Is this a terrible idea?

[Ldavis24]

Slaughtering a chicken with your toddler just roaming around while you do it?

Tomorrow I am going to show DH how to do it (he hasn't ever tried one before) and we don't have anyone to watch DD (will be 2 next month) while we work on it...

Aside from the fact that she obviously needs to stay away from the knives/blood and guts/scalding pot, is it so wrong if I just let her roam around? That means she will probably be standing right there when I slit it's throat and bleed it out...Is this something a toddler shouldn't see? In my head it's not big deal but I talked to my mom about it and she was horrified...Apparently she forget that when I was 4 or so my dad would chop the heads off quail right in the kitchen in front of us...

Anyway what do you fellow animal slaughtering mamas think?

[Alyantavid]

I may not be the best person to answer, but I don't see a problem with it.

Our kids have seen our steers butchered, deer skinned and cut up and pigs butchered.  But we do raise our own meat so it's a fact of life for us.  I'm certainly not going to hide any of it from them and we've let them see the whole thing being done at their request.  They're 9 and 4 now and we have always told them where they're food comes from and I do make it a point to explain how our animals have been taken care of as opposed to how meat in the store is raised.

I hear ya though, most people are horrified that our kids have always known that the animals out in the pasture are the ones we eat. 

[prothyraia]

We haven't slaughtered anything here, but I can't imagine why it would be a problem if you've got the safety aspects covered.

[Ldavis24]

I personally don't see anything wrong with it at all but my mom got me confused (not a surprise) and she was absolutely horrified that DD would be "exposed" to that...Frankly DD needs to know where her food comes from period. I'd rather her know that we eat the birds we care for than if we buy a chicken from the grocery store it led a miserable miserable existence and had an unpleasant death most likely. 

My mom is big on pretending that the meat in the grocery stores were never animals though...

At this point DD does know the difference between her chickens outside and the chicken she LOVES to eat inside so I'm not over worried about having to explain much of anything to her except please don't put your hands in the bucket full of blood feathers and guts.

[Alyantavid]

I have a 32 year old friend who insists her meat only comes from the grocery store.  Grocery store meat icks me out so this is the way it is. 

But then again, I was plucking freshly butchered chickens at 5 or 6, so I may be a bit warped.

[Caneel]

Kids (older than toddlers obviously) are active and necessary participants in butchering where I live so I don't think there is anything wrong with it at all. 

[Ldavis24]

Originally Posted by Alyantavid 

I have a 32 year old friend who insists her meat only comes from the grocery store.  Grocery store meat icks me out so this is the way it is. 

But then again, I was plucking freshly butchered chickens at 5 or 6, so I may be a bit warped.

she sounds like my mom. I can barely look at grocery store meat without gagging simply because I KNOW pretty much exactly how that "meat" lived/died before it got there all nice and packaged.

Well I did the slaughtering today and DH was actually around to watch DD for me so it became a non issue. Although when I came back inside she did ask "mama kill the chickens?!" all excited, it cracked me up. She hasn't made the connection yet that the chicken she loves to eat is the same chicken that she loves to chase after in the yard...She's not even 2 yet though so I guess I don't have to explain anything to her yet really...

I'm honestly glad she didn't hang out with me outside, I am still new to butchering and the first bird did NOT go well. He moved too much in the cone and I didn't get a clean cut. I was in tears when I finally took the cleaver and whacked his head off because he wasn't bleeding out well.

[mattemma04]

I think it is OK. Kids should know that it takes the life of an animal to make their meat meals,and as long as you do it humanely then that is *life*. I recall seeing pigs and chickens killed back in a hungarian village.It was for fall harvest,weddings,or just a basic meal. Hard to watch the kill,but the best darn meals I ever had!

Sometimes you have to kill to eat.Lots of times that meat is better for you than going to a store to get factory meat.If a child grows up seeing you dispatch and process the animals it is simply the normal way of things. I don't think there is some special age of exposure,becuase this is  the way life is  for your family.

Our society has gotten away from this and made it seem like a *bad* thing for kids to see/know about,but there really isn't anything bad about it.

[Chicky2]

Our kids aren't normally exposed (their wishes) to the actual dispatching until they are older/used to seeing what happens after the animal is dispatched, and helping with that part.  My 12 yo dd just recently started watching the dispatching of the pigs, but still would rather not watch that part w/the rabbits.  We leave it up to them.  My 10 yo ds doesn't want to watch that part yet, but will gladly help skin something, pull guts out, or just dump buckets/refill them.  Our 4 yo happened to come around the corner when we were in the act of chopping off a duck's head (a white duck, and it was our first duck ever and well, dh didn't aim right w/the blood and we got it all.over.us.-oops) and she cried and cried.  She knew we were butchering, but she wasn't ready to see a duck she was slightly attached to being killed.  She was previously (and is now, btw) just fine w/knowing what she was eating, just not seeing it done.  After that incident a couple of months ago, she now wants to sit in a chair and watch everything after the dispatch/bleeding out part.  She sat and watched her daddy do 2 small pigs yesterday.  So, no real damage done, thankfully.  It is how we eat and she LOVES meat.  We do it because we feel we have to for many reasons and the kids know that, and understand it, and respect it deeply.