When You Have to Put an Animal Down

One of the hardest things any pet owner must do is make the painful decision to end an animal's life. That is most often done by injection at the Vet's. But what if you had to do it yourself?

Without going into the (blessedly non-gory) details, I had to euthanize a sick chicken (not any of the ones pictured) a few weeks back. It was harder than killing a wild animal, something I do with varmints or, for food, with deer.

Our Vet performs necroscopies, which confirmed cancer as the culprit for the creature's visible pain.  It's not likely systemic to our flock, but we are keeping an eye out.

That's only the fourth chicken we have lost in four years, with two to heat and another to a sudden illness, but it's the first where I had to end the animal's suffering. We really think so little of chickens, don't we? Those nuggets hardly seem to have come from something that once made noise and walked around, though industrial-production chickens lead lives of horror.

For many of us, however, the most personable pampered hen lacks the warm feeling of a loyal dog or purring cat, but they do have individual personalities and often follow you around clucking for treats.  We don't eat our birds, so they have become pets even after the flock grew to nearly 20 animals, with our first rooster and about 7 more hens on the way.

Chicken keepers may have a tough time finding Vets to treat a bird, unless one lives in town where urban chicken-keeping seems to have replaced beekeeping as the ecological hobby du jour.  I phoned one of those in-town vets and they treat animals but do not do any postmortem exams. Luckily, our  country Vet here was more than happy to assist.

As for the death of the hen, it was painless for her. There's a great blog post here with advice I used to euthanize the bird. When I have to process my surplus roosters I cannot re-home, I'll use the same technique. No hatchets or helicoptering for me. I treat living things with respect, and the method shown really keeps the animal comforted and tranquil until death. Yes, a chicken will thrash after severing its spinal cord, but that's involuntary. The deed is done and if animals go somewhere after they leave this world, our hen made the passage.

Since we began raising chicks, I've not eaten any chicken. Oddly, euthanizing the bird bothered me little more than killing a fish for supper. But I'm not quite ready to eat one of our flock.