Yesterday, we took our meat birds to the slaughter house. Actually, Tim took our meat birds to the slaughterhouse because I was working, and he took these pictures.
It's always an awkward process. In the morning one starts with healthy birds balking "good morning," and by the afternoon, they're in the freezer. Tim had to chase them around the coop to catch them, and they scream in terror when they've been caught. It's like they know what's going down. He said that they were eerily quiet in the car, as if they were just waiting for their death sentence. I have a hard time looking them in the eye on slaughter day. They are alive after all, and soon they will be dead.
Still, we are meat eaters, and we have to be comfortable with what we're actually eating. The 16 birds in our freezer, raised by us from the first day they were born, will provide the two of us with 40 or so meals throughout the seasons. They ate mostly bugs, supplemented by some organic chicken feed. The day before, they had been practicing flapping their wings, and the boys had been strutting around. They lived a good life, and now they'll serve ours.
