I was talking to a friend the other day. She’s a gentle soul, a kind-hearted person who says, “I could never kill an animal” with wide, pained eyes that let you know she’s not talking in hyperbole.
She wants chickens. She wants them bad. She wants the experience of fluffy little chicks and she wants hens to weed for her and she wants her daughter to have that mini-backyard-petting-zoo experience.
She has, up until now, not given into her chicken-keeping desires. For this I am so proud of her.
You see, there’s a reality to chicken keeping that doesn’t show up when you are scanning Pinterest for gorgeous coops. (I maintain a Pinterest board of chicken keeping and coop inspiration, by the way, if you are into that kind of thing.)
A continuous supply of plentiful eggs requires a continuous supply of hens at laying age. For us non-commercial chicken-keepers, a good rule of thumb is that hens will lay pretty consistently (with periods off for molting, reduced day length and broodiness) from about 6 months old until about 3 years old. Although you will hear a lot of anecdotes about individual hens that keep pumping out eggs until they are 5 or 6 years old, the general consensus is that three years old is usually the beginning of the end for consistent egg laying.
Call it Henopause.
“Woh. Was That A Hot Flash?!”
A well-kept backyard hen, protected from hawks, raccoons and Fido, can easily live to be 8 or 10 years old, and ages of twice that are not unheard of.
Bear with me here as I do some Urban Homesteader math. One layer hen eats about 1.5 pounds of layer feed per week. (Pastured birds will eat less purchased feed – yet another good reason to buy this book and study it before you design your coop and run.)
If a chicken starts laying at 6 months old (this is a bit later than average but it makes my numbers easy) and has essentially stopped laying by 4 years old, and lives naturally to be 8, a backyard chicken keeper is looking at 3.5 years of egg production time, and 4.5 years of Pets Without Benefits time. That’d be 351 pounds of feed going to a hen that isn’t making eggs!
Current, local prices for the layer rations I feed my hens is $28 per 40 pound bag, or $.70 a pound. Admittedly, this is a bit spendy, but I get the locally produced, happy-hippie, GMO-free feed from the lovely folks at Scratch & Peck. At those prices, it costs $245.70 to maintain a hen into theoretical old age and natural demise while you aren’t getting any eggs.
Which means those half-dozen cute peeping balls of fluff you take home from the feed store in spring could cost you $1474 during the time when they are not giving you eggs. And of course I’m not including the cost of bedding, a fractional share of the coop, potential vet bills, etc.
Meanwhile, if you live in a city or suburb, you have an even bigger problem: your now non-laying hens are taking up your legal urban chicken quota which could be filled with younger, laying hens, and you are stuck. You can’t just keep adding to your flock indefinitely when you live on 1/12th of an acre in Seattle. So now you are a Backyard Chicken Keeper without any Backyard Eggs.
If your hens are pure pets, this is all totally fine. These are very reasonable amounts of money to spend on a pet, and if you are not resentful in the least at having to buy both chicken feed and grocery store or farmer’s market eggs, then Chickens As Pets is a wonderful path to take.
There is another option, of course. This is the option you won’t tend to run into on Pinterest. It’s not the solution of a soft heart so much as a calculating head.
You can make the decision to cull your birds when they are past prime lay. This is what all commercial egg operations do, and what “real” (as opposed to “urban”) farmers do, and what everyone who makes a living and not just a hobby from animal husbandry does.
Culled laying hens aren’t good for roasting or frying but they make unbeatable stock and stewing birds.
So basically those are your two choices: you continue to pay and care for chickens that barely give you eggs or you cowboy up and you deal with the slaughter of no longer profitable hens.
Back to my friend who really, really wants chickens.
Could she kill her chickens?
Oh no. Absolutely not.
We both agree, she doesn’t have that in her. Fine, I’ve no problem with that, and I’m glad she knows herself.
Does she want to pay for chickens even if she gets no eggs?
Well, not really.
Fine, I wouldn’t either – I totally understand.
I told her quite bluntly (as is my way) that she should not get chickens.
Can I give them to a chicken sanctuary when they get too old to lay? Some place that has a no kill policy?
No. No. You cannot do that.
She can’t, and no one reading this can. You know why? Personal responsibility. Your chickens, your adoption, your decision, your responsibility to see it through to the end. You do not get to embrace the idea of a more intimate relationship with your food chain and then make that food chain – the food chain you specifically set up – someone else’s problem when shit gets real.
There is a local urban farming message board that is filled – filled – with people trying to give away their three year old chicken to a “good home.” Are you kidding me? You own the chicken. Your home is a good home. And once it’s not, your soup pot is a good soup pot. I once joked to a good friend that I could stock my freezer for the entire year off no-longer-laying hens being given away free “to a good home.”
This pisses me off, as you can probably tell. There is absolutely nothing ethically superior – and quite a bit that is ethically dubious, if you ask me – about enjoying the benefits of a young laying hen and then turning over the care or slaughter of that hen to someone else once it stops laying.
That is not how animal husbandry works and it’s not how pet ownership works, and those are your two choices. I don’t care which path you take with your chickens, but pick one. Playing Little Suzy Farm Girl until it’s time to get the axe and then deciding you aren’t up for chicken ownership just doesn’t fly with me.
Normally I am a Rah-Rah Cheerleader for this quirky way of life, and I think any fair assessment would deem me particularly encouraging to beginners. But a chicken is not a seed packet, it’s an animal and a responsibility. If you can’t cull your own birds or can’t provide for them all the way into their Chicken Social Security, then please, do not get chickens.
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My lovely ladies are still laying at age 6. Apparently they didn’t get the memo that they were supposed to stop by now. I find it’s not so expensive to feed mine because they get a lot of bugs, seeds and greens from my (small) yard, plus leftovers and scraps from the kitchen. I made sure to get breeds that are good at foraging for their own food. They’ll happily eat things that would have gone to the compost pile and then they provide me with their own contribution to the compost pile. Plus they are great for eating bugs out of the yard which by itself makes them worth having around.
I had chickens in high school, which was more my mom and dad’s idea than mine, but I ended up taking care of them, and I hated them, not just because no one else wanted to help out with the keeping of them. The smell was awful, and they were just stupid nasty creatures to me. At one point we decided to get rid of them for humane reasons (we all knew they were being neglected because it was more disgusting than any of us had imagined–none of this was spoken, but looking back , that is what I think). However, my dad was too squeamish to do the head cutting so asked our neighbor with chickens to do it for us. I was kind of insulted, but didn’t want to sound like the budding serial killer, “Hey, Dad, I wouldn’t mind killing those chickens for you, I hate them already, so no biggie.” Thus in the end I kept quiet, but I secretly itched with the desire to do it myself, since they were essentially my birds, and we watched while Bob chopped off their heads and they flopped around. It went faster than I expected, and we buried them near our compost pile. Bob said they were too scrawny to be worth cooking. My parents were too credulous, I think. I’m actually kind of surprised we didn’t try stewing at least one of those hens. Another interesting experience was when a car hit a deer near our house, and I recalled that the Joy of Cooking had instructions for slaughtering game. Unfortunately the newer editions don’t have this anymore…they were very good instructions, which we followed to the letter very successfully from 10pm to about 2 am, deer slung across the picnic table laid up at an angle. It also smelled bad, but not as bad as those birds. Venison was interesting. I can’t say I liked it, but I probably wouldn’t have tried it otherwise.
I totally agree! One of my favorite of your blog posts ( so far!).
Thank you ALL for sharing your input, knowledge and 1st hand experiences. We have just recently purchased a new home with a bit of land and I have dreamed of having chickens for eggs (not that we eat a lot of them) as well as pets. I always thought we’d just keep them until they expired of natural causes. But after reading their life expectancy and the cost of raising them I more inclined to think more about how many we will have. I honestly think that I could cull a chicken if I had to but don’t want to. I do eat chicken a nd do think my children should at some point realize and experience eating what they raise. You all have given me a mouthful to chew on and will definitley do much, much more research as to whether there are butchers that will slaughter for a fee or if I can find someone I. my community to cul them for fruit trees. I also am thankful to everyone’s kind words and non-attacking others with differing views.
If you have the courage I don’t see anything wrong with killing the hen once it can’t produce eggs. I mean, send it love, pet it, hug it, tell it you’re sorry but thank you so much, you’re grateful for the nourishment it’s body will provide you and cut it’s damn head off. Isn’t that how they use to do it? As long as you do it with love… I mean maybe let it grow some after it stops laying, I don’t know but I don’t think killing it should be out of the question. You should be willing to kill a hen if you have once or pay up.
I live in the suberbs and my husband finally let me get chickens a year and a half ago. I have Silkies and they are my pets. I have a few neighbors that take the eggs because we don’t eat them, mostly because I don’t like to cook much. If we were ever in a situatio that we had no food then of course I would shed many a tear over tasty soup, but the fact is right now we have no need. I am sure that there are more than a few real farmers out there that would make fun of the fact that I took one of girls to the vet last week and had her euthanized. The vet said she would not survive surgery, and that she was suffering. Yes I cried. My husband helped me bury her in the back yard with other beloved pets. He never even asked, just had it all prepared when I arrived home. He’s a good man.
I have no problem culling my own chickens, but there is another option here for those too squeamish to “cowboy up”, which is to have a friend who can handle doing these sorts of things come over and take care of it for you. I see this a lot in my community. You also failed to talk about one of the best things chickens supply that they can supply a lot of until they die. Poop. I actually originally got chickens because I didn’t want to truck manure to my house from far distances. The value of chicken manure to the fertility of my garden soil is priceless and something many people fail to recognize when considering the value of keeping/feeding chickens or other urban/suburban livestock.
I couldn’t agree more about the compost. Here’s a few posts I’ve done on that very topic:
The Real Bounty of the Coop (Hint: It’s Not Eggs)
The Crappy Composter’s Secret to Perfect Compost
I just came across this blog post from someone sharing it on FaceBook.
This is my first year with chickens and ducks and for now I want to believe that they are pets with benefits and I plan to let them live full healthy lives. But I know the cold harsh reality as you have stated it and I agree with you… I am doing every thing in my power to care for my animals to the degree they deserve – I took them out of the potential pool of going to a more experienced person and owe them my utmost efforts of care and comfort. If/when it comes time to put them down I want to be the one doing that as humanely and respectfully as possible. When I see that bridge on the horizon, I plan to take steps to learn how to slay them properly – but for now they are my pets and I’m not thinking about the cost analysis of it all.
Thank you for writing about your experiences, it’s how many others will learn and make educated decisions.
I have had Chickens most of my adult life and that is a long time. For the last 15 years I have approx. 75 chickens at a given time, run in 3 sets of age groups, in 3 separate chicken runs. And by age 3+ they are indeed past their egg a day productive time of egg laying for the most part. I sell fresh eggs to locals and it is important to me to keep only 80% productive birds here. When it is time I have a nationally known birds of prey person near by who takes the birds, changes their PH balance by feeding them a high corn diet and when it is time he rings their neck and in the freezer they go as is and then as needed they are food for the birds of prey that he rehabilitates. It is never easy to raise from birth to this point of decision making. I could not bring myself to do this to any other animal type but I have with the chickens. Having the numbers I do and keeping all clean & healthy is work, lots of work. It is important to keep it all real. If you need a animal fix there are many places you can go & visit to achieve that need. By just visiting or volunteering or donating can make a big difference in the places that are willing to keep this lifestyle alive for you to have that opportunity to visit.
Bravo! It seems chicken-keeping has become a fad. People need to think long and hard before making the commitment!
Love this post. I grew up on a “real” farm which included chickens for eggs and eating. Grandma and I bonded while gutting chickens in our kitchen sink several weeks every spring. (Really – it’s one of my favorite memoroes with her.) When I was around 4, my city slicker cousins were visiting and we wanted fried chicken for lunch. So, we went with grandpa to his coop and had great fun catching 2 chickens… and then he chopped their heads off. None of us kdis would eat it and Grandma was so mad! It’s funny now and a great life lesson then… People that aren’t prepared for this reality definitely do not need chickens – death is part of life.
And – each of us kids raised a bucket calf each year – named and loved, put to pasture after they weaned… one would go into our freezer, the other 2 sold with the money being split between all of our college funds.
Farming is an honest way of life – there is no sugar coating where food comes from or how much work is involved in producing it. We still as adults respect meals more than most city friends. Maybe this is why farm kids are more chill about all of this?
In this whole long thread, perhaps someone has already mentioned it, but just in case: Ask your fellow local chicken keepers about workshops for culling hens. Often someone with a larger or more rural operation and more experience is willing to lead some urban newbies through the process. I know there’s a poultry farm in our area that offers this.
Agreed – I think more folks should consider sharing resources like chickens anyhow – everyone I know with chickens has too many eggs! Personally, I don’t have them because I don’t want to worry about them when I travel, and because I get them for free from so many folks! 🙂 A volunteer-run henhouse in each neighborhood would be awesome. Any pet or livestock is a commitment and folks need to think about these things carefully before starting out.
Great piece – I agree with many of your points, however, I fear you are doing a disservice to urban farmers with one of your statements:
“This is what all commercial egg operations do, and what “real” (as opposed to “urban”) farmers do, and what everyone who makes a living and not just a hobby from animal husbandry does.”
Here in Vancouver, BC, we have many urban farms (i.e., businesses that grow food for market in the city). Some raise chickens, some do not. The farmers operate on a smaller scale and under different challenges and constraints than conventional farmers, but make no mistake: these are not “hobby” farmers. Farming consumes their days, evenings and weekends and pays their bills. To trivialize their work as anything other than “real” farming undermines their efforts and plays into existing stereotypes of agriculture that prevent good people from trying to do things differently.
Wow, that’s good to know. I’ve thought about starting up a chicken coop for a while now without realizing that hens only lay eggs for so long. Hmm… food for thought…
I love animals… let me tell you, of all the pets I’ve had my 4 hens are by far the most cost effective and productive. Unlike my dogs who crap up my yard, dig holes, eat my plants and have to have an expensive non grain diet because of allergies. My chickens cost me $15.00 (for a bag of 40lb layer) for food every 2 1/2 months (I don’t know where you buy food but $28.00 is ridiculous) The composting for the garden with the droppings works great. For a family of 3 we do not have to buy eggs until late November and they start back up in February. So here’s the break down: I would normally spend $3.00 a week on eggs (or $12.00 a month). When the hens are laying the food cost me less then $7.00 a month. I’d say that is a savings of sorts. They are work but if you have 10 minutes a day to spare it’s really an enjoyable hobby. As for my rotten dogs I love them too but it’s not the same joy collecting dog poo as it is finding your first egg 🙂 Read up, and enjoy if you choose to give chickens a try 🙂
thanks for this post – I was thinking about keeping chickens for eggs, but I am going to postpone doing so. Instead I gave some money to a lovely woman who brings me fresh eggs every other week. She has a huge flock and says she enjoys sharing, but I know feed isn’t free! in addition to work involved.
Tawanda! I totally agree.
You certainly have a new blog follower..first the crocks (how I found you) and now this… I’m excited to read more!
I’m getting ready to move to the rugged and rural western upper peninsula of Michigan from the Detroit area and am getting ready to go from vegetarian-for-11-years/vegan-for-7-of-those-stressed-out ICU nurse to farmer/hunter/forager. It has been a momentous year of transitions for me to say the least, but I’ve recently gone from being a devout vegan to being a locavore/freegan/mostly-tofu-lentils-veggies-eater, who eats meat only from what she catches and kills herself. I’ve started by delving into my much rusty fishing knowledge from my dad and foraging local plants with the guidance of author Samuel Thayer..I’ve caught, filleted and sauteed bluegills and sunfish so far this year, serving them with garlic mustard pesto.
I’m currently training with a compound bow to start hunting deer and small game this fall. I also plan on having fowl and processing them myself when the time comes. Reading this post makes me feel better about my decision, helps me cast away the uneasy vegan ethical superiorist in my head that is dying away more and more each day. It’s been a hurdle, confusing and cathartic, undertaking this gustatory journey, but necessary. I’m figuring out my new relationship to animals, my boundaries.
Thank you for being another of my guides on this journey!
This is a great article and really touched on the main hesitation I have about getting chickens. I don’t know if I could butcher them or even hand them off to someone knowing that would happen. I did however also read that post you did about a year ago about how your chickens provide you with almsot $300 worth of compost every year. Would you say that benefit out weights the cost of keeping them?
We are new to backyard chickens and after doing a lot of research I knew this would be an issue for my children. I intentionally have names to my chickens that would help us never forget their inevitable fate. We have a BO named Sesame, Aussie named BBQ, RIR named Teriyaki, Buckeye named Peanut, another RIR named Honey and last but not least are our BSL twins, General T’so and Kung Pao. We do have two silkies that are pets so their names are Grover and Elmo.
We recently added 3 baby turkeys and named them, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter.
I just encountered an interesting solution to a common problem… Two of my adult birds went broody, just AFTER I’d already started raising some new chicks as well. I figured I’d get them some fertile eggs to raise, just a few, because I hate the thought of ‘breaking’ a broody hen. Figure out what to do with the ever-increasing size of the flock later, right? Well, I contacted somebody that I’d bought fertile eggs from before, and it turns out that she has a ton of eggs that she wants hatched, and would rather them be under a hen than in the incubator! So my hens get to raise some babies, without increasing my tiny, urban flock. I never would have thought.
Overall, my plan is to just retire the girls after they finish laying, but I do have a friend that will now only eat meat that she knows how it’s butchered– no slaughter houses– essentially vegetarian now. So if I end up with some roosters, I may donate them to her diet…
I read this the day it was posted and just listened to your interview and was inspired to come back to comment.
Why I love this post is simple: Accountability. Six weeks ago someone tossed two hens into my backyard in the middle of the night. One was injured and the other was visibly stressed. I was angry beyond belief that someone would stoop so low. I am now a bit more passionate about the subject than I was when I began raising hens, but that is my experience and I feel I can complain a bit. Take the responsibility, whether that is to cull them yourself, hire it out, or passing them along to a willing participant.
Thank you for a fabulous post!
Hens are great if you just want someone to eat insects out of your garden, provide fertilizer, be a pet and a source of entertainment. Eggs should be a secondary benefit if you don’t want to kill a hen you and your children have gotten attached to for 3 years.
We have backyard chickens on an urban lot and plan to keep them until the end of their natural lives. They are pets with egg benefits. The coop will support 5, we started with 3 and I had the idea that we would add on when they stopped laying (I do like the benefits!). Well, we lost two to raccoons when the girls didn’t come in one night, and then we bought two pullets because you can’t have one hen by herself…then the survivor of the original 3 died, and now we have 3 chicks in the brooder to bring our flock to 5. (Two hardly feels like a flock, but they do go around the yard together. ) I wonder when we will wind up maxing out at 8? We’d have to build another coop. There is an in-joke among chicken people called “chicken math” which explains how you wind up with a lot more chickens than you originally planned. Everybody does it 🙂 Needless to say we are not in chicken-keeping for the financial benefits. But they are a help around the yard, they make lots of compost, and the kids love them…frankly I spend a lot more time in the backyard with the girls there for company.
Re: Life, Death and Backyard Chickens!
In 2013 our population is more urban based than ever; life is fast and furious. Stuck in our urban landscapes, the mythology of going ‘back to the land’, even if it is only a tiny bit, is tempting. The heart tells us we will slow down, enjoy nature, raise our chickens, scramble our eggs, and life will be so much better with this rural addition to our lives.
In reality, the chickens will become one more check-mark to accomplish in the day. Feed the chickens, feed the kids: go, Go, GO!
I wonder if there are as many people who, enamoured by the sight of little fluffy chicks say, “Awwww…I wish I had chickens” as there are those who hold a new-born baby and say, “Awwww…I wish I had a baby”. Sure, they look cute when they’re little…but I don’t think there is a parent out there who, after tucking their screaming, bawling, snot-running, tears-streaming 2-year-old under their arm, heard the words, “Awwww…I wish I had a 2-year-old” trailing them as they fled out of the store !
If people really, REALLY want chickens, start at the ‘end’ and work your way forward. If you want to be a good parent, you learn as much as you can from books, friends, family, etc. To do less, to enter into any endeavour without doing the necessary homework, is to do a disservice to chickens and children alike. Spend time with chicken owners; not a half an hour, but several days. Find out how much it hurts to get pecked! Get poop on your shoes!
In the article, which BTW I loved, you mention how your friend “wants the experience of fluffy little chicks and she wants hens to weed for her and she wants her daughter to have that mini-backyard-petting-zoo experience.” And then, because she does not want her chicken to be killed, wants it to just ‘go away to a good home’.
Based on these parameters, your friend has made the decision to shield her daughter from so many opportunities to experience some important facts of life: 1) cute fluffy chicks grow up into big chickens with beaks and claws, 2) caring for any living creature is a lot of work and responsibility, 3) poop happens – its what you do with it that is the important part, 4) sometimes the pets, or people, we love die. Death is a part of life. 5) The decision to get a chicken also means the eventual goal to kill the chicken.
It’s wonderful that people are becoming more vocal in what they want in their food choices, but at the same time, they are extremely removed from the actual, hands-on realities of the daily raising of livestock and poultry. Their life, death, and preparation as food is foreign.
A great example of this is a TRUE story a friend shared with me…My friend regularly received eggs from a local farmer. One day my friend offered to bring in a dozen eggs to her co-worker. Horrified at the thought, her co-worker turned up her nose in disgust and said, “Your eggs come from a chicken’s BUM!” My friend, completely bewildered asked, “Well, where do you get your eggs?” “From the STORE!”, her co-worker replied indignantly!
Your friend, in wanting a nice, fluffy egg-laying, happily-ever-after chicken will probably be very happy to hear that Kentucky Fried Chicken is going ‘boneless’. Their research has found that people find that dealing with the bones is a pain and a bother, so KFC is planning on removing ALL the bones from their chicken pieces. My creative little brain tried to imagine the future of poultry farming…perhaps farmers will have to roll their blobby, round, boneless, feather-balls-with-beaks from one area to another?! I can see it now: ‘Deluxe chicken coop with tilting floor deck’!
Chicken bones, chicken poop: it’s all messy! Life… all forms of life doing life makes mess! Even one-celled amoeba put out waste product! But it is in the mess of life that we have opportunity to experience all that it has to offer: the good, the bad, the cute and fluffy, the large and smelly.
If someone wishes to raise chickens in their backyard – give ‘er! But do so with the intent of learning and experiencing the whole life cycle. If the excuse to have chickens in your back yard is just so you can have eggs…stop playing mind games with yourself that you are doing the world a favour by sacrificing your backyard to ethically raise a chicken! Save the guilt, hassle and inconvenience, and take $2 down to the store for a dozen eggs…just remember they came out of a chicken’s BUM! LOL
I think that you are projecting a false motive onto urban chicken keepers. While I’m sure *some* of us are looking to “slow down” or go “back to the land”, most of us aren’t so delusional. I for one was fully aware that adding another dimension to my life was not likely to slow it down any. And really, the day-to-day ‘work’ of chicken keeping is not that big of a deal! “spend 3 days with someone who keeps chickens”– seriously? They’re less work than an outdoor cat. Fresh food and water, collect eggs, repeat daily. On the other hand, yeah I do actually think that raising my own chickens is doing the world a favor. Why wouldn’t it be? If more people did it, the world would be off.
Great post with excellent points. As a breeder of heritage poultry, (Buckeyes) who lives on a farm, I think this addresses a lot of things I hear from people on a pretty regular basis. Yes, it’s hard to contemplate killing a chicken you have grown to know over time. No, you should not name your chickens, frankly. Making a pet out of a bird if you aren’t going to keep it for its entire life is a bad idea. And selling it means you’re handing off the responsibility for its end of life process to someone else (who may use it for nasty things, as others have suggested.)
The other thing to be aware of is, it is NOT cheaper to farm your own eggs. Better, yes. Tastier? No question. Free from hormones and antibiotics? Absolutely. Hens that are treated humanely? Sure, as long as you do so. But cheaper? Never. You’re never going to beat the price of a factory farmed egg, just can’t do it on a little homestead, urban or rural. But you can wind up with quality food you’re happy to eat that’s healthier for you.
Well said. For some people it is better to get their eggs, chicken, pork, beef, etc from someone else. There is no shame in that. This reminds me of a cartoon I have on my list to draw:
Hen packing her bags says to friend “Well, I’m retiring and off to a Good Home.” Split panel shows the stew pot on the stove.
We keep hundreds of chickens for their organic pest control ability. They eliminate the black flies, mosquitoes, deer flies and other pests around our farm. We have about 400 pigs on pasture. The chickens follow the pig herds, breaking up the manure patties and smoothing the soil. As a bonus they produce tens of thousands of eggs which I cook for our weaner piglets to help transition them from suckling to grazing on pasture. In the fall and winter we eat a lot of chicken, culling down the flocks. The chickens we winter over eat pastured pork – the remnants from our weekly slaughter of pigs. The pigs make it through the winter on hay (stored pasture) and whey. We buy no commercial pig feed nor hen feed / grains since during the warm seasons they get the vast majority of their food from the pastures.
It’s an interlocking cycle of life. Life involves death.
-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in Vermont
I wonder why you pointed out the reality of owning backyard chickens, and then said you have to kill them when the laying part of their life is over. That is pure ignorance. We don’t kill dogs because they are costly, and I have to say I worked in a vet clinic, and people shelled out thousands daily. They are a loving pet that will be loved until they die a natural death. I chose a chicken for a pet to love and educate my children about animals, and the eggs were the bonus. I clean their coop daily and give them fresh fruit and feed and spend time with them. And yes I am busy, mom of 3 small children and I take classes, who is not rich by any means. I think what you should have pointed out was if you have no time or money for a pet, regardless of the species then don’t do it.
I never said “you have to kill them when the laying part of their life is over.” I did say:
“If your hens are pure pets, this is all totally fine. These are very reasonable amounts of money to spend on a pet, and if you are not resentful in the least at having to buy both chicken feed and grocery store or farmer’s market eggs, then Chickens As Pets is a wonderful path to take.”
But not everyone thinks chickens are pets, or that the eggs are just bonus. And for those that don’t, they need to consider their own plan for when hens slow down or stop laying.
I agree that your friend needs to understand the responsibilities of caring for animals to the end, whatever that end may be. HOWEVER, I think telling her that she should never own chickens is going too far and is putting your own belief system on someone else. There is always someone who is willing to take a mean rooster or old non-laying hen and dispatch that bird humanely and responsibly. I’ve done so several times and have friends who keep chickens who know they can call me in such a situation. We personally keep our girls to the end, whether they’re laying or not. They’re our friends as much as our dogs and cats are. They may not give us any “profit”… however, they give us joy and friendship. I’m happy to pay for that and many others are, too.
We cannot ignore the parts of ourselves, as human beings, that are sometimes opposed. We are BOTH practical and emotional. There are myriad ways to balance them.
This is an interesting piece. May I suggest for your next one “never get a cat”. Its a worthless pet that in fact produces nothing but waste. The average life span of a cat is 13 years over which time at a cup a day, it will consume 890 pounds kibble. That comes to 52 bags of the uber expensive Hills Science Diet, which retails for about $44 a 17 pound bag or $2303.51 not to mention the cost of litter. The Blue Buffalo Naturally Fresh Multi Cat Clumping Cat Litter (34 lbs bag) retails for $36.00 lets say you can stretch that bag out for a month, thats another $5616 of expense. leaving off the vet bills, and adoption costs, fluffy will cost you $7919.51!
Thank You. I was like your friend–wanting chickens, for the wonderful farm-fresh eggs. But we are gone alot, have neighborhood foxes and racoons, and I am not opposed to offing the non-layers if I don’t have to do it myself. SO, I will just support our local chicken people and buy their eggs, and let them deal with the nasty parts of chicken ranching.
I LOVE this article and will pass it on to my idiotic neighbors who want the ‘farm experience’. As a teenager I worked on a farm and had to go put the ‘no peck’ on the pheasant that was being pecked to death in the barn by the other hens. They are vicious animals en masse. I personally have no trouble killing them and eating them but wow do my neighbors get incensed when I suggest we eat the old ones when they want to give them away. How do they think they got in the grocery store? I am personally baffled by this dichotomy. When we raised rabbits at home in the 1960’s we came home to rabbit stew made by my grandmother. They were pets sort of but after awhile they were dinner.
It doesn’t put me off the idea of chickens at all. I would be fine with either keeping them on as pets or eating them. And the laying longevity does depend a bit on the breed.
I LOVED your article here. Describes my one acre “farm” err yard exactly. My kids once helped butcher 30 tyson type chickens in two or three days. We were able to get six chickens from feather to freezer per hour! Right now our Plymouth Rocks, Buckeyes, and Hamburg population is down due to a wild dog on a rampage while we were away at Thanksgiving. But there is peeping in the kitchen in the hatchery. Most of the roosters of all the breeds will ultimately be in the freezer, and the soup pot is for those who have entered “henopause” (love that term you coined! BTW I love kale 🙂
Don’t forget – if you play your cards right, those birds will be producing high-quality manure you can use in your garden beds and a potent fertilizer. Not to mention, backyard poultry make for incredible, all-natural pest control. Not all is lost, should you wait a bit on slaughtering. All in all, great points. Thanks for the post.
This all totally makes sense to me! A couple years back, my sister started raising chickens for our local FFA chapter. I wasn’t too psyched about it (those chickens all look so sick), but I went along with it. I was in high school at the time, so I ended up helping out only a bit. We ended up overpaying to have a bunch of stupid little broiler chicks grow into fat broilers, a lot of them died from their weird broiler problems (gaining weight too fast, diseases from over-breeding, whatever it was), and she never showed them at the fair. Fine. I could handle that.
We got eggs from a few of them after about 1.5 years of them doing nothing. It was hilarious, because the guy who sold them to us told us that the egg-laying was practically bred out of them, so they’d likely not lay eggs at all. Well, they did and they were huge. So we had that.
Then a friend of mine was like, “Oh, I’m gonna buy chickens and become self-sufficient and organic! Never mind that I’m a vegan, I want chickens like you!” I was too young to know for myself that it was a bad idea, so I just said okay and let her do her thing. She ended up having all roosters (which is HILARIOUS because she was convinced she’d have eggs by the end of the summer). Her neighbors found out and she had a week to get rid of them. She gave me three and I took them, thinking I would help her out.
One died, and the other two ended up fighting once the weaker one realized he was bigger. We sold one to a friend and kept the other until he eventually committed suicide due to the untimely death of his favorite hen (our sister’s dog’s pup got it). As you can see, there has been loads of tragedy when it comes to the chickens.
Well, I finally took over this year. I graduated college and didn’t have a lot of job prospects, so I decided to take care of the chickens. I ended up doing things I never thought I would do. I was herding chickens for awhile, I played rooster for some wayward chicks who kept getting picked on, I bought another duck for our lonely female, I’ve pulled tons of weeds and dug up earthworms for my babies. I even took the time and money to troubleshoot the lack of eggs and realized it was the lack of calcium, so I bought all the necessary supplemental stuff for the chickens. It worked and suddenly, I was Chicken Farmer Laura, handywoman and farmhand with a small side of graphic designer. We started getting eggs and I was like, “Yes! Take that, biatch!” (My sister said that they were just pets but now they were multifunctional!)
For the first year ever, we have had three mothers hatch chicks, a grand total of 16 out of 17 surviving. And I have done so much research on my chickens and how to better their lives (and my own). Hopefully, we’ll have some baby ducklings as well, since my broody hen has decided to steal these eggs, and my little bantam brahma mama stole a single egg that is vastly too big for her, haha! I’m totally content with how things are going.
But reality has to set in at some point. I’m aware that we have too many roosters right now. At 5 adult roosters, unless I had 60 chickens, I know this won’t work. So I have to butcher at least 2, sell one, and leave my big Rhode Island Red and my tiny bantam brahma frizzle roo (’cause he’s gonna be used for mating purposes with our silkie). And I know realistically that rotating the hens (butchering the older hens so the younger hens can take over) will be my go-to method for making sure our flock stays reasonably sized.
That being said, I get looks of horror from my urban family members when I tell them that something’s gotta give and it can’t be my wallet. My little sister took on this responsibility. She follows through sometimes, but ultimately, it’ll be me who has to take over when all this butchering business comes to pass. When people ask if she’s okay with it, she just looks at me and says, “Well, I’m not the one doing it and I won’t eat any of the chicken. You have to ask Laura.” It’s what I truly hate about this entire thing.
I love my chickens (they are mine now; I don’t care what she says, I have put in the effort and the love, I’ve adopted them), but I am also realistic. I’ve given them a life that I wish all chickens could have. They’re safe now, free to graze and eat/drink their fill of nutritious food and they have the occasional treat. They can lay and brood when they want. I’m so happy when they’re happy. But when the time comes for them to pass the torch to the younger generation, they’ll be humanely butchered for canning.
It’s something that I wish some people would understand. I don’t do this to be cruel or to be a “murderer”, as I’ve been called by a self-righteous vegetarian (she’s the only one I know who is self-righteous, so I’m not labeling all vegetarians/vegans). I just know that I can’t realistically keep 60 chickens with only half actually producing anything. But I can be thankful for their lives and for their deaths and the sustenance they will provide for me and my family. I think that’s all we can do when we take full responsibility for our choices.
So yeah, thanks for this post. I get very frustrated when someone says they want chicks but they won’t take full responsibility. Grinds my beans. Hmph.
I loved this post. My husband and I bought a house in an urban area about 2 years ago that already had a couple of chickens and a coop on the property. We knew we wanted chickens so this was a bonus for us, but because we were kind of handed over the chicken ownership with the house we didn’t really have time to prepare for the gruesome reality of raising chickens. That first winter, we lost a chicken to a raccoon and it became painfully obvious that we needed to get serious. Then we got some pullets and our dog (a 22 lb schnauzer) decided to break into the coop and make them his dinner. So we learned. We lost more chickens that first year then we were able to keep alive. We had our first rooster and subsequent rooster slaughtering experience (roosters are illegal in city limits here). We recently lost a hen who was egg-bound and we couldn’t save her in time. Now, in year two, we are finally cruising along. We’ve decided the remaining chicken who came with the house–Enid, will be a “pet” chicken that we will happily feed and keep until the end of her days. She is the sweetest little lady and so gentle with children’s hands–in particular the little neighbor girl who feeds her night crawlers through the fence. 🙂 Any others are fair game for the stew pot when their time comes. It’s been a tough road (especially for my husband who is surprisingly more sensitive to chicken death than I am) but we are finally getting the hang of it! Raising backyard chickens is definitely not for the weak of heart!
Amen! This is exactly mirrors how I feel about people who breed their pet dogs and cats – my family’s done it several times (we don’t do purebred anythings, just healthy mutts with good traits we want to pass on). My siblings and I were raised with the understanding that if you let your pets breed, any kittens and pups you can’t find good homes for will be your responsiblity for the rest of their natural lives. So, if you have some adorable kittens, and your classmates love them and adopt them 4 out of 5, that fifth kitten (who’s maybe less cute or not as cuddly) will be your pet for the next 15 or so years, rain or shine. You take on that responsibility when you decide not to spay your pet. Heck, we took on that responsibility when we took in other people’s spayed or ‘male’ cats…and then watched them give birth. -.-
Wheeww…and I thought I was negative sometimes! Too thought out.
Totally late to this conversation, but here goes:
We made the decision to have chickens not only for layers, but for the excellent stewers that are made when they’ve hit henopause.
We have 4 layers currently, at about 1.5 years old each. One went broody, and she is now sitting on a clutch of 12 fertile eggs that I bought off of Craigslist. We hope that this weekend (and next weeks) upcoming hot weather won’t kill the eggs.
That being said, we also used to raise meat rabbits until our doe quit producing. Old doe & buck went into the stockpot as well. We kept their son, and will be acquiring a new meat doe tomorrow.
We feel that the only responsible way to eat meat is to raise it ourselves. Even with Temple Grandin’s additions to the slaughterhouses of the United States, we feel that the meat supply in the USA is too sick, dirty, over medicated and inhumane to feed to ourselves and our young daughter. Lets not to forget the monetary cost of humanely raised, pastured, heritage breed meat, which is hard for people one one income to procure.
We live in the middle of a very poverty stricken neighborhood in a municipality in Washington State. We don’t care about the laws regarding slaughter. All slaughter is done away from prying eyes (or noses), in a clean area inside the well-ventilated garage. For our rabbits we use a pellet gun, quick, clean and quiet. Our chickens we will be investing in cones. We have made it a point to thank each animal that has given their lives for our table, and we try to provide them with the best life possible until dispatch – Fresh clean water daily, green grass, non-GMO feed, and plenty of love. Yes, we’ve named our birds and our rabbit breeding stock. The baby bunnies are sadly referred to as dinner after our first litter when we made the mistake of naming one of the babies. That baby was the hardest to slaughter out of that group.
I raised pigs as a child and the only thing I couldn’t bring myself to watch was dispatch. I still have issues with dispatch and luckily my significant other has taken it upon himself to dispatch our animals in the cleanest, and most painless way possible.
When it comes time to dispatch our chickens I will probably be more than a little sad. The feathered dears are so funny to watch, and so friendly towards us and our neighbors. I think the only way we would keep a non-laying hen is if she went on permanent brooding status. Who needs an egg incubator when you have mama hen who will do the job twice as good?
The jist is this: Humanely raised eggs and the resulting meat should be a staple in our American way of life. Sustainable, healthy, and humane. During WWII Americans were encouraged to grow food, raise a flock of chickens and be present in the raising of their food. In our economic times, why should today be any different?
It seems like trading some of your non-laying hens to a butcher is a perfectly reasonable option. They get free chickens that they didn’t need to raise and you get rid of excess chickens.
Thank you for this insightful post. I had been romanticizing the notion of having chickens until now. It’s good to see the reality of owning chickens and I love how you pointed out the fact that you can not give away your chickens to a “good home”. I think I’ll stop wishing for chickens now because I couldn’t kill them, either.
We live “Semi-rural” in not quite a half acre on a small street with about 12 other homes. We have had our six “girls” for about four years now and they haven’t shown signs of slowing in production. They roam the back all day and herd themselves into their house at night where they are locked up and safe from predators. They are a kick to watch and they follow me all over the place when I am outside tending the garden. They also poop everywhere, but I hose off the walk ways at night and keep fly traps at the corners of the yard for summer flies that they attract. Our cats and tortoises are fascinated with them and we have never had a problem…ever! As much as we enjoy them, I will have no problem culling them for food when the time comes! My folks grew up on farms and that is what you did! I like the life cycle lesson here and it is great to eat food that you know where it comes from.
Thanks for writing about a subject I find fascinating, especially with the recent link glut of articles about abandoned chickens doing the rounds on facebook.
Because I volunteer at a place where there are a lot of wannabe-country-folk (like me), and suburban hen keepers, I actually have thought of the idea of having to deal with livestock, be they big or small (I want to grow our own meat some day). Most of those wannabe-country folk have the attitude that their poofy silkies and plumed Polish hens are their pets, and the eggs are a convenient bonus. Very few of them have the attitude of thinking of their hens as food. I’m not surprised, if a couple years down the road, those cute little hens will be more of a burden than a joy for them.
However, although I’ve euthanized injured wildlife, and I’ve never had to kill an animal for food. Back when grandmothers had hens and rabbits, I was too young to learn the skill of respectfully dispatching of your dinner before cooking it. This is where another approach comes in. I’ve started looking around for people who could teach me.
Someone on Facebook linked to a video titled “respectful chicken harvest”, featuring the start to finish processing of a hen. You can imagine my surprise, when I realized the lady’s within a half hour drive from where I live. The woman in the video is a lady called Alexia Allen, of Hawthorn Farm in Woodinville, WA, who, as she herself says, has the reputation of being “that chicken lady”, who takes in hens for her stock pot.
For bigger livestock, there will be a Seattle Meat Collective opening later this summer, (the first one was the Portland Meat Collective, and the Olympia Meat Collective), that teach DIY butchering techniques to people who want to learn, so if I want to buy half a pig, or later raise my own, I know how to render it into familiar cuts.