I ate a chicken..

[Vamoosh]

I keep hens for eggs, we acquired the current hens and cockerel because a friend was moving house and couldn’t take them. One of the hens was broody last year and hatched 3 chicks that turned out to all be male.
We have recently had them humanely dispatched and I prepared them and ate them. They have always been free range in our garden so have had a decent life and a stress free death.
A few different friends have been appalled that I’ve eaten my ‘pets’ and have reacted like I’ve cooked up my dog! (I will add that all of these friends eat meat!!)
AIBU for eating the cockerels?

We did much the same when a friend had so many cockerels she gave them away to anyone who didn't run fast enough

We kept them, read up on feeding them and the quite happily ate them.

Not nasty, just expedient.

People are ridiculous. YANBU and I bet it was delicious.

If you’d become attached to them and seen them as pets I guess that would be one thing, but the reality is that is where meat comes from. It seems hypocritical to judge you for eating them if they also eat meat themselves. People seem to disconnect the idea that the chicken fillets they’re buying at Tesco came from actual, living chickens.

If your friends eat meat then their argument has absolutely no grounds! I’m a vegetarian and I struggle to see an issue with this- they were acquired accidentally rather than just being bred for slaughter and while I wouldn’t have done it myself I can see little issue

Are you Yasmeen from Coronation Street?
Personally, I couldn't do it, but add long as they were humanely killed, it's probably better than buying supermarket chicken

People don't seem to realise that most cockerels will be killed anyway. Better that they had a purpose in death rather than going in the bin.

I think that’s pretty much the most moral way to eat meat! Do your friends think the meat they eat is treated with anywhere near as much care and good health as yours were? Ridiculous. Your situation is the idea way to eat meat.

What would she rather you did with them? Just kicked them as chicks like happens commercially?

I bet it was delicious. Like chicken actually tastes like rather than the tasteless version we mostly eat.

This sounds like the best kind of eating - unless you are vegan. (Hen: free-range - well-fed - cared for during a healthy life.)

Of course it seems a bit harsh now that we are all used to being so far from the beginning of our food-chain but this was standard in my parents' earlier lives.

(To pacify your friends, next time you need to eat a hen, remember first to create a little grave in your garden - with a lovingly engraved headstone. Refrain from discussing good chicken recipes for a while after the 'funeral'.)

Meat's meat. They're pathetic hypocrites.

My friend’s dad slaughtered their goats and hung them up to drain in their garage.
Kids didn’t know they were to be eaten and thought they were pets, we were traumatised aged 9 by this 😂😂😂
But chickens? I couldn’t get worked up about

It's better than buying one from the supermarket by far. I'm vegan so would say you're being unreasonable for eating any animal but wont vote becuase that's not what you're looking for.

As far as I'm concerned, if you eat meat from the supermarket, you dont get to take a moral high ground over any other meat consumption.

We have a cousin who rears animals, pigs, sheep and various birds. One year he gifted my mother in law a pig and we ate it. They rear their animals mostly from birth as they breed and then slaughter and rinse repeat yearly.

I found it odd to begin with but how else does meat get produced 🤷‍♀️ so got over it quickly.

Well, at least you didn't eat a flying rodent from a wet market in a Place-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.
YANBU

Why would you not eat it - it's a chicken (a species bred to be eaten and produce eggs). You're hardly going to have it as a house pet.

They used to breed rabbits for food during the war. Where do these people imagine meat actually comes from?

We got a lamb from a farmer friend when I was younger - it spent a glorious summer in the field at the bottom of the garden then provided many glorious meals. It's life.

Yabu not to tell us how many meals you made from it surely being high-welfare means it lasted you two weeks of meals?

“ We did much the same when a friend had so many cockerels she gave them away to anyone who didn't run fast enough ”

😂😂😂😂

I wish we could stop using the word humane and slaughter in the same sentence it can never be humane. Can you imagine standing in line waiting to be killed?

It depends - if you had a chicken flap in the door, had given them names and let them sit on your knee in the evenings while you watched telly, or knitted them little wing cosies, I would say you were a right bastard to kill and eat them.

On the other hand, if they had always been destined for euthanasia (because I imagine that cockerels, fight and make a lot of noise as well as being too bloody male to lay eggs), then I think they are just re-paying you for all the corn and an easy life they've enjoyed up until now.

They sound as though they've had a much easier death than they'd ended up in an abattoir, or a fox had got them.

Did they taste nice?

Just as a matter of interest - how do you "humanely despatch" a rooster?

Grab and twist

Aren't they called capons? Cockerells? I'd eat it. I find them nicer than chicken