We decided to raise chickens for eggs this year and ended up with 2 roosters out of 6 chickens. Aside from the crowing [that our gracious neighbors tolerate well], it didn't seem like a big deal.

Our son is young and very attached to all of the chickens. One of the roosters seemed a little "off" lately. He chased our son (elementary school age). Whether the rooster thought our son was an unruly hen that needed herding, or a threat to his rooster status is something we don't know.

Although our son was devastated, I explained that we had too many roosters, that the one rooster was hurting him (repeatedly - we gave that bird several chances to prove us wrong at our son's request), and that he was going to become our dinner.

I explained that we weren't going to kill him because we were mad, and we weren't going to waste him - we were going to eat him.

It wasn't hard to clean the rooster. Once he was dead it was easy to clean the bird up for consumption. The hard part was killing him. This was a bird that we raised from a chick. He had a name and an awesome personality (outside of the aggression). It sucked to kill him. It REALLY fucking sucked.

Our son saw the news about the lion. I had to explain that if you are going to kill an animal you either need to be eating it or you are in danger of losing your life to it, but you don't kill it so you can show your friends the head of the animal that you killed.

If someone can kill an animal just for shits and giggles they are a fucking turd. If someone kills an animal that they will eat and don't feel anything, they are also a fucking turd. I couldn't eat anything yesterday after I killed that rooster, and I waited until our son was sleeping to cry. I'm still not over it and I don't want to do it again.