Sunday, April 13, 2014

It's Done

I won't be including any graphic pictures in this post, but I will discuss killing chickens, so if you don't want to even imagine me doing such a thing, look away now!



Thursday afternoon N and his brother J helped me kill and process our three meat chicks.  They were well past their six-week maturity age, and quite sizable.  They were also becoming kind of a nuisance, because they eat a lot and have to be lifted in and out of the coop each day.  Also, I worried about them more than the other chicks because they couldn't escape from rain or bright sun by going into the coop.

There are a lot of posts out there about how to kill your own homegrown chickens - this isn't that.  Instead I just thought I'd post some of my thoughts about it afterwards.
  • It was surprisingly difficult and time consuming.  From reading books and watching videos it seems like such a seamless process.  So how did it end up taking an entire afternoon to do three chickens?
  • How the heck do serial killers do what they do?  We just killed chickens, and we were trying to be sneaky - I hung sheets and put up a sheet of plywood to hide the killing area from the neighbors - and still multiple neighbors ended up standing in their yards watching us.
  • I did not feel all that bad for the chickens.  I kind of liked one of them, and admired another, but they were always food-to-be.  I didn't want them to suffer, but it was never a possibility that we would just change our minds and keep them around.
  • Blood is funny stuff.  It is literally hard to get those spots off of your hands.
That's it.  Those were my thoughts.  And now it's done.


2 comments:

  1. But I do want to know - what method did you use to kill the chickens and would you use that technique again?

    Follow-up: Would you kill your own chickens again? Was it worth the effort?

    Thanks for posting!

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  2. Hi Sarah!
    We put them in something called a killing cone and cut off their heads. It's fast, discreet, and relatively neat.
    If I had the opportunity to raise, say, 50 chickens for meat, I would do it again. Slaughtering in small numbers is a PITA and includes a lot of setup and cleanup per bird.

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