What does culling mean?

Answer 1

When talking about chickens or any farm animals

Culling is removing or getting rid of unwanted stock.

It does not always mean killing the unwanted stock as you can cull a flock by selling off excess birds.

Answer 2

To remove the unwanted. This can be done for size, coloration, conformation, too many, etc. As many people as do it, there are reasons. As I raised dairy and meat animals, I ate my culls. Some sell them, auction them, or eat them, too. Generally 'cull' means killing - for example, kangaroos in Australia are culled when there are so many that the alternative is for half the population to slowly starve to death, and deformed calves are culled from the herd shortly after birth. However, this is not always the case. As said, 'culling' simply means removing inferior stock. So for example on a farm growing only premium cattle, 'culling' might be the selling of any inferior calves - which are still healthy animals but not up to that farm's high standards. A 'cull' in the singular is either an animal that has been selected for removal, or a program to remove a percentage of the stock. Ie a library can have a 'cull' by selling off books nobody reads. 'Cull' is the verb (to cull), it can be used in all of the above contexts.