Saying Good-bye to Our Adult Flock

Good-bye Sweet Hens...
posted by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

This week, a number of us -- both Learning Farm staff, as well as some of the students from the Montessori Adolescent Program -- participated in the pre-winter slaughter of the Learning Farm's adult chicken flock. These were the Bovans Brown chickens that we purchased as adults last fall from Sandhill Family Farms, so these hens have been with us for just one short year.  

Because Bovans Browns are a hybrid, bred to produce a lot of eggs, we started seeing some reproductive issues during the past few months as these hens approached their second year. For that reason, we decided not to offer these birds for adoption as we have in the past, but to slaughter the entire flock instead.  

This is the third chicken slaughter that I have participated in at the Learning Farm -- and I have participated with mixed feelings every time.  It is not an easy thing for me.  I don't think it is for any of us.

What follows is a reflection that was written several years ago prior to an earlier Learning Farm chicken slaughter.  It was written by Eric Carlberg, the Learning Farm manager, and the farm educator for these Montessori students.


Chicken Slaughter Reflection
by Eric Carlberg

For me, it’s not easy to kill the hens I’ve cared for over the last two years.  It’s not easy to write about either.  During the last couple of days, as I’ve begun to gather the necessary supplies to organize a processing station, gathering and organizing my thoughts into a clear message has proven more difficult.  But I believe it is every bit as important.

One hundred years ago, the majority of Americans still lived on farms.  Most 12-14 year olds – the age of the students who will help with our slaughter – would have seen and probably helped with the killing of farm animals.  They would have known these animals well, feeding, observing, and carting off their manure on a regular basis.  This intimacy with the life and death of animals would have conveyed what I find to be an uncomfortable truth: animals die so that we can continue living. 
         

Today our relationships with animals are full of contradictions.  We spend tremendous resources protecting their habitat.  We spend hours marveling at them and sometimes petting them in zoos.  We invite them into our homes to become part of our family.  We watch movies and travel to theme parks portraying animals that think, speak and sing not like actual chickens, mice and hyenas, but like human beings.  As a culture we are anthropomorphizing animals to an unprecedented degree, and yet, we are eating more animals than ever.  And we usually place those animals in living conditions exponentially worse than when most of us raised and killed them ourselves.

In many ways the Learning Farm exists to illuminate these contradictions.  We strive to shrink the tremendous gap between the food on our plate and the sacrifice, by animals and humans, needed to get it there.  Slaughtering our chickens every two years provides one of our best learning opportunities.

The adolescents that will help end the hens’ lives know the animals.  They have fed them regularly, receiving the chorus of coos hens make when food arrives.  They have washed, packaged, cooked and eaten their delicious eggs.  They have helped me move their fences and wagon around the farm so that the hens’ manure will nourish next year’s crops.  They have protected the chickens from predators.  And alongside us, they have analyzed the shrinking egg production graphs and feed costs and concluded, as farmers do, that at this point in their lives the hens are placing an unsustainable financial strain on the farm. 

They will feel as sad about this as I do.  And on the day of the slaughter, because they know the chickens, because they appreciate all the hens have done for us, they will help me give the chickens the most humane death we can.  It won’t be easy.  And it shouldn’t be.