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?

It's illegal to caponize cockerels under current UK law.

I don't see what's wrong with eating birds you reared. Personally I'd probably buddy up with someone else who kept chooks and swap, but that is pure squeamishness.

How did they compare to a supermarket chicken?
The irony is that the supermarket chicken often tastes "better". A proper free range high welfare chicken, especially a cockerel, is usually quite a lean and sporty animal. Good for a stew / coq au vin, but challenging as a Sunday roast.

When I was about 5 a neighbour friend's dad who kept chickens invited me to watch their about-to-be-sunday-lunch being beheaded. He let it go after chopping its head off and it ran 30 feet across the yard spouting a fountain of blood from it's neck before colliding with something and falling over.

I'm not sure I needed to see that, but on the plus side, I've always know exactly what "running around like a headless chicken" meant.

The same joker invited me to view my friends bedroom, which had been redecorated with vertical red and white stripes covering the walls. He told me he had used red-and-white-stripe paint. I must have looked skeptical, because he invited me out to the garage so he could point to a tin of paint as proof.

Vegetarian friends are allowed to feel queasy, meat eating hypocrite friends need to shut the fuck up

Have you just registered to post about something which has the potential to be controversial? To bother the vegetarians maybe?

Cool story bro.

a capon is a castrated cockerel. Please do not google the procedure, as it is definitely not something humane by current animal welfare standards (spoiler: a cockerel's sexual organs are internal rather than external).

What?!

It's worse than I thought - I thought they just hormone-ised and de-sexed them that way . . .

There’s noting humane about killing an animal!

@SchadenfreudePersonified
No, the "testicles" are actually cut out from a living bird, which is then left to heal and fatten. It is quite a barbaric practice, and I am glad it is banned (I saw it performed in my childhood - I am not from the UK).

Pumping hormones probably would also work from the technical perspective, but I cannot see how it could be economically viable.

OH grew up on a farm and regularly ate his pets. He remembers once eating a Sunday lamb roast and asking his mum if it was fluffy.

I grew up a pescatarian in a city which is notorious for its hippy community, I eat meat now but am a massive wimp about it and couldn't eat a chicken I'd seen, which I think it's terrible really.

Wish I could be as realistic!

@LST the lambs sent for slaughter are about 6-7 months old, weaned for ages and are at about the age of sexual maturity, so not cute little bottle-fed babies (well they are still cute..). I think it's because we just call anything under a year old 'lamb' so it makes you think of cute little fluffy ones rather than just a younger sheep.

Yanb any more unreasonable than any other meat eater

Have you just registered to post about something which has the potential to be controversial?

Eating chicken is very much not controversial.

'Humanely dispatched'

FFS. What bullshit.

Have you just registered to post about something which has the potential to be controversial? To bother the vegetarians maybe?

If people are upset at the thought of OP enjoying a few cocks in the privacy of her own home then there is always the choice to just move on without reading any further.

OP, I would just ignore your friends who are horrified at the idea of eating a cock. I would love three plump, fully grown cocks all to myself.

No, the "testicles" are actually cut out from a living bird, which is then left to heal and fatten. It is quite a barbaric practice

That sounds brutal mentat.

While I eat very little meat myself (I was vegetarian for years), I don't think I have the right to harangue anyone else about their diet - however, I don't think that ANYONE has the right to be cruel to an animal.

Every living creature has the right to as good life and as kind a death as we can give it.

OP's cockerels doubtless had the life of Riley until they were quickly and (comparatively) humanely despatched. If you are going to eat meat, that's how it should be.

If they're feeding you, you should treat them kindly - you owe it to them.

Your post made me feel like heaving.

I am not sure whether it is a good idea to advertise your lack of empathy.

I once went with my mum to visit a friend who was hand rearing a lamb with the help of her grandson. I asked her what the lamb was called, she said she didn't know as it was Royston's (the grandson) lamb. My mum said I went quiet, and it wasn't until later that I said I thought Doll, the friend , was very cruel, not only was she going to eat the lamb but was already planning how she was going to cook it.

Not a common name Royston, easily confused with roasting......

if you didnt see them as pets then do as you wish-theyre hypocrits if they eat meat

And yes I have been a vegetarian for twenty five years. I could not kill my own chickens and eat them even if I was a carnivore....it is kind of twisted assuming you must have built up some relationship with them, an affinity even.

My Bf father's killed and cooked her pet rabbit and she was forced to eat it, we were 14. I have never forgotten it. To me this is no different.

I’m a vegan because I can’t much see the difference between eating my pet dog and any other animal. BUT if I had to eat meat for medical reasons (as everyone predicts will happen to me) I would prefer to eat meat that had lived a natural life, not kept inside, bits lopped off and squashed in filth. I have no way of knowing how the meat that arrives at my plate lives but you do. You are confident that your cockerel was cared for and unaware of its impending death. Your friends are struggling to deal with the reality of eating meat. That doesn’t make you an arsehole.

@PolPotNoodle I am quite aware how old lambs are when they are sent for slaughter. Thanks 👍🏻

Of course its fine. I grew up on a small holding and lovingly raised many an animal that when then ate.

Eating chicken is very much not controversial.

Yawn.

YANBU. They're your birds.

I've been vegetarian for flipping years ( 40 years to be exact)
A few years ago , one of my male guinea-pigs died in my arms (he'd been to the vets literally hours before and I knew he was not good but I wanted him to pass at home)

I did look at his little tubby body and think "In Peru , I would eat you" and weirdly the thought of it wasn't abhorrant because he had a good life and a good death.

Chickens if I reared them myself , knew they were well kept and humanely dispatched ..maybe .
I can see no wrong with what the OP did ( but you'd have to cook the stringy little beast a while though)