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.
But I do want to know - what method did you use to kill the chickens and would you use that technique again?
ReplyDeleteFollow-up: Would you kill your own chickens again? Was it worth the effort?
Thanks for posting!
Hi Sarah!
ReplyDeleteWe 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.