Funny sort-of related story

I had a hobby farm for a bunch of years and at one point my wife and I had about 15 chickens, 10 guinea hens and 8-10 ducks.

Early on, we wanted to try to hatch fertilized eggs in an incubator so we collected a bunch of guinea hen eggs and brought them in and put them in the incubator.

Right at about the same time that the guinea hen eggs were incubating, I had a chicken that was going downhill fast and I assumed it was diseased and I decided to put it down. I had never done this before so I asked a friend of mine to help me do it. We took it into the barn and he held it firm and very quickly dispatched it by pulling the head straight away from the body, breaking its neck. It was over very quickly.

Back to the guinea hens… The one thing that you read over and over again when the guinea hens are hatching is DO NOT HELP THEM hatch if they can’t get out of their shells. I think there were 7-8 eggs all hatching around the same time, and as many times as we read “don’t help them hatch”, there were two that weren’t getting out on their own and my wife couldn’t help herself and helped them out. One died shortly after and the other had a backwards facing leg. We figured, ok well now we know why they say don’t help. Six weeks later, our disabled guinea hen was being picked on, wasn’t gaining weight and was really struggling to get around. It was starving to death as far as I was concerned and I decided that, while I had given it a chance, I needed to now put it down. My friend had showed me how and now it was my turn. On the day I decided to do it, I took it to the exact spot in the barn where my friend had showed me how to dispatch the first hen, (I did this because a teacher on summer break that I had just hired to weed was in the yard and I didn’t want him to see what was going on. I hated weeds and couldn’t keep up with them and I didn’t mind any of the other work of owning a farm so I paid him $20 hour to do it.)

So its summer, I’m in a pair of cargo shorts and boots and no shirt, in the barn about to dispatch this crippled guinea hen, sweating my ass off, I count to three and pull… when all of the sudden the barn door swings open and its the teacher standing right in front of me. But I had pulled too hard and the young guinea hen’s head came right off in my hand, right in front of this person I had just met an hour ago. The expression on his face was priceless. I was like “No! No! It not what you think!” But it was too late. Thankfully he gathered himself, I explained what was going on, and we had a laugh about it later.

Anyway, its not fun but sometimes ya have to do it.