The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done

Growing up, you experience a lot on the farm. Although I grew up surrounded by corn and soybeans, I had an understanding of life and death. We had lots of barn cats and lots of predators: coyotes, foxes, our dog… Basically, I knew that death was something that happened and was an inevitable part of the food chain.

[Fast forward to my final semester of college…]

I’m responsible for my county’s Chick It Out program (as you may have seen evidence of on my Facebook page) and this week was hatch week. The idea of the program is to teach students about agriculture by placing an incubator in as many third grade classrooms as are interested and giving students the opportunity to watch the chicken eggs through the three-week incubation period and hatching. Through this time frame, students learn about the life cycle of a chicken and are exposed to agriculture.

This year, there are 110 dozen eggs throughout the county. Of course, not all of the eggs will hatch- one breed has a 95% hatch rate and the other has a 65% hatch rate. It’s life; every egg that is fertilized will become a chick. Sometimes the eggs aren’t fertilized. Sometimes the egg just “quit”, meaning the embryo stopped growing for some reason. Sometimes the embryo grows but doesn’t hatch. Sometimes the incubator was too cool or too warm or too humid or not humid enough. It happens.

Hatching day is exciting, even for a 21 year old! I setup a live stream of the incubator in my office online so I could watch from my college campus when I couldn’t be in the office. I was glued to my computer when the chicks were hatching and rushed to the office every free hour I had to see the new chicks.

While most chicks will be cute and fluffy and run around the brooding box and prefer to use the food dish as a standing spot or quiet napping place, sometimes these chicks don’t come out of the shell the way that they are supposed to. I’m talking about chicks that didn’t develop normally.

I went into the office today to make a few quick phone calls between classes and found a chick that was separated from the small flock in the aquarium sitting in a box on my chair. A teacher brought it to the office because it was lame and the other chicks she had were picking on it. If you don’t know much about chickens, you need to know that they are mean creatures. Bored chickens will gang up and pick on the weaker ones, pecking it or pulling out its feathers. Basically, a lame chick mixed in with the rest of the chicks will be harmed and maybe even killed by the others.

This chick had no eyes. Based on the way it held itself up and later couldn’t even stand up, I would guess that it wasn’t all the way developed on the inside either. I don’t know what caused this, but I do know that the eyes are the first thing to develop and that this was very unusual. It had access to food and water, but didn’t take interest when shown where it was. I later figured out that it couldn’t open its beak.

As I said earlier, I understand life and death. Personally, I’m okay with eating animals. I respect that others don’t feel the same way, and that is their choice to make. I’ve been in operating slaughterhouses and I’ve seen animals killed. I kill scary spiders and weird-looking bugs that make their way into the house. I’ve witnessed our dog kill a kitten. But today, I did something I’ve never had to do.

I’ve learned about animals and animal welfare. I acknowledged that the chick was deformed. I knew that it probably wouldn’t survive the week because of its deformities. I knew that it would suffer and eventually die a natural death. I knew I shouldn’t let it suffer.

Farm animals are not pets. Farm animals serve a purpose. They are alive because we intend to use them for their meat, milk, eggs, hide, etc. They are killed in a manner that is determined to be the least stressful for them. Everything is used; their sacrifice is not wasted. Chicks are not pets, no matter how cute and fluffy they are.

I killed the chick with no eyes tonight.

With my situation and my experience, the least stressful method would have been to cut off the chicks head- a swift death. I couldn’t do it. I stood there with a pair of scissors in one hand and the chick in the other, but I couldn’t do it. My remaining options were to drown it, freeze it, or allow it to die a natural death. My ranking of least stress on the chick put drowning it as my next option.

Let me completely honest here- I didn’t want to do it. I stalled all day hoping that it would die on its own. Finally, I had to do it. I picked up the chick from its box and cupped it in my hands. It finally stopped peeping for the first time all day and laid its head down between my palms at the base of my thumbs. I got attached. I couldn’t do it. I had the bucket filled with water and a plate next to it to hold it down, but I couldn’t do it. I cried some more. I apologized to it over and over, telling it that it wasn’t its fault that it had been born that way. The right thing to do was to put it down. I gently lowered it into the water and held it down with the plate. And I cried some more.

I feel that I did the right thing. I don’t regret killing it. If it would have been older, I don’t think I would have been so emotional about it. Maybe if I wouldn’t have waited all day thinking about it and had just done it right off the bat it would have been easier.

Tomorrow, the chicks come back to the office to be given to people who will raise them. I know of at least five lame chicks coming back that will need to be put down. While I love this job, this is definitely the hardest part and I dread having to go through this again. I can only feel for the farmers and ranchers that have to go through situations like this with their livestock. You have to do what is right for the animal. As a farm kid, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.