by t!
When you raise chickens for meat, the logical endpoint of the raising is, of course, the slaughtering and butchering. And you have two choices about how this will be done: (A) by you, or (B) by someone else. We have decided to kill our chickens ourselves, and the several books we own which describe raising chickens all assume that this is what the reader will be doing. So far, so good.
However, the authors of these books have been raising chickens for quite some time. They enjoy it, they are good at it, and their books are designed to make chicken raising seem both fun and easy enough for anyone to do. The same goes for the slaughtering. It is easy enough, but there are a handful of tiny things that came up which I think deserve a mention, and these books did not quite warn us about.
– We use the broomstick method. What this is, is you lay the head of the chicken on a flat rock, place a broom handle across the back of its skull, place your feet on the handle, one on each side of the head, and yank up on the chicken’s legs. This breaks the chicken’s neck instantly, killing it. If you do it right. If you don’t, you will just damage the chicken horribly, probably paralysing it, but it will still be alive and frightened. Then you will have to pick up the injured terrified animal and kill it a second time. The key word here is to be *decisive.* Kill the chicken, with certainty, on the first try. This isn’t cruel; in fact *failing* is cruel.
– Also, some indication of how hard you should pull on the legs would be nice. If you pull too hard, the head stays behind.
– If you can keep the chicken’s head on when you kill it, afterward while you’re butchering you don’t have to worry about the gizzard spilling its contents out the top of the neck.
– You’ve heard that chickens flap around after they’re dead; everybody hears this. But it needs to be stressed: Chickens really *really* flap around. A lot. Enough such that we were glad the legs were tied so the corpse couldn’t run off down the road.
– The books play down how difficult it is for a caring human being to kill a chicken. One expects that the authors have become used to it, or that they don’t want the readers to think they can’t do it, which is all fair enough. But there should be some warning about the eyes. Once the chicken is dead, do *not* dwell on its eyes.
– Also the books do not warn you about the *feel* of that first chicken. You catch him, pick him up, and hold him steady, ready for the end. Since you rarely get this close to a chicken, you look him over. You’ve done well as a homesteader; he’s a good-looking animal. His chest is warm. You can feel it moving in and out as he breathes. He feels just like a kitty. You want to stroke his belly. Hang on – this is *not* the proper mood for poultricide! You’ll need a few sharp moments to rearrange your perspective and remember that this creature is food. It’s not too difficult to do, but I would have preferred it if I’d been prepared for that moment.
– If you read about killing chickens, you will be told that holding a chicken upside-down by its legs will cause the blood to rush to the chicken’s head, knocking it unconscious and making things easier on you and the chicken. Everybody agrees this will happen. Nobody will tell you how much time it takes for this marvelous passing out to occur. We’ve suspended the chicken and waited patiently; out of 11 chickens not one has ever passed out. But each of us has had a chicken try to escape by bending itself upward and pecking our hands.
– When you are cutting the legs off a chicken, the blade presses into its tendons. This causes the toes to curl. Therefore, when you cut into a chicken’s leg, the dead claws will grab your finger. This is rather startling the first time it happens. The second time, it’s still pretty creepy. I don’t know about the third time. I’ve changed the way I hold the leg.
– You hang chickens upside-down with their carotids cut (or heads missing, depending on how you killed them), to allow the blood to drain out of their bodies. This is better for the meat, and means less mess during innards removal and other butchering. The books all recommend you hang the chicken upside-down for a half hour, but they don’t tell you how much blood should drain out. We had one chicken that looked like it had clotted after two minutes, there was so little blood. But it did not bleed during the butchering. Our last chicken dumped a lot of blood into the pail for its half hour, and then bled some more in our garage, and then bled all over the counter during the butchering. Maybe the books don’t tell you how much blood is normal because it always varies? Perhaps this last chicken bled so much because it was one-third heavier than most of our others. Or maybe it had been taking Aspirin.
– With practice, one gets better at catching chickens. However, it does not get easier. The first ones you catch are the small and slow ones – the losers. The later ones are faster and more clever, plus there are fewer bodies remaining to get in their way when you chase after them. We were down to our last three roosters: The alpha, the second biggest, and the smallest. We decided, naturally, that the smallest should be killed, so that should anything happen to the alpha his replacement would still be a large bird. Well, it turned out the smallest one was also the fastest ever. After five minutes – a very long time when you’re trying to catch one specific chicken and all around you the other dozen are running flapping and shrieking – we gave up on him, and nabbed the second largest. He was *much* slower. Darwin has spoken; the one best able to avoid predators (or farmers) has prevailed.
We call him Speedy.
*dies laughing*
I have read most of this out to Gideon – I particularly loved Speedy. I hope they all tasted fantastic.
I’ve eaten lambs I’ve bottle-fed but I didn’t have to haul them to the butcher!
I am so impressed that those chicks have grown large enough to eat, though! Are the girls producing eggs or do you have a large cleaver and a beady eye?
Do you know the joke about the three-legged chicken?
We’ve eaten one chicken so far. After all the work it was – especially for the plucking/skinning – we were very relieved that the chicken was much better than good. If the taste had not been worth it… best not to think about that.
The meat’s a bit darker than battery poultry. These chickens have actually moved around in their lives. So it’s got a bit more resilience when you bite into it, too. Yum.
I don’t know if I could slaughter a lamb I’d bottle-fed. Yow.
No eggs yet. They should have started laying at the beginning of the month. Maybe we’ll have to set up a stereo in the coop to play some Barry White.
t!
This is hilariously writing on a topic that, I suspect, that most newbie chicken farmers will appreciate. May I repost it on Mindful Table, or at least tweet it out?
I remember my first (and only) chicken ‘harvest’ a few years ago. It was at a farm and with a partner we chopped his head off. My partner was the chopper and I was the handler/holder. His head came off and he almost flapped out of my hands. I can’t imagine trying to kill a chicken without having assisted in a harvest before.
t! says you are very welcome to repost on Mindful Table.
*I* can’t imagine trying to hold onto a dead flapping chicken – more than one of ours have actually taken flight during the post-killing flapping!
I shot a grouse that did exactly the same thing; shot it, and it suddenly started flying straight upwards like a helicopter. Quickly shot it again and that was that, and later discover that grouse will occasionally do that when they take a pellet to the brain, but wow, I hate it when they don’t just bangflop.
This was hilarious yet thoughtful, and so well written. It does touch on aspects of the process that most authors wouldn’t expect to need to address, as homesteading appears to focus more on the practical bits.
Dead chickens taking to flight say “zombie chickens” to me. Anyone else?
Hilarious . . . and fascinating, and poignant, and dreadful, too.
I quite literally laughed and cried. (What can I say—I have a weak stomach for this sort of thing.) Thank you, I think.
xox
We butchered five of our chickens this last weekend. My wife and I had never done this before, but my Mom had worked with her Mom years ago at the task.
You might be interested in a funnel-shaped device my wife came up with that keeps the chicken contained during the slaughtering and bleed-out.
I wrote about it here (including photos–caution, a little bit graphic).
Briefly, you place the chicken in the funnel until his head sticks out the narrow end. Now he can’t do much more flopping around. If you have two people working together, one person can hold the legs and the funnel, leaving the executioner to just worry about the head. After whacking off his head with a hatchet, the chicken in the funnel is hung up to bleed out. He can’t flap around because he’s upside down in the funnel, so the process is a lot less hassle and mess versus trying to deal with the proverbial “chicken with its head cut off”.
Reblogged this on Healing Tree Farm and commented:
So, while researching the best methods for killing and butchering chickens, we discovered this gem of an article that feels perfectly suited for us… And you, if ever you find yourself looking into a sweet hen’s eyes with the intent of making what feels all too much like a pet into dinner.
Loved this write-up! We were crying (laughing so hard) while reading it aloud… Hoping it has gotten easier over the years. We’re not yet due for our first kill, but are trying to prepare ourselves for the inevitable. Your words helped us realize we’re not alone in our feelings of horror!
We read your post before AND after the killing of our first chicken. You have been a giant help! Somewhat luckily, this was a rather easy kill for us because it was a mercy-kill and not a kill for food. Chicken had been sick for 2+ months and was rather weak (so the flapping didn’t make her take off, but flap she did).
I looked up butchering processes on YouTube, because I wanted to see how it was done, but found your blog when trying to determine how long to let the darn things drain. It’s my first time and there are seven chickens upended in buckets in the yard…. and now it’s raining. Guess I know what my blog will be. Anyway, I penned mine up overnight, when through and caught the old laying hens who weren’t any more, trimmed everyone else’s flight feathers. Zip tied the culls and then opened the door. The catching wasn’t too bad. Used a .22 pistol for the initial kill and then whacked the heads off with a hatchet. I did not pet the hens but did show some sentimentality when I was short one zip tie and let the oldest, scrawniest one go. She won’t eat much and there wouldn’t be a lot to eat out of her. Thanks for the tips.
I wish we had the option of a .22 pistol, I think that would make things much, much easier!
I killed a hen for the first time last week. Not one of mine, which probably made it easier, but a meat bird of a friend of mine. We used the broom handle method and to be honest – I pulled the head off as instructed by my friend. I’d seen it done before I attempted it so I knew what would happen.
Firstly: the bird feels heavy and strong and you do wonder how on earth you are going to manage to keep hold of it, but once you hang it upside by its legs, it does stop struggling and becomes easier to handle.
Secondly, once you have placed both feet on the broom handle you do need to act decisively because at this point the hen is being strangled. Once I placed both feet on the broom handle I grabbed a leg in each of my hands and I stood up whilst pulling upwards sharply.
Thirdly, yes the hen does a fair bit of flapping but I didn’t feel the need to let go. By keeping hold of its legs I could contain the blood and it was less traumatic for any onlookers. With its head off, you know for certain that it is dead, there can be no doubt and I would much prefer this. The spinal cord is severed so the bird can feel no pain as there are no signals getting to the brain.
Finally – done this way then there is no need to bleed the hen afterwards, we placed the bodies in a bucket to allow the remaining blood to drain away for 5 mins. Plus if you pluck whilst the hen is still warm, it’s much easier to get the feathers out.
I wouldn’t say that it is enjoyable at all, but I found it to be quick and effective and it really didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. I was prepared having seen it done and as I said, I would be worried I hadn’t done it properly if the head had remained on. I would recommend that people ask to see it done before they try it themselves, then replay it over in their minds so when it comes down to it, they are fully prepared. My friend runs courses in dispatching chickens and then preparing them for the table – I’m sure there will be other poultry keepers who can do the same?
I’m a pitiful backyard chicken farmer with two pet hens. They were attacked by a neighbor’s cat last night and one of the girls is looking really rough. Thank you so much for this posting, it’s given me the courage to go take care of her.