I talked to a guy the other day who raises certified organic chickens and sells their eggs for $8-10 a dozen. He's got about 60 chickens with his son and makes about $6-7k a year off of it. So it's the kind of small, family run operation that seems so traditional and wholesome in our society.
He told me a possum got into the chicken coop the other night and killed a few chickens, which meant the others would be too stressed out and he wouldn't get any eggs for 2 or 3 days. I asked if that happened often and he said it did. Apparently possums usually tear up and eat the chickens haphazardly. Raccoons often just open up the skull eat the brain. Foxes will take the chicken away to eat.
Apparently one night a raccoon, or multiple raccoons, got in and killed 30 chickens.
He sets traps for them now, one that grabs onto their arms when they try to reach in for the bait. He shoots them, or more often his son does in the early morning before football practice because the father's work schedule has him away nights and mornings. When his son doesn't check the traps sometimes he finds the raccoons still trapped at the end of the day, which he doesn't like to see because he knows they've been suffering, sometimes in direct sunlight on a hot day. On occasion there will just be an arm in the trap because the raccoon chewed it's own arm off to escape.
It sounds like a great deal of casual animal violence and suffering for a small amount of money and food. And this is about as good as it gets. We all know it's a lie when people claim you don't have to kill animals for eggs but that discussion really reinforced how even the nicest-seeming types of commercial farming necessitates constant suffering and violence.
He told me a possum got into the chicken coop the other night and killed a few chickens, which meant the others would be too stressed out and he wouldn't get any eggs for 2 or 3 days. I asked if that happened often and he said it did. Apparently possums usually tear up and eat the chickens haphazardly. Raccoons often just open up the skull eat the brain. Foxes will take the chicken away to eat.
Apparently one night a raccoon, or multiple raccoons, got in and killed 30 chickens.
He sets traps for them now, one that grabs onto their arms when they try to reach in for the bait. He shoots them, or more often his son does in the early morning before football practice because the father's work schedule has him away nights and mornings. When his son doesn't check the traps sometimes he finds the raccoons still trapped at the end of the day, which he doesn't like to see because he knows they've been suffering, sometimes in direct sunlight on a hot day. On occasion there will just be an arm in the trap because the raccoon chewed it's own arm off to escape.
It sounds like a great deal of casual animal violence and suffering for a small amount of money and food. And this is about as good as it gets. We all know it's a lie when people claim you don't have to kill animals for eggs but that discussion really reinforced how even the nicest-seeming types of commercial farming necessitates constant suffering and violence.
