Chickens Have My Heart

I have a chicken story to tell about today, but first, I have to share some history.

When I was a little kid, from about age 3 until I was about 11 or 12, my parents raised chickens. Yes. For meat. The first flock, my dad butchered himself. He's a man that is so full of love and kindness that he couldn't bear doing it again, so for the next several years, we loaded up the chickens and took them to a place called Golly's Locker to have them butchered by someone else. Eventually, because of lots of government red tape and bureaucracy in regards to slaughtering small flocks of birds, a lot of the lockers that butchered chickens in our area closed. So we stopped raising flocks. Because, well, no one in my family could step up and handle it.

I myself have never butchered a chicken. Or any animal. I ran over a squirrel yesterday morning and actually cried. I've been counting and it's the third animal I've (knowingly) run over in my life. I've spent the last day torturing myself over this. I also have had many vegetarian blocks in my life. Probably adding up to a total of two years, maybe a little more. My point: I love animals. I don't just think they have souls and personalities and intricate lives like humans... I KNOW they do. So loading up the chickens and taking them to the butcher has always proven to be one of the most awful events of my year.

That brings us to more recent history. My son was born in late 2011 and I started thinking, "Ummm... I don't want to feed this kid chicken that is raised commercially." And I know a lot of people consider this to be persnickety and pious. I dare you to check out some articles on commercially raised poultry. DARE YOU. If you're really adventurous, check out some YouTube videos on how egg layers in factory farms are treated. It's AWFUL. And there's so little regulation about the hormones and antibiotics pumped into these chickens, that even if they were raised in better situations without stress hormones coursing through their blood, they would be so ridden with chemicals... I mean. Why? Because of all of these factors (and because the price of so-called "free range" chicken meat and eggs is so high) we decided that we would attempt to raise flocks again every year. And then I also decided to get a small flock of laying hens and keep them in our back yard and treat them like the beautiful queens that they are. It's safe to say that my beautiful laying hen queens are going to live out their days in luxury and die of natural causes.

Now. Today. This morning was the morning. The morning where we load up the meat flock and they go to the butcher. We all have our place in the process of this. I wrangle the birds (not because I want to, because I'm good at it unfortunately), my mom puts them in the crates, my husband and dad take them to the butcher and deal with it from there. I spend every moment while I'm "wrangling" the chickens sobbing. I thank them, my mom thanks them. We settle them and pet them and cry some more. I can't help thinking about how we've raised these beautiful birds from chicks, we've cared for them, fed them table scraps and excess from our garden, made them trust us. And then, we chase them down, put them in the truck, and then, well. You know. I can't help but constantly think about how I abandoned that trust that we worked so hard to gain from them.

It's heart-crushing.

The emotion comes naturally and I feel that I deserve to be heart broken over it.

I don't want to get on a soap box here, I really don't. I do want to encourage you to get to know what you eat. I don't necessarily mean go out and buy a flock of laying hens or have a back yard garden or butcher your own cow (like I've heard the celebrities are doing now). Start small. Get a basil plant and nurture it. Or if you're constantly buying pre-cut melon, for example, buy a whole melon and cut it yourself. Buy a block of cheese and grate it instead of buying shredded cheese. Do some research on where your other food is coming from. Earlier, I dared you to look into commercial chicken farms. While you're at it, if you can stomach it, Google the article about how chicken nuggets are made. Start to understand the process and start to learn. And then continue learning.

(P.S. If you're wondering, I get closer and closer to a vegetarian diet every day. That doesn't mean we won't still raise meat flocks in the future because I don't see my husband straying from meat completely ever. I whole-heartedly believe that this the most humane way for us to eat chicken. Giving the animals a wonderful life. Giving them a clean, warm place to sleep at night, grass, tomatoes, peppers, etc. to munch on during the day, space to run, fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink... The way I see it is this. While I still eat meat, if I eat the chickens we've raised who have been given good lives, it's that fewer chickens in factory farms, living tortured lives. Okay, I'm rambling here and I'm crying again. Bye. Have a good weekend, all.)