The great chicken debate

I grew up with dogs and cats but I never willingly had pets of my own until I became a chicken lady — a crazy chicken lady. I talked to them, fed them, petted them, put them to bed at night because that is how I lovingly approached it, rather than “locking them up,” and adored that they followed me around the backyard and came running when I called.

Getting attached to a pet is fine. Is it fine with a farm animal? No. And that’s the problem.

We have raised three sets of chickens, all from when they were days old. We named them. (Don’t do that.) Ours roam freely in the backyard. They sometimes escape from the yard but have always found their way back or the neighborhood school principal has called to find out if ours were the chickens on the loose.

Yet Francois is special. She has survived two dog attacks and two opossum attacks, one that left a couple of her feathered buddies dead in the coop. We’ve had to bring her to safety when hawks of winter eyed her from 20 feet away, and again when she was just five months old and sauntered six houses down the block. When a farmer friend came to slaughter our four-month-old roosters, which you can’t have in St. Louis City, he tried to grab her. “Not Francois!” I cried out. Again, she survived. That makes what, six lives? She’s got a good three more before she transforms into an alley cat.

Chickens also have personalities, something I never knew until I had to make feeding them at 6 a.m. part of my morning routine. Francois is pushy, rambunctious and a femme among chickens if I ever saw one. She’s a scrapper, a survivor. See why I can’t just slit her throat? (We found a home for our other hen, Beardy, the cutest, gentlest little French Faverolle you ever did see. It helps that she still lays eggs.)

Perhaps you wonder why I can’t just dump Francois on some farmer willing to foster a hen past her prime. Thing is, Francois has become mean. She pecks when there is no reason, even to the hand that feeds her. I think all her near-death experiences have affected her. I’d be traumatized, too, if I’d been attacked or injured six times.

When we first got chickens, I fretted over how we’d handle the birth-to-death thing with them. I wanted laying hens, but I didn’t really want to kill or eat them. I envisioned that when we were through with them they could go off to some happy place and be therapy chickens. Who knew that mental health professionals used chickens as therapy for old and young people alike?

Thus, the special petting, putting Francois on my lap and talking to her. When I did that once while stroking her, she really did purr like a cat. There is no way she can be a therapy chicken if she’s determined to peck the eyeball of a 90-year-old nursing home invalid.

So, this whole debacle is weighing on our minds. My husband even raised the idea of taking her to an island situated between Missouri and Illinois, setting her free and letting her fend for herself since she’s proven to be pretty good at it already.

The other option, slaughter, is not fun. It’s sobering. When we slaughtered the roosters, a neighbor came over to witness it because, like me, he felt that if he was going to be a meat-eater, he should see the taking of life. Afterward, he said he needed to go home to have a beer. I needed bourbon.

There are many ways to be connected to the food world. I try hard to stay as close to the source as possible. It’s led me to the point that I have to figure out whether to kill my first pet or not. I’d rather have another nip of whiskey than decide Francois’ fate.