I’m Jayden. I am fourteen years old and the eldest son in our family. Taking care of our animals is my job. I am also in charge of culling them, and I help out with the gardening.
This blog post is about something we all must deal with as homesteaders: death.
I’ve found myself having to deal with death in new and unexpected ways.
In my experience, I’ve found that there are in general four kinds of death. These four are split between two main categories as outlined below.
The main categories are Wild and Homegrown.
Wild
- Pests: wild animals that are harming you or your animals
- Prey: wild animals to feed you, your family, or your animals
Homegrown
- Planned: the animals you raise to feed you and your family
- Unplanned/Unexpected: the animals you raise that die prematurely (old age, sickness, predators, or other people)
It has been good for me to have experienced these deaths, and I’d like to share my thoughts about them with you.
Wild: Pests
Wild pests are those animals that intrude on your property and either harm you, your animals, or your plants. Some of the pests we deal with are rats, squirrels, and racoons.
These animals might kill or wound your animals, eat their feed, or ruin plants.
I feel that the dispatching of these animals is the easiest of the four kinds listed above, as you will likely develop some sort of animosity towards them and just can’t wait for them to be gone. You might feel nervous, excited, even vengeful. It’s all OK. That said, causing these animals unnecessary pain, evil though they may be, is not good; they are as much God’s creation as you are. However, there was this one time …
Anyway, the conclusion is this: you have to be OK with this kind of death. This is the least difficult, or most bearable kind of death to endure. So if you can’t handle this, you will not be able to stand the others.
Wild: Prey
The other kind of death in the Wild category is Wild Prey. These animals usually are herbivores and may or may not be ruining your garden. You kill these animals to either eat or feed to your animals (chickens love meat). Prey we have around here are rabbits, birds, and squirrels. I haven’t actually eaten any squirrels and don’t really want to, but if times get tough they might become a valuable food source. Animals like those can go into either the Pest or Prey categories, depending on what you do to them after you dispatch them.
These animals that you kill to eat might not be harming you in any way, so killing them will be harder. That is good. It’s not good to be a bloodthirsty monster and start killing animals left and right. These prey animals deserve to be honored by being put to good use; you should not kill more than you can eat, which is wasteful. It is best to be thankful and acknowledge God’s hand in providing food for you and your family.
The first animal I ever killed to eat was a rabbit. It had been eating all of our sweet potatoes and digging holes in the ground. One night, as we were eating dinner, we spotted it digging in our garden bed. I grabbed the pellet gun. My dad and I approached it carefully, but it ran away, turning the corner of the house. It was at the fence gate, sniffing at the hole it had been using to get into our property. Quickly, I took aim and fired; the rabbit jumped up, dead. The bullet had gone straight into the back of the head, so it was an immediate and painless death. My legs were shaking, and I couldn’t believe that I had done it. In the next ten minutes, I watched several videos on processing rabbits. Right after, I went out with a knife and skinned, gutted, and separated it. We have a video of it below. We then cooked it into a stew.
Killing animals to eat is hard, but it will be a source of food when things get rough. There is no better way to use the animals God created than to use them to feed his greatest creation: humans.
Livestock: Planned
Now we move on to the first kind of death in the Homegrown category: planned death. The animals in this kind of death are ones that you kill to eat. They might be animals raised specifically for the purpose or perhaps they might just be bad; they might hurt your other animals, be bad parents, or have bad genes. These animals could be rabbits, chickens, quails, pigs, or ducks. Practically any animal that you raise that can be eaten might end up in this category.
I feel that it is best that you have animals specifically grown for this purpose. This allows you to make decisions about how to raise them and your interactions with them so that culling them won’t sadden you too much.
Some tips I’ve found helpful are:
- not naming them
- naming them after various food items
- choosing animals that are bred to be very ugly or mean so you won’t grow to love them
However, the fact that you spent money and invested time on these animals might make you not want to kill them, but that’s the whole point of why they were raised. They’ve lived their life, gorging themselves on food and growing fat, and now they’re going to help you keep your family alive. All of that money is going towards giving yourself clean, healthy food.
Recently, I culled a quail for the first time. His name was Victor and he was my sister’s. The reason we decided to cull him was that he was a big bully. He had torn part of the eyelid off of one of our other cocks and was very aggressive to both the cocks and the hens. At the time, we didn’t have another cage to separate him so the only option left was to cull him. After giving him just water for 18 hours, I culled and processed him. It was very sad, and I find no joy in killing animals (except for rats). However, my sister laughed as I killed him, which was very odd, but I think it was her way of dealing with it.
Anyway, although it may be sad, raising and killing your own animals is necessary for you to be self-sufficient and healthy; you never know what is in the meat at the store.
Livestock: Unplanned
The last, and worst, of the four kinds of death is the unplanned death. This is when one of your animals dies from old age, sickness, predators, or even malicious people. Unfortunately, this is inevitable. Victims of this kind of death may be chickens, pigs, goats, horses, cows, quails, rabbits, or any other animals you raise.
In my opinion, this is the saddest kind of death. Most likely these animals were meant to live; you may have grown close to them, gave them food, and loved them. Then suddenly, they’re gone, their life ripped out by a bobcat or withered away by illness. It’s sad at the moment. It’s sad later on. You count your chickens or goats and, with sorrow, remember that one of them is no longer with you.
Recently, we had one of our chickens die. She was a part of our first ever batch and was my sister’s chicken. We think she had sour crop but it acted really fast, and she died within days. It was very hard on my sister; Ruby had been one of her favorites. However, Ruby’s death motivated us to be more focused on preserving our living chickens’ health.
This last kind of death is terrible. But life goes on. Don’t let your animal’s death be in vain; let it correct you so you can prevent further unfortunate deaths.
Conclusion
Homesteading is hard, physically and emotionally. However, although there is hardship and death and sorrow, there is also hope and joy and happiness with your living animals. Enjoy them while you can. Enjoy your family while you can. When someone dies, we grow to appreciate others more and love them even more. It is more than worth it to homestead. You may get knocked down, but then you get back up again.
