Tags
Once again, I have gotten myself into a predicament. This time it was deciding to get eight Cornish cross chicks this spring.
For those who don’t know, Cornish cross are chickens, the type grown for meat, not eggs. They grow freakishly fast, in a commercial farm they are butchered at eight weeks. The chicken you buy at the store is this type, btw.
So I thought why not get some and raise my own free range meat, right? And now, they are twelve weeks old.
Perfect, right? Not exactly…
Well for one thing, they are darling. They run like fat little dinosaurs across the yard, following me like pet dogs.
For another thing I am missing something critical, and that is someone willing to kill them for me. 
I may end up with 20 pound chickens who are so fat they can’t walk if I don’t figure something out soon…
Turns out I am more of a gatherer than a hunter.
Chicken dinner, anyone?
Notes From a Red Pill Girl 
RPG,
It doesn’t surprise me. Do they all have names? You may want to discuss it with someone both I and Farm Boy can recommend.
https://thiryfarm.com/
RPG, get them a pet fox, that ought to work well
Lol re pet fox! Actually last time I did this I ended up with a 50 pound turkey! I felt too guilty to eat him but the coyotes did not have the same dilemma. I jinxed him, too… The day before I said, “that turkey is so big he walks like Godzilla! I can’t believe the coyotes haven’t got him yet.” Well that night they did and he was so big they had to come back the following night to finish packing him off
I hope thast he gave them indigestion.
And right there, milady, you allude to the unspoken virtue of men – that they are comfortable with violence.
Saracen III … I wouldn’t say it exactly that way. I think RPG pretty much just spoke the truth.
MEN are hunters … WOMEN are gatherers. There’s a difference. Men don’t make good gatherers … but they can gather. Women don’t make good hunters … but they can hunt. Gathering doesn’t require violence. Men can do that. Hunting requires violence … WOMEN aren’t so good at that, in fact most women can’t do that at all.
Does that mean women aren’t comfortable with violence ? Yeah, I guess, in a way … its just that they were never designed with that in mind. Its not a defect … its a feature.
Men are much more comfortable with killing … especially game/animals. Does that make them horrible ? Or is it designed in … a feature.
Kinda reminds me of the convo I had with the GF on Sat. We were discussing “putting down” pets who were old and in ill health. I helped my mother (as in … I did everything) put down her elderly cat. He was a cool cat and he’d been around for years, but his health was failing and he had health issues from which he’d never recover. At 17 he’d lived a pretty good life. It was time. So I set it up, picked up mom and kitty, took them to the place, had it done … with mom holding back tears. Drove her home. PAID FOR EVERYTHING. All mom had to do was show up. And make no mistake … mom knew it was time too. So anyways, GF said she has had to put pets down before too … but prefers they keel over and die of natural causes. No matter how old they are, no matter how much they are suffering … she won’t put them down. Can’t do it. And she said … that after they pass … sometimes for weeks … she inexplicably breaks out in tears when she thinks of them. Think a dude would do something like that ?
It is interesting, this idea that men’s willingness to commit violence or ability to hunt without feeling conflicted or however one puts it is definitely an advantage, as much as it is vilified and shamed in our culture today. There are women who hunt, or who can kill a chicken without blinking, but they are pretty rare and I don’t think it’s because of social restrictions or whatever people might blame so much as it is an inborn thing. After all women bring life into the world, makes sense men take it out? In any case there are certainly men who would not relish the idea of killing a chicken, but if someone’s life depended upon it there are probably few men who absolutely couldn’t.
That said these chickens are really cute, even guys I know who hunt on a regular basis won’t for some reason off one for me! Luckily for the chickens, so far… 😉
My grandparents had a deal, grandpa offed it and grandma took it from there (cleaning and defeathering.) it seemed to work to divide he labor and share the results every Sunday! Fried chicken, BBQ chicken, baked chicken, etc…
I do have a feeling that were these chickens truly the only source of protein around, I would be able to get past it and off them in a heartbeat. Maybe it’s that too, nobody HAS to kill them? I dunno… That and Americans are so far removed from our food sources that we don’t even know how it’s done anymore, which is not good IMHO.
Food comes from a grocery store it does
Yoda,
That doesn’t always work out so well for me.
I hope that you watched it all. He is a very good customer.
RPG,
To be honest, I wouldn’t want to kill them either. Can you trade them for laying hens?
I’m pretty sure that farm women killed chicken all the time, back in the Olden Days.
Also, there were (and probably still are) tribal people where the ‘privilege’ of torturing captives to deal is granter to the women, and captured in Kipling’s lines:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
…so maybe the perceived aversion of women to violence is at least partly cultural.
oookay RPG…I have stifled my snickering somewhat….to make a clucking feather duster into dinner is simple and effortless. Just imagine it nice and brown (fried, baked, roasted, bar-b-qued) and wring it’s neck. done deal.
No butchering cows, pigs or sheep is a tad bit more complicated but every bit as rewarding.
I have an offer from an old-timey neighbor to teach me how to do the deed properly… Now I just need to pick a date!
DF: “I’m pretty sure that farm women killed chicken all the time, back in the Olden Days.”
I liked the Kipling Quote. Amusing story: I have known a pair of very cute identical twins who are fairly well know for a particular variety act they do for big parties, on places like the Tonight Show, and at charity functions. They are very sexy and have a lot of fun with what they do. Several years ago, when we were all younger, a friend called me from a comedy club suggesting I come to meet him Right Now! He’d met these identical twins and they were really attractive and they did this particular sort of act (description deleted for privacy reasons but it’s NOT X-Rated) and, and, and …
Basically, he wanted me to show up so that he could isolate one twin from her potentially cock blocking wing-sister in order to see if there was some potential there. I just laughed and laughed. I told him I’d known them for years and that they were great but, though they did a very sexy act, they were very traditional and while he might eventually get somewhere with one or the other, it sure wasn’t going to be that night. He was a bit put out, especially once he realized I knew them and that I’d be doubly good at pealing off one sister … I don’t think he cared which one and for the record, with twins, that’s a mistake!
“Traditional” in this case means growing up on a farm and living in pretty rustic conditions.
The next day he called back to fill me in on the coffee they had allowed him to buy them after the show. “Do they really kill their own chickens?” He gulped. “Yes,” I told him. “When they are back at their parents home they kill their own chickens.” For me, it heightened the allure. For him, always a bright-lights big-city boy, it was a bit scary. I think all the time he was trying to make a move he kept hearing the sound the cleaver makes when it hits the chopping block …
RPG,
I have the feeling that, once you are led through the process. you’ll feel more comfortable withe having laying hens. You feed them, and they give you eggs. Then, you, you feed them some more.
Gratuitous feel good animal video.
Why the chicken cross the road it did?
To become the neighbor’s chicken it would
Silly chicken. Must have thought they were having a party.
“Why the chicken cross the road it did?
To become the neighbor’s chicken it would”
Chicken was looking at the GPS tracker upside down it was,
Lost it got, most certainly it did.
Why farms need men.
In the last week thanks to the cats I have recovered in the house and disposed of
3 front ends of mice
Half a bunny
A live squirrel
A bat (I think)
And various amounts of what Mrs refers to as Critter Haggis.
Dealing with the unpleasantness of “the circle of life” is just one more thing that shows gender is not a social construct.
Cat!!! Damn It!! What is that you’re bringing in now???
@AK: “… twins who are fairly well know for a particular variety act they do for big parties, on places like the Tonight Show …”
I’m familiar with a set of blond twins who meet your description. Wonder if they are the same twins. I was in the Home Depot on Van Nuys Blvd in Van Nuys, CA 5 years ago or so. Met them coming out with a fair amount of carpentry kinds of stuff. My twins are the type that you think they would just bat their eyelids and get some strong man to do that for them. If my twins are your twins, your story helps flesh out my Home Depot experience. Why have someone else do it for you if you can do it yourself.