Le sigh. Fine, the punishment was you forfeit your chickens to your neighbor. Should those chickens be inedible by the new legal owner? What if they have to return them later if new evidence comes to light?

Chickens are basically fungible and interchangeable with money.

You can't select some random person and do a bit of bureaucracy and then tell a family whose member you killed that this rando is now part of their family as restitution for your mistake. You can give them money but in general it is considered somewhat distasteful to put an immediate pecuniary value on human life.