring the absolutely huge benefits of eating meat as humans.
- pvaldes 2y agoWell, from a philosophical point of view, vegetarian movement is unfair for the plants Plants that are responsible of lots and lots of human well-being and as life beings deserve to be treated with a similar respect that we use with other organisms. Incidentally is also bad for human health Yes, it is. Those articles that claim that you can live on a strict vegetarian diet without any bad consequences for your health are either lying, incomplete or based in pseudoscience. Is basically a religious movement.
- crashmat 2y agoI have grown up on a purely vegetarian diet since I was born and I don't have any health problems from that. I know anecdotal evidence is usually not great and I will admit it is harder to maintain a healthy diet whilst vegetarian (but not too much), in this case it surely cannot be true that you can't live on a vegetarian diet without any bad consequences if I have done that?
- hombre_fatal 2y agoWhat are these bad consequences so that someone can challenge your position?
- pvaldes 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- globular-toast 2y agoI've been in such communities and they do bat an eye actually. If people enjoyed it then rich western people would be doing it for fun. Funny that I don't see the "kill your own goat" experience being sold in tourist packages.
- salad-tycoon 2y agoHobby farming tourism is definitely a thing. Many well earning organizations host immersive events that include butchering classes. Joel Salatin. Farmstead Meatsmith. Justin Rhodes. Etc. I guess it depends on your definition of fun but rarely are people learning as an immediate need for survival.
- globular-toast 2y agoButchery != slaughter. And not many of those tourists can handle pig face, for example (I'm sure some of them force themselves to go through with it).
- hulitu 2y ago> Funny that I don't see the "kill your own goat" experience being sold in tourist packages. Some goats can kill you.
- margor 2y agoI think there is a shade of grey between enjoying it and never doing because animals are another living being that don't deserve it. If you are doing it as part of putting a good tasting food on the table, I would say no, no one bats an eye, but I suppose they don't enjoy the process too - it's messy process and requiers some safety considerations too like making sure your meat doesn't have any parasites.
- alt227 2y agoHave you seen the 'Kill a cow with a grenade launcher' packages which are popular with stag parties in Eastern Europe?
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- alt227 2y agoYep fully agree. I live in a small village near a country estate and lots of the people here kill and pluck their own foul, including myself. The ones that dont, have no issue with it. When there is a shoot on the estate we request some of the birds and then through the season we regularly come home from work to find braces of dead pheasants hanging on our front door. We pluck them and then roast or make stews out of them and they are delicious. It is common to walk through the village after a shoot and see dead birds hanging from most of the doors. Nobody complains or thinks it is strange, in fact everybody looks forward to the free meat!
- chrisco255 2y agoNot even 3 generations ago, it was incredibly common for people to slaughter their own farm animals. My grandmother was an old farm woman, raised in the time before refrigeration. She'd slaughter and pluck her own chickens without a second thought. It's entirely a modern phenomenon of global distribution and modern conditioning that lead you to that conclusion. Some animals evolved to be prey, and that is why they have an excessive number of offspring. Fowls are among those species. They lay eggs sometimes once a day so their numbers can increase incredibly rapidly. That is an adaptation to high predation. In the absence of that predation, they can overwhelm ecosystems. You are a descendent of millions of years of hunters. I know many hunters and have been hunting myself. I know many who like to fish and have been fishing myself, and cooked my own catch. It's quite a satisfying experience actually.
- throwup238 2y ago> Some animals evolved to be prey, and that is why they have an excessive number of offspring. Fowls are among those species. They lay eggs sometimes once a day so their numbers can increase incredibly rapidly. That is an adaptation to high predation. In the absence of that predation, they can overwhelm ecosystems. Red junglefowl, the ancestors to domesticated chickens, only lay a few clutches annually for a total of less than 20 eggs per year. Modern chickens that lay hundreds of eggs a year are a product of selective breeding, not some natural adaptation.
- thinkingemote 2y agoThe sibling comments to this are truthful, we wouldn't be vegetarians but I think we would be eating more vegetables. When I was vegetarian in my youth I visited my grandparents in the country and asked them about killing animals themselves. They did have relationships with their animals and didn't enjoy doing it but its what they did. I think if you ask modern animal farmers today they would say they do not enjoy killing their animals. My ancestors did say that they ate more preserved (salted) meat and vegetables more but they had more meat in later times. The animals they raised were for occasional or special times not daily consumption. This is reflected by a thousand years or so for most of the West with significant parts the calendar where there was abstinence from meat which for many now people would consider impossible. At most we would be periodic vegetarians, omnivores with the balance towards the vegetarian.
- globular-toast 2y agoI think you are closer to the mark. People don't seem to realise they didn't eat meat as much back then. Like not even 10% what people eat now. To sustain the amount of meat consumption today they would have been killing every single day! In fact, it was common for families to have one pig which they'd kill around Christmas time. The pig was fed waste food (leftovers, vegetable peelings etc). They ate the entire pig, including the blood. Not a scrap would be wasted. But I think you are also forgetting that agriculture has improved since and people aren't hungry any more. We don't need to keep a pig and feed it swill. There's so much to go around that many people are fat. It's 100% a choice to eat meat today and if that choice involved doing the killing I don't think many would make it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago> they would have been killing every single day! Wut? A quarter of a steer provided my family of 3 with beef for an entire year. A quarter!
- globular-toast 2y agoYeah but you didn't only eat beef, and people choose the same cuts over and over (like chicken breast).
- tomcam 2y agoI did in fact go vegetarian after killing animals as a kid. I could do it now because I have a family.
- _heimdall 2y agoWe processed and butchered our first two pigs earlier this year. Its not for the feint of heart, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. We raised them from a few months old (we took them from a farm that was having to close) and did the entire processing and butchering process ourselves. The meat is night and day better than what you can buy in a store, the bacon is delicious, and we know the animal lived an excellent life and had a near instant end.
- globular-toast 2y ago"Processed". Did you personally see their "near instant end"? There is a very humane way to kill mammals actually: inert gas asphyxiation. A pig will happily enter a chamber full of nitrogen and die peacefully. If you arranged that then it's commendable. Personally meat is nowhere near important enough to me to go to such lengths, though.
- _heimdall 2y agoBy processed I mean the act of skinning, gutting, and cleaning. As far as the near instant end I mentioned, yes I did see it. I pulled the trigger myself, each pig dropped instantly. I wouldn't begin to claim that there is a humane way to kill anything. Taking a life is no small thing, though its a part of life it shouldn't be taken lightly and demands respect. I had a bad experience with attempting to use gas asphyxiation to put down a baby chick that was suffering. It didn't go well unfortunately, and though I'm sure with just the right setup it would work really well, I don't have such a setup. While we're on this subject, though very out of place for HN, I've never personally agreed with the idea that death can be humane. It seems to be a relative comparison if suffering from a third party's perspective. We never really know what one experiences when they die, we only know what we see and what appears to be suffering. We similarly assume that plants don't suffer when killed, frankly I just don't buy it. There's plenty of research showing communication between plants, why couldn't they feel pain or loss? Do plants truly not feel anything, or are they just so different from us that we don't recognize any signs if pain or suffering?
- NikkiA 2y agoI killed my first chicken when I was ~9 I think, maybe 10 at a push, my dad handed me the axe and said 'have fun'. Still eat meat.
- bongodongobob 2y agoThat is an incredibly naive statement. Most people I know can kill and butcher deer, fish, birds, etc. 99.9% of the country isn't San Francisco.
- slackfan 2y agoI see you're making wild assumptions about peoples' backgrounds, including hunger, income status, and whether they've ever been fishing or not. Check your privilege.
- jen729w 2y agoYeah! We got a couple of backyard chooks and thought it’d be eggs all the way. Three years later, and we’re taking Belinda ‘the bruiser’ to the vet tomorrow for her second hormone implant. Turns out the ISA Browns that are bred to lay have their insides just destroyed by the constant production. So you can let them die, or you can spend thousands of dollars keeping them alive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I had no idea I’d love chickens this much. They’re tremendous animals.
- tomcam 2y agoWHAT IS WRONG WIH US
- salomonk_mur 2y agoIn my country, whenever a chicken was running too old, you'd just make a great sancocho out of the opportunity.
- pvaldes 2y agoLosing chicken to predators is normal and according to plan. Fortunately they can be multiplied really fast so... If the fox cubs had a good dinner once on a blue moon is not the end of the world or something to be depressed about it.
- tomcam 2y agoI know that in my head.
- oooyay 2y agoA $20k run?! Please tell me about this. My run and coop are maybe $1k total.
- tbyehl 2y agoAre you not on any chicken social media groups? If you're paying someone else to build something with, uh, curb appeal — fully painted, metal roof, nice hardware — $20k is real easy.
- oooyay 2y agoAh, I'm not social media apart from forums. I do watch a lot of coop and run builds on YouTube though. With that inspiration I bought a bunch of tools and am in the process of revamping my stuff to fit more with our house. It has the added benefit of making the chickens more a part of our little microecosystem as well since much of it is geared towards collecting their waste and pine flakes to make into compost. Even with all the tools added in I'm probably only at $2-3k.
- tomcam 2y agoI don't trust myself to get it right. This involved many bags of buried concrete for the main structure, special hardware cloth buried a foot down, expensive lumber during its peak prices during covid times, etc. I was running a faltering business at that time and was happy to delegate.
- tomcam 2y agoI didn’t trust myself so I hired an awesome dude who did a great job. Two years later we learned mountain lions are bigger and stronger than expected.
- tbyehl 2y agoSorry for your loss. And that's kinda crazy bad luck. Every story I recall reading of a mountain lion getting into a chicken enclosure built well enough to defend against a determined racoon or fox has been a young cat strolling through an open door, not forcing their way in.