[bibs]

We have just booked one of our heifers into the abattoir. We've done it before with our two steers-  and we keep pigs for meat too. Am I alone in finding this process getting harder to cope with ?? Having a small holding has changed my thinking about death and dying - not only in relation to my animals , and how the food I eat is produced and cared for - but also in relation to my own mortality and living responsibly. My husband says that at least we know that our animals have just one bad day in their lives ... the day they die.... and every animal we raise in our own way , in our own time , is our answer to the 'system'. Having done everything thing we can to make life good for our beasts I am finding it harder to come to terms with the last day and the final 'process'.  Any thoughts??
Bibs

[Frieslandfilly]

I dont think it does , it certainly makes you think a lot more about what you are eating and how much of it you consume and if you would be better off as a veggie, but the answer to that lies within yourself, I personally would not want to give up meat so the way I look at it is ' at least I know how they have been reared and what they have been fed ' a sentiment that customers who buy from me share. Its a tough one because you are more aware than the general consumer of the process and you have a more personal involement and attachment to the animal concerned. Conclusion......no it does not get easier....reason.....because you care. x x

[little blue]

I like your husbands phrase, "one bad day in their lives" etc.  Can I adopt this as my mantra for slaughter day please, we will be raising pigs for meat for the first time soon (they're not even born yet!)

[Power Poultry]

I get my head round it by telling myself they have had a great life till that point and had a life many livestock never get to see even so called free range.

As a smallholder you have given them large grass paddocks and the best care and there not just for meat that you shoot the sick.

I care for all my stock and would do anything in my power to help them but we have them for a reason.
.
Chicken a prime one the s**t they are given before death is horrid but ours are all true free range not  1SQM per bird outside place. Pluss for eggs

We now have sheep and I am sure I will feel the same with them at leaste we will not have to kill them oourselfs.

You really are doing the right thing you gave them a fab life and thats a credit to you.

[Sylvia]

I don't find it gets any easier. Even the thought that there are chickens to kill in the morning keeps me awake at night.
Do you find that you eat LESS meat than before you kept your own?

[Rosemary]

I get less attached to individual animals than I used to, so yes, I find it does get easier. I'm less sentimental about them - they are here for a purpose. If I wasn't going to eat them they wouldn't be here at all. And they don't agonise about death the way we do.

[Hilarysmum]

If the jouney and the slaughter are properly done then its not even a bad day then, just a final ending. 

[bibs]

Thanks all - getting my head around it again ....

I don't find it gets any easier. Even the thought that there are chickens to kill in the morning keeps me awake at night.
Do you find that you eat LESS meat than before you kept your own?

Sylvia , I probably do eat a bit less. I was veggie ( principles only not dislike of meat ) for 15 years. Now we do our own meat I often sometimes want a couple of meatless days. But the meat we do eat , we are so much more aware of its life and death. Much more tuned in. I think , if anything , I wish my beasts didn't have to go in the trailer and go to the abattoir. I wish a slaughter man/woman could come and do it on our smallholding. I don't know if this happens at all. Where I am ( farming community in Dorset ) we are miles from the nearest abattoir ...it's amazing really with the number of animals in the area.
Bibs

[sheila]

All things must die ,including us but knowing that doesn't make it any easier. We haven't been able to eat chicken since we started keeping them as we see them as beings in their own right. We do eat other meat but we seem to have cut down an awful lot. It's good that you feel the way you do. It means you will never be cruel to your animals so as people have said they have had a happy life.

[darkbrowneggs]

It's a pity they have to leave home to be slaughtered, before all the restrictions I always had my animals killed at home, and I think as far as they were concerned to be caught and killed was the same as being caught.  And just think, the stress of going to market would equal the stress of going to the abattoir, and most people would cheerfully send animals to market (not me I would add, I have never sent an animal to market, and I would rather them be killed when I know they have had a happy life)

I always go with them to the abattoir, and they have gone in happily (many years ago the abattoirs were often  uncaring and sometimes cruel, but they have put a stop to that now)

It does get easier, the first 2 pigs I had were the most difficult, I had allowed them to become friends, and although I ate and enjoyed the meat, killing day and a few days after were very bad.

But I think its best to have a sensible attitude if you intend to eat meat of any sort.  I would rather eat my own chickens for instance, that have lived for at least 6 mths, eaten well, had a stressfree life in the sunshine and freshair, eating and running about, than say I couldn't eat a friend, but then have chicken mcnuggets or pie or curry, made from some unfortuante bird reared in China or Eastern Europe, and killed after 42 days in the gloom and sometimes filth of a broiler shed, and treated as an inanimate profit making object.

All the best
Sue
Dark Brown Eggs