Farm life can be hard, and often it involves death.

I guess that life in general involves death, but on the farm it can happen a little more frequently. When a family living on a homestead harvests an animal for food, that is one thing, but other deaths happen too.

Whether it is disease, accidents, or an attack from a wild animal, livestock and pets may not exactly be around as long as people wish they would be. Recently, an animal killed a rooster and a chicken that my neighbors had. As it happened, they asked me if I wanted the dead animals.

MAKING USE OF EVERYTHING

Now, @papa-pepper is not exactly a collector of dead animals, but I actually had some uses for the dead chickens. Recently some raccoons or possums have been raiding chicken flocks in the area. We still have all ours, but one of the neighbors lost their entire flock. I am working on a raccoon trap made out of shopping carts, so I took one of the carcasses and loaded it in there.

As for the other dead chicken, @mama-pepper, who does most of our research, had shared a story with me about a video that she saw on YouTube. A homesteader put a dead animal into a bucket with holes drilled in the bottom. As the flies laid their eggs and the maggots hatched, they would drop out of the holes in the bottom and the chickens that were still alive would eat them. @mericanhomestead - Did you guys make a video like that?

Anyway, you wouldn't want to do that with an animal that died from disease, but I thought that I would try it with the remaining carcass.

Yup, the supply of maggots showed up pretty quickly. I was kind of amazed. Thankfully, they fell out of the bucket through the holes just fine too!

DINNER IS SERVED!

Everyone one of the chickens really liked this treat. They would sit there for very long periods of time just eating the maggots as they fell out of the bucket.

When I put the poultry away for the evening, I left the bucket up. In the morning, there was a long line of maggots on the ground. Thankfully, the chickens and muscovy ducks made their way over right away for breakfast, and quickly pecked them all up.

I fully understand that this may be my grossest post ever, but at least it allowed me to find some purpose for the dead animal. It was a creative and peculiar way to recycle the dead chicken, and it worked out very well. Sure it was a little strange, but it did work and my chickens and ducks were very happy about it.

Have any of you ever done anything like this? If not, would you?