Pets or ? well, you know ? | Good Faith Ranch

Posted in Animal on August 26, 2012

While I have always wanted horses, I managed to avoid keeping any animal in the ?livestock? category until I turned 50 and decided to get a trio of laying hens. Not realizing, of course, that chickens are ?gateway livestock.?

Within five years? time, I went from three slightly used chickens to 15 hard-working young layers. From a single raised-bed planter to plans for more than a dozen of them. From my childhood Breyer horses to three real ones. And, of course, from a quarter-acre suburban lot to Rancho Buena Fe?.

Coming next: Goats.

Nigerian dwarf goats, to be specific. Small, friendly and productive, with milk for cheese, butter and soap.

I mentioned on Facebook that I was getting goats, and publicly and privately I started getting word of goats who need homes. Farm sanctuary goats. Shelter goats. Mixed breed and meat goats. Because everyone assumes I?m looking for pets. Which I?m not, not really.

The only animals on this place who get a pass are the dogs and cats, and honestly, they contribute plenty in the way of emotional support and endless amusement. Everyone else (except for Bernadette The Weather Duck? and her companion, ABBA) contribute food, in one way or another. As for me, I bring in the mortgage money and I handle all the care. The rest of the animals:

• The horses get ridden.
• The chickens give eggs.
• The goats give milk.

The gardens provide food for me (and for sale/barter, eventually) with leftovers for the chickens, goats and compost pile. The compost pile gives back to the gardens.

But then, there?s the subject of meat. While I eat less and less meat over time (I?m becoming a ?Fork Over Knives? person, and the meat I do eat is largely raised here or purchased from sources I trust)? my dogs and cats are carnivores, and they?re fed that way. I have two massive freezers in the garage, and I?ll soon be adding another to accommodate serving as a drop site for SF Raw Feeders, a spectacular buying co-op that supports humane, sustainable, regional animal agriculture ? small family farms and ranches.

When I first got those three chickens, back in suburbia, I mentioned to my very sweet neighbors (two sisters who share a home) that I would have extra eggs, if they wanted them. One of them said, ?No, thank you. We?re vegans.? After a little probing whether it was a choice for health or because eating animals was unthinkable, I got that it the latter. So I said, ?You know, these eggs come naturally from chickens who live their lives to the best that any chicken could.?

?Oh no,? said the neighbor. ?We could never kill fetal chickens.?

?I don?t have a rooster,? I said. ?You?re not killing anything.?

They insisted you didn?t need a rooster to make more chickens. At that point, I let the matter drop. I just didn?t have the patience to explain high-school biology to them.

And I certainly didn?t have it to explain why feeding the leftovers of industrial animal agriculture to their dogs and cats (in a bad of kibble) negated pretty much everything they believed.

Which brings me back to meat.

I do not need to squeeze every last dime from my animals, which is why those who give a lifetime of eggs (hens), or milk (goats), or service (horses) will live out their lives here even when they no longer contribute. Beyond that, only the horses are guaranteed to never be fed to something else here at RBF. One of my dogs has killed a chicken or two, and when that happened, the unlucky hen is eviscerated, plucked and put into the freezer. She will later become dog food, fed back to the same dog who killed her. That wasn?t my plan for her, but I?m also not going to waste her final contribution by throwing her body into the trash. (Chickens who are sick I kill swiftly and mercifully, but they DO go in the trash ? I won?t feed sick animals to other animals ? which is more than you can say about a pet-food company.)

But chickens are not that hard to deal with emotionally, at least not for me. I can slaughter them, I can butcher them and since I made that leap, I stopped naming them. The two ducks ? Bernadette and ABBA ? are pets. The chickens are not, although there is always the possibility that one or two of them might become so, names and all. But as I said, barring accident or illness, the laying hens will live out their natural lives after they are no longer productive. The meats birds I?ll be raising next spring will not be. While they?ll be well-cared-for every day of their lives here, they will be raised to end up in my freezer, a few months after they come here. And I?m OK with that, too. The same goes with cockerels: We eat them here.

Pets or meat, we get to make the choice. That?s why I have a pet duck who I got after a field-training sessions ? once in which most of the other ducks died. I have no problem with death. I have a problem with cruelty.

And I really have a problem with people who cringe when I talk about killing poultry for the dogs or the table if they?re buying meat someone else killed after the animals were treated with less compassion than shown to your average end table. (I feel the same way about people who whinge about how ?cruel? hunters are, also while eating factory-farmed meat.)

With the goatly additions, though, I have to do some more thinking. That?s because (for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, such as people who believe in immaculate insemination of chickens) to milk from a goat (or any mammal) you need to breed them. The milk, after all, is intended to be given to offspring, not moochers like us.

While industrial dairies would do what industrial hatcheries do with male offspring if they thought they should get away with it (note: if you have a gentle heart, don?t look it up), what to do with males when you?re someone like me is a very big issue indeed. While the female offspring of a productive dairy goat is not problem to sell, there are not many ?pet? homes for neutered male goats, known as wethers. Then what? Goat meat is very good, but I know I couldn?t personally slaughter and butcher a goat I?d seen born. And I?m only barely able to cope with the idea of having someone else do the dirty work.

Yes, it?s the cute factor, I admit it. I don?t ever plan to have meat rabbits, pigs, cattle (even nifty small ones like Dexters) or sheep. If I can?t find homes for the inevitable wethers or deal with having them butchered for my freezer, next to the chickens I?ve killed myself or the meat I bought from SF Raw ? well, I?ll have no milk, just a goat pet.

And that, I don?t want, and can?t have.

The first wether, the boy goat I?m hoping to buy gave birth to a couple months ago, is staying, because goats can?t be kept as singles. He?ll be a pet to me and a companion for his mother. But that?s all the boy goats there?ll be here, one way or the other.

Image: The dairy goat I?m negotiating to buy now. Well-trained and well-mannered, an excellent producer of top-quality milk.

Source: http://www.goodfaithranch.com/animal/pets-or-well-you-know/

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