Slaughtering and Butchering Mature Hens

[paulraphael]

The ethical way to do this is to make sure it's a fair fight. Considering you're probably much bigger than the hens, you need to find some kind of handicap for yourself. like have your hands tied behind your back, and face the hens a half dozen at a time.

And yes, you should probably video tape it.

[Henry dV]

The ethical way to do this is to make sure it's a fair fight. Considering you're probably much bigger than the hens, you need to find some kind of handicap for yourself. like have your hands tied behind your back, and face the hens a half dozen at a time.

And yes, you should probably video tape it.

←

Yeah, yeah, tell that to foxes, domestic cats, polecats..........

[budrichard]

If you do not have an experienced individual with you, ready to assure that the task is performed quickly and as humanely as possible, you will end up with a mess both literally and figuratively speaking. You need hands on instruction from a qualified person.-Dick

[Mallet]

So, did you do it?

[ChocoMom]

Host's note: this post and the responses were originally in What Are You Preserving, and How Are You Doing It?

 

 

No pics, because its just plain ugly.  But, I had two days of killing/processing chickens here, as I posted on another thread.  Today, I finished doing the last 10 chickens.  I've got them all in the freezers now,  except for one that we BBQ'd last night.   

 

I cut all the scraps off and bagged them for the freezer too. Those are the pieces that will go into pressure canned chicken soup later on.    I'm tired, but a good tired. Nice getting all the buggers done in two days!  

Edited September 30, 2017 by Smithy
Added host's note (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

4 hours ago, ChocoMom said:

No pics, because its just plain ugly.  But, I had two days of killing/processing chickens here, as I posted on another thread.  Today, I finished doing the last 10 chickens.  I've got them all in the freezers now,  except for one that we BBQ'd last night.   

 

I cut all the scraps off and bagged them for the freezer too. Those are the pieces that will go into pressure canned chicken soup later on.    I'm tired, but a good tired. Nice getting all the buggers done in two days!  

 

In my youth (maybe age 10 or 12) I had to help with chicken killing.  In this case the birds' throats were cut (perchance the purpose of the @liuzhou mystery knife) and they were hung to exsanguinate.  Not that I mind eating chicken, one is in the CSO as I speak.  However I can't help but think there is a more humane method of slaughter.

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

3 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

In my youth (maybe age 10 or 12) I had to help with chicken killing.  In this case the birds' throats were cut (perchance the purpose of the @liuzhou mystery knife) and they were hung to exsanguinate.  Not that I mind eating chicken, one is in the CSO as I speak.  However I can't help but think there is a more humane method of slaughter.

 

 

What more humane method do you suggest? Were the birds left to live and only die upon bleeding out? If so, I agree that a more humane method could easily be found.

 

I was about 13-14 when helping with the family chicken butchering day. I could still run well back in those days and was first set to catching chickens for my grandpa along with a male cousin who was an even better runner than I was. After handing Grandpa my first two or three chickens, I stopped to take a breather and watched what he was doing. He grabbed them by the neck, just under the head and slung the bodies around until the head was in his hand and the body went slinging off across the chicken yard. There was a growing pile of chicken heads by his feet.

 

Why he didn't chop the heads cleanly off is a question we would have to ask him, but I'm afraid that's impossible now. Perhaps because the wringing was the way he learned and that's the way it was always done?

 

It is absolutely true that the headless bodies will get up and run around sometimes for almost a minute. They are dead (I sincerely hope), and not all of them do it. The majority are happy to lay still after parting from their heads. It is unnerving, to say the least, to see it though.

 

I witnessed a couple more times and began to beg fervently to be given another job. Don't worry, I have close to 200 cousins and many of them were there that day. I was easily replaced on chicken catching duty.

 

I was put on butchering detail in the kitchen with some aunts and other cousins after the chickens had been gutted and skinned outside. We didn't have a machine to take the feathers off and it just takes too long by hand, so the skin was sacrificed. Sad.

 

I'd only cut up a very few chickens from the grocery store before. Everyone was skeptical that I could learn to be useful in that capacity and I was warned I'd be put on another detail, if I couldn't perform. An aunt showed me once how to find and pop the joints and what to do. I cut up at least fifty chickens for the freezer that afternoon. I did NOT want to be on gutting and skinning detail!

 

We put about 200 chickens in my grandparents' freezers that day and the army of aunts, uncles and cousins that helped took almost as many home to put in their own freezers. After we stowed the meat in grandma's freezers, and the coolers the helpers brought with them, now empty of the food they brought with them, we cleaned up the considerable mess and had a potluck dinner where everyone had brought dishes. It was a good, and unforgettable day.

[ElsieD]

I lived on a farm from when I was about 10 until I was about 14. I too have memories of chickens meeting their end.  My dad would use an axe to chop their heads off and one whack did the job, so it was quick.  As TFTC said, often the headless chicken would race around the yard.  It was a weird thing to see.

[kayb]

My grandmother would wade out into the flock and select the one she wanted to cook for dinner. She'd grab it by the neck and with a quick swing and flip of her wrist, snap the head right off. I always marveled at how she could do that.

 

We didn't have chickens long. Daddy hated them, and we soon got rid of them and got ours from the lady down the road. She, in turn, got pork from us. It all worked out.

 

[ChocoMom]

8 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

In my youth (maybe age 10 or 12) I had to help with chicken killing.  In this case the birds' throats were cut (perchance the purpose of the @liuzhou mystery knife) and they were hung to exsanguinate.  Not that I mind eating chicken, one is in the CSO as I speak.  However I can't help but think there is a more humane method of slaughter.

 

 

We have been so busy here, working and trying to the house completely finished...my memory was shot.  So, while struggling to recall how its been done other years, I decided the quickest way to refresh my memory as to how I had off'ed them previously was to visit Youtube.  After searching... I found that, apparently, the PETA -recommended humane way to kill a chicken is to make a gas chamber. Using a 5 gal bucket, you put the chicken in, using the lid- cut a hole for a hose to snugly fit through, and connect the other end to a Co2 tank. put the lid on tightly, and crank the gas. In 2-3 min....you have killed the chicken.  Part of me thinks it was a joke, but I really do wonder....  Doesn't matter....I don't have a tank like that sitting around. 

 

My next thought was was to pull out my dear, Mrs. LC9s Ruger.   But, ammo for that is too expensive to spend rounds plinking their heads off.  So, after contemplating for a bit, I formulated a tidy, quick method.  I hold the chicken upside down while moving to an area away from the other animals, wait a few minutes for it to get dizzy and almost faint.  Head and wings fit neatly into a nicely-fragranced trash bag, and I just step on the neck and yank the legs. Breaks the neck and pops the head off in a jiffy.   No mess, no cleanup. I cheat incredibly while butchering, too. First, I skin the portion Im going to fillet...then pop the thigh/hip joint, pull out the ole Rapala fillet knife (think: miniature Sword of Isildur), and carve the thigh-leg quarters right out, and immediately put into ice water. Then, I carve the breasts out, and into the water. After all that, I carve off all kinds of meat scraps that go into a ziplock bag setting in ice water. Thats the stuff I use for soup.  It is the neatest, most expeditious way I can manage to get the job done-solo.   Between 11am and 5pm yesterday, got 10 done- with a 1/2 hour lunch break, and 1/2 hour round trip to pick the peanut up from school. Once I get the tiling done on the front porch, I can spend a bit more time in the kitchen and get some chicken soup pressure canned, then move over to the chocolate kitchen and start cranking out goodies for the holidays. So much to do, so little time! Argh! 

[cakewalk]

Amazing stories, all of them. Here's how the city slickers did it in the early sixties:

My father was a butcher and worked in a meat factory. They would get freshly slaughtered sides of beef, and my father's job was to cut them up into portions. They sold wholesale only. When I was a little kid, his factory still had fresh chickens. But when I was about 11 or 12 they stopped keeping chickens, so we got our chickens from the Chicken Lady, whose shop was across the street from our building. She got freshly slaughtered chickens from ... somewhere. Anyway, on a weekly basis this is how my mother ordered her chicken for Friday night dinner: on Thursday morning she would open a window of our third floor apartment that faced right onto the Chicken Lady's shop, and she would shout" "Sylvia!! Sylvia!" (The Chicken Lady's name was Sylvia, but she was always referred to as the Chicken Lady, except when my mother was ordering a chicken.) If the weather was nice, the Chicken Lady was usually sitting outside her shop on an upside down crate. In bad weather she'd be inside. Either way, she would eventually look up and my mother would shout, "Cut me a chicken into eighths!" And the Chicken Lady would smile and nod. Later that day I'd be sent to pick up the chicken. Without fail the Chicken Lady would say, "I know your brother likes chicken livers. Wait here a minute." And she would disappear into the back with an ax in her hand. I'd hear a "whack, whack" sound and a few minutes later she'd walk out with a fresh liver on a piece of white butcher paper. She'd wrap that up with the chicken and I'd take it and go home. I don't remember ever giving her money, I guess my mother took care of that separately. And the next thing I knew, we were eating chicken for dinner. Nowadays, I get my chickens in the supermarket. 

 

I cannot imagine killing my own chickens. I'm thoroughly impressed with everything I have read above.  

[sparrowgrass]

I use a long handled pair of loppers to dispatch my chickens.  Just quietly walk up, slip the loppers around the neck, and crunch.  I am afraid of my aim with an axe.  I have to admit that I rarely dispatch a chicken--it is unpleasant work and laying hens generally have little meat..  Most of my girls live their lives out, eggs or no eggs.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

8 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

What more humane method do you suggest? Were the birds left to live and only die upon bleeding out? If so, I agree that a more humane method could easily be found.

 

They were hung upside down to die slowly.  Decapitation would be more humane.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I don't know that these were mature hens.

 

[Martin Fisher]

FWIW,

We used to dispatch and process about 1,300 chickens raised on pasture every summer.

For dispatching we used a Dexter Russell Sani-Safe 3" Poultry Sticker 11043 S128

Edited October 1, 2017 by DiggingDogFarm (log)

[liuzhou]

Most of my neighbours buy live chickens and ducks from the market and "process" them at home, although the market vendors will do the business for you if you ask. One market I used to frequent didn't kill the birds for you, but there was a stall which only dealt in chickenocide and duckocide for a very small fee.

Neighbours, market vendors and professional poultry assassins carry out their deadifying by hanging the birds upside down by the feet then slitting their throats over a basin to catch the blood, which of course you want to use alongside the meat. Pig murderers do the same with the porcine variety of meat.

 

I tend to buy my poultry in the supermarkets where no carnage is visible. Not because I'm squeamish, but living alone, I seldom need a whole fowl. Neighbours are convinced that the supermarket specimens are weeks past being as fresh as a live one. They could be right.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

7 hours ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

FWIW,

We used to dispatch and process about 1,300 chickens raised on pasture every summer.

For dispatching we used a Dexter Russell Sani-Safe 3" Poultry Sticker 11043 S128

 

 

Please do tell, Martin, how this little knife was used. It might lead to a more humane way. Or not.

 

Were all 1,300 chickens done at one time? If so, that was a major, major job of work! How many folks did you have working on it?

 

Did you have one of those spinner machines that pluck the chickens?

 

Did you keep them for your own/family's/employers use, or sell them?

 

There is nothing like the taste of a true pasture raised chicken. We can still buy them today at three or more times the price of industrially farmed ones. And yes, they taste different. Way, way different.

 

@liuzhou,

 

Organic is not just market speak here. It is actually highly regulated and to jump through all the government hoops is time consuming and expensive. I am a skeptic as many might know, but the organic ones here are much, much better than the Big Ag ones. The rich constituency that demands organic is not large, but has a loud voice with politicians, so they allow the moneyed to get what they want at a price, after making sure it won't cut into the Big Ag profits significantly. 

 

Good pasture raised chix is like chicken perfume compared to the industrial version. I buy it when I can spare the money, and it compares well with the ones raised on my grandparent's farm, where I was witness to everything that happened in the chicken's lives. That kind of chicken is still available here, IF you can afford it.

 

Sometimes, if you live in a more rural area, people still raise chickens the old-fashioned way and you can luck out and get some at reasonable prices. In the cities it is always filtered through the government which tries to direct everyone to the big factories if they can.

[liuzhou]

10 minutes ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

@liuzhou,

 

Organic is not just market speak here.

 

I've searched this topic and can't find any example of me mentioning "organic". Why are you addressing this to me?

 

I do almost always buy "organic" chicken and I buy my duck eggs from a duck I have met. But I remain sceptical. It's healthier.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

12 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

I've searched this topic and can't find any example of me mentioning "organic". Why are you addressing this to me?

 

I do almost always buy "organic" chicken and I buy my duck eggs from a duck I have met. But I remain sceptical. It's healthier.

 

I apologize @liuzhou. Someone (I think) told me somewhere (I think) that advocating for organic chicken was pointless because it was just market speak. I thought it was you, but I am obviously going prematurely senile.  

 

I still stand behind my point about organic labeled chix being a superior product in this country, even if my credibility is completely shot at this point. 

 

And you are absolutely right about the skeptical part!

[liuzhou]

24 minutes ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

I apologize @liuzhou. Someone (I think) told me somewhere (I think) that advocating for organic chicken was pointless because it was just market speak. I thought it was you, but I am obviously going prematurely senile.  

 

I still stand behind my point about organic labeled chix being a superior product in this country, even if my credibility is completely shot at this point. 

 

And you are absolutely right about the skeptical part!

 

 

I may have said it elsewhere but then it would be taken out of context. As far as I am aware slaughtering methods that are used on non-organic chickens (whatever that could possibly mean) and organic chickens are the same.

[Martin Fisher]

2 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

Please do tell, Martin, how this little knife was used. It might lead to a more humane way. Or not.

 

Were all 1,300 chickens done at one time? If so, that was a major, major job of work! How many folks did you have working on it?

 

Did you have one of those spinner machines that pluck the chickens?

 

Did you keep them for your own/family's/employers use, or sell them?

 

There is nothing like the taste of a true pasture raised chicken. We can still buy them today at three or more times the price of industrially farmed ones. And yes, they taste different. Way, way different.

 

@liuzhou,

 

Organic is not just market speak here. It is actually highly regulated and to jump through all the government hoops is time consuming and expensive. I am a skeptic as many might know, but the organic ones here are much, much better than the Big Ag ones. The rich constituency that demands organic is not large, but has a loud voice with politicians, so they allow the moneyed to get what they want at a price, after making sure it won't cut into the Big Ag profits significantly. 

 

Good pasture raised chix is like chicken perfume compared to the industrial version. I buy it when I can spare the money, and it compares well with the ones raised on my grandparent's farm, where I was witness to everything that happened in the chicken's lives. That kind of chicken is still available here, IF you can afford it.

 

Sometimes, if you live in a more rural area, people still raise chickens the old-fashioned way and you can luck out and get some at reasonable prices. In the cities it is always filtered through the government which tries to direct everyone to the big factories if they can.

 

The chickens were raised and slaughtered in batches over the summer.

See cervical dislocation here. The knife was used for proper bleeding out.

We had a 'scalder' and a barrel plucker that would pluck about 6-7 birds at a time.

Most of the chickens were sold to customers—there's an exemption for very small small operations.

 

[dcarch]

Is it true that farms can use hormone and vaccine when the eggs are being hatched and still call the chickens organic?

 

dcarch

 

 

[Martin Fisher]

2 minutes ago, dcarch said:

Is it true that farms can use hormone and vaccine when the eggs are being hatched and still call the chickens organic?

 

dcarch

 

 

 

No, I don't believe so.

Check the organic standards.

[dcarch]

1 hour ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

 

No, I don't believe so.

Check the organic standards.

 

Source, Googled, quoted from Mother Jones, 

 

http://www.motherjones.com/food/2014/01/organic-chicken-and-egg-antibiotics-edition/

 

"----I learned that at the industrial hatcheries that churn out chicks for the poultry industry, eggs are commonly injected with tiny amounts of an antibiotic called gentamicin, which is used in people to treat a variety of serious bacterial infections.That alone dropped my jaw—what, the practice of dosing chickens with antibiotics has to begin literally in the egg? But get this: The practice is allowed in organic production, too. Organic code forbids use of antibiotics in animals, yet in a loophole I’d never heard of, such standards kick in on “the second day of life” for chicks destined for organic poultry farms.-----"

 

dcarch

Edited October 1, 2017 by dcarch (log)

[Martin Fisher]

7 minutes ago, dcarch said:

 

"----I learned that at the industrial hatcheries that churn out chicks for the poultry industry, eggs are commonly injected with tiny amounts of an antibiotic called gentamicin, which is used in people to treat a variety of serious bacterial infections.That alone dropped my jaw—what, the practice of dosing chickens with antibiotics has to begin literally in the egg? But get this: The practice is allowed in organic production, too. Organic code forbids use of antibiotics in animals, yet in a loophole I’d never heard of, such standards kick in on “the second day of life” for chicks destined for organic poultry farms.-----"

 

dcarch

 

Apparently that's correct...

Too bad the USDA took over organic regulation several years ago.

The organic standards used to be MUCH more strict!!!!

 

"Origin of Livestock (§205.236)
Poultry intended for slaughter or egg production must be under continuous organic management beginning
no later than the second day of life.
Accepted
 Day old chicks purchased from a conventional hatchery
 Poultry over one day old purchased from certified organic sources
Prohibited
 Purchase of chicks from a conventional hatchery that have not been managed organically from the
second day of life"

 

 Source: https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Poultry - Guidelines.pdf