Eat your friends

They taste like chicken

I eat my chickens. They're delicious.

The fact I do this seems problematic for some people, and because of the magic of the internet - they get to tell me all about why they don't like it, or me, or anything I stand for, for that matter. Such is the double-edged sword of instant and widespread access to the eyeballs of people you don't know on the internet. Some love you, some compare you to Hitler.

Almost all my males? Eat em.

Females once they stop laying? Eat em.

Chickens who are mean to others? Eat em.

There are some chickens, just like every other species on the planet, who are just jerks. I eat them, too.

Our chickens are sweet, but not the brightest. At our house, they exist to serve a purpose. We raise our chickens to feed us with their eggs and meat. They are fun to watch, and some become our friends, but eventually, they will all be consumed. If not by us, we have predators who roam around the pasture.

We’ve decided the upside of allowing our birds the ability to run around the property outweighs those chickens we lose to hawks, eagles, snakes, raccoons, coyotes, skunks, and their own stupidity.

Whenever I post or talk about the fact that we eat our chicken, someone online feels the need to tell me how awful I am. Yet, they don't seem to spend the same vitriol on food bloggers posting a chicken tetrazzini recipe. It's no different. In one, I kill a chicken; in the other, they're buying it, and a part of the purchase price includes outsourcing the dispatch. Either way, a chicken dies.

Ultimately, modern people find some strange comfort in the separation of people from their food sources, as if the sanitization of the process changes the moral calculation - it doesn't. Hiding from an animal’s mortality doesn’t insulate us from our own.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CoVFH0CpvGk/

I recently posted a jokey Instagram Reel where I looked to the camera and asked, "I wonder if all the people who get upset every time I post about eating my own chickens know that our birds are made out of . . . chicken." It was a bit cheeky, as I was holding a hen at the time, but it mostly was just a reminder that our animals are also food.

In the comments, I got called disgusting by a "chicken mom." She then, when asked by another commenter, wouldn't answer another as to if she was a vegan, calling the question "pointless." It's not.

They see me as some serial killer out in the coop trying to gain the trust of my future victims. I almost responded something like, “they taste better once you’ve gained their trust,” but my better angels stopped me.

It’s as if I’m Chicken Dexter, I'm just throwing out corn and treats while sharpening a knife. In truth, I aspire to manage my animals the same way almost everyone I've ever met who raises meat does - a great and happy life and a swift, painless death.

I struggle with those who eat meat themselves but object to how *I* do it. It's a bizarre criticism - as if knowing the chicken before I eat him is somehow worse than eating a stranger chicken. There's nothing wrong with eating chicken strange, by the way; I do it plenty, too.

Because the internet is a simmering stew of people needing to share and shame those with whom they disagree, the false equivalency crew always emerges in the meat debate. They want to know if I would eat my dogs and cats - as if companion animals are the same as livestock. Nope, my labrador is safe from consumption.

Then there are the "soylent green" people who wonder if I would eat people or be mad if someone ate me. Disney has done plenty of damage over the years, particularly to a generation of women waiting for Prince Charming. Less discussed, however, is the damage from their constant anthropomorphization of animals. Animals are not people, even when you put cute hats on them.

Also, I would prefer not to be eaten. Cannibalism, like eating my labrador, is not my jam. Thanks.

I don't know if the chicken people who think I'm a monster believe that their love makes the birds immortal or if they have moved their chickens from "livestock" to "companions" in their minds. That, by the way, is perfectly fine for them. If you love your chickens and they love you and you decide to care for them until the end of their natural lives, go for it.

But, don't much on a chicken sandwich while throwing food to your geriatric, non-laying chickens marching toward a slow and painful death, and tell me that *I'm* "disgusting."