Chickens Without Feelings

I entered the chicken coop this morning to collect eggs, feed the chickens and let them all out. As I turned to my right, I noticed a bird that was lying motionless under the laying boxes. I mean really motionless. Like dead motionless. The life of a “farmer” (and I use the term very loosely in relation to myself) is sometimes a difficult row to hoe. There is life and there is death. There is sometimes pain and suffering and sometimes not. I took a moment to reflect on the life of this particular bird and thank her for her service to our family in providing eggs.

But, as these things go, there are always the practical matters that must be addressed. Carcass removal was at the top of that list this morning. I’m not so great with this sort of thing, you might be surprised to know. Dead things kind of freak me out. Plus, her legs were all stuck out straight kind of like she’d been just standing around, being a chicken, and then just fell over dead. I couldn’t bring myself to just grab her by the legs and haul her out of there, mostly because I didn’t want to actually touch her. A quick glance around the barn proved that my shovel was not present – most likely hauled off to some other part of the yard by the kids for God only knows what purpose. Still, I was in kind of a time crunch so I just had to make do. I grabbed a milk crate and then looked around for something that I could use to push her body into the crate with. The only thing I had in my hand was the feeding scoop that I use to feed the chickens.

Living on a farm you get over the whole “germ” thing pretty quickly. Most people would become faint with some of the non-sterile things that go on around here. It is not at all a rare occurrence to have the kids complain to me about having chicken crap squish between their toes. “You’re fine,” I’ll say. “Just rub it off in the grass”.

So you might think that it might not be a good idea at all to scoop up a dead chicken with the very utensil that I would then use to feed the living chickens. But you weren’t in my shoes (and work clothes) this morning so you’d have to get over it.

I positioned the crate to receive the body and took the scoop and started to try and wrangle her (surprisingly floppy) body out from under the nesting boxes. What I did not anticipate was the reaction of the other birds. The minute they saw the feed scoop they went into a sort of frenzy, assuming that it was feeding time. They trampled all over their fallen comrade in an attempt to get to the corn that would invariably be delivered.

So now, I’m pushing them away with my foot, shooing them away with the grain scoop and frantically trying to get the body into the crate. I’m also yelling nonsensical things such as “Have some respect” and “Did her life mean nothing to you?” at a bunch of chickens.

Once I got her into the milk crate, I set her up on top of the cage and went about the rest of the feeding schedule. Gave the goats and llama some hay, put some corn scratch in the yard for the chickens and fed the cat. Then, I went back into the barn, grabbed the milk crate and chucked the whole damn thing into the weeds. Gross. I didn’t really need that milk crate anyway.