Life and Death

When people come out to the farm, it looks like so much fun.  Usually the sun is shining and all the animals are at their charming best.  I love to show people around and enjoy our beautiful farm.  Lots of people have that as the idea of what farming is like.  They don’t consider having to get up before the sun and go out to milk the cow in 16 degree weather.  Or having to go out and move several tons of hay to keep it from getting wet.  Or the devastation of when the pigs get out and find something to eat that they should not.  And especially, illness or the death of an animal is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind, even if the death is a purposeful harvest.

This past week, I had a 6 month old goat kid get injured to the point that it looked like he was not going to recover.  I made the hard decision that we were going to butcher him here on the farm.  The backlash that I got from this decision was quite surprising.  Almost everyone that heard about it had a shocked reaction as though I was doing something inhumane, vile and disgusting.  It surprises me over and over again that people react in this way.

I did the correct thing.  The goat was not going to recover, we put it down and we made use of the animal.  I do no like to waste life.  To me, that is the highest form of respect that I could give to an animal that is giving it’s life for me and my family.

This just shows the lack of connection that exists between the general population and their food.  Meat comes wrapped up in nice little packages at the grocery store.  Most people don’t even know that the meat was a living breathing animal.  Nor do they realize what part of the animal what they are buying comes from, much less which animal.

I assure you that an animal killed and processed on my property is killed as humanely and with as much respect as can be given.  I can also assure you that that is not the case in the big-time packing plants.  The meat we eat comes from animals that were once living and have given their lives to nourish us.

Death is an inevitable part of life for all of us.  As livestock farmers, death visits more frequently than some of us would like, but I for one spend a great deal of time ensuring that life is not wasted.