I've never been a vegetarian --- not quite --- though for the first
twenty odd years of my life I ate meat sparingly and mostly under
duress.
I blame my budding vegetarianism on pacifist parents who looked on in
amusement the summer that I decided it was immoral to kill
anything. Soon thereafter, I spent a week in the Outer Banks of
North Carolina stoically and gently brushing mosquitoes from my
skin.
And now I'm a chicken killer and soon to become a deer killer.
What happened?
The chicken or the egg?
It all started when I bought a few hens to provide eggs for my
table. I slowly came to realize that vegetarians who eat eggs but
not chickens are deluding themselves into believing they cause no pain
to another living thing.
The cycle of egg production
is rife with blood and gore, even assuming the chickens were raised
humanely on pasture. After her first year or two of life, a hen's
egg production begins to taper off and a new batch of hens must be
raised to take her place. The old hens, who could live for
another decade or so eating you out of house and home, are then
slaughtered and eaten.
At the same time, the new hens which are being raised to take the old
hens' place hatch from eggs which produce half males and half
females. A good flock of chickens will have about one rooster for
every ten hens, so the other nine roosters will go into the pot along
with the old egg-layers. Basically, that seemingly pristine egg
you just ate for breakfast sprang from a bloodbath.
Feeding the soil
So now I've probably scared all of the
vegetarians in the crowd into taking the plunge into veganism.
But consider this --- a healthy, self-sufficient organic garden is best
fed with animal manure as well as plant-based composts.
I keep my chickens in tractors which I slowly move across soon-to-be
garden sites. The chickens greedily eat weeds, scratch
over-wintering pests up out of the soil to be ingested, and fertilize
the soil in the process. After a few passes with the chicken
tractor, the ground is ready to be turned into rich raised beds for
next year's vegetable garden.
Just as vegetarianism often stems from a soul-searching moral decision,
my new belief in eating meat is based on an expanded awareness of the
agricultural ecosystem. Although steering clear of chickens while
eating eggs gives many people the impression of guilt-free protein, I
can't help but feel that the healthy agricultural ecosystem includes
meat-animals. For me, life on the farm involves meat.
Read other posts about killing and eating your own chickens: |
That's basically the same logic and thought process that led to me abandoning vegetarianism (again) some years ago. The same thing applies to all dairy products - there's no milk unless animals are born, and there are many extra males in this cycle, too.
Thanks for the chicken butchering tips. I have a dozen or more roosters around here and have to get rid of some very soon...my hens are all worn out.