It is an interesting experience to eat an animal you know the name of.
Friends of our family also kept sheep, and I remember they coming by one christmas, and the youngest son (7 or so) hands over a smoked sheeps leg and says. "This is Pontus!"
(That summer, we had visited their farm and played with the lamb named Pontus)
The farm we buy turkeys from, when my mom went to go eviscerate the turkey, the family's little boy came up to her and sadly said, "That was Tom... he was my friend... :("
My family raises and eats about a hundred chickens every year (150 this year). With the meat birds, we don't bond all that much, 'cause we only have them for about 10 weeks. But our egg-laying hens we've had for two years now, and every day I go out and call them to me so I can feed them. We're going to have to kill them in five months once the new egg-laying chicks (currently only 4 days old) get to egg-laying age.
Still, the rooster is an aggressive jerk; I wouldn't mind seeing him gone.