so i live on a farm. mostly horses now, but when my grandmother was growing up it was a ‘working’ farm; cattle, chickens, some goats and I think a few sheep. Mosty cattle though.
when Ive been around, we’ve mostly just had horses and birds. horses are another story altogether but I’ve never been able to look at birds in the same way.
around 8/9 years ago, a boarder of ours bought a whole bunch of different kinds of birds, and set up pens for them and whatever. i think rhe agreement was that we’d split eggs/meat/potential profit as well as caring costs. we had a lot: silkies, turkeys, chickens geese, and ducks. We had two female geese and one male duck already, but everything else was new.
We had several laying hens, and 4 male meat chickens. 3 of the males were terrors. they would honestly attack anything and everything that moved to the point of harming the other birds and being a risk to our other small animals (a mini pony and cats and dogs). As is what is likely to happen when you have animals that are just too cruel to do anything else with, we slaughtered them. In our backyard my dad, the boarder, and my grandma all had a chicken. My dad had already lobbed their heads off (sharp axe, one clean blow each. they didnt suffer trust me), had let them run around, and now they were being plucked.
Mom and I, being city kids, had never really seen this happen before so were outside too, watching and chatting and asking questions, and then the turkeys spot us.
we tried to keep the turkeys in the pen we made, honest. and for how stupid they were it really should have been easier than it was but lemme tell you we couldnt keep them inside, especially when they saw me. i was Food and Water Lady and was rightfully worshipped.
turkeys catch sight of me, all 4 or 5 of them at this point, and they come gobbling. they know who feeds them. they stop though, when they catch sight of the discarded chicken heads in this ever growing pile of feathers.
they didnt eat them, didnt strip them down or destroy them or anything like that…They fucking played some version of soccer or something, i swear. it was like women’s rugby but with three balls instead of one and it was hilariously awful and brutal and just disturbing in some way.
lemme tell ya, i love and miss those stupid birds all the time but i treasure few memories like the turkeys playing a game with three detached chicken heads.
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