Homemade killing cone!

UKApril said:

Thanks for your description. I'm about to cull my first birds next week and dreaming about it every night. I want to be pragmatic and when i decided to hatch chicks always intended to eat any surplus but it's still hard to actually go through with it.

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Hi, welcome to BYC!

I haven't started dreaming about it.... yet. But it won't surprise me if I do. Good for you for following through even though it is difficult, especially the first time.

It probably won't be as hard to go through with it as it is to know what the chickens at the super market have been through, for me. But still hard. Aside from just looking at the cone, I have found myself becoming familiar with the sight of the chicken IN the cone as well. Of course I'm not looking to turn cold, but the desensitization of seeing another bird I haven't raised will help when I am faced with it. Weird how I can usually deal with serious situations when I am in them.... until I have to say it out loud. It's like speaking it makes it real. I never expected to learn so much about myself from raising chickens!

And I know there are plenty of videos on the internet, but to me BYC was a place where I feel safe!

Hope your chickens are yummy and all go well for your first culling!

Beekissed said:

When the chicken is comfortably contained in the jug, just pull down gently on the head with your thumb under the beak. Slice directly where the waddles meet the feathers on the neck. A nice deep cut here opens both carotid and jugular and you don't have to sever the whole head. This way the spinal cord isn't damaged and the bird just calmly bleeds out and cannot breath. No ugly jerking and curling of the neck when the spinal cord is left undamaged.

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Beekissed said:

Deep enough for the vessels and trachea but stopping when you meet bone. It should be one, swift motion, with the head held between a thumb and forefinger of the same hand and the knife in the opposing hand.

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Hi Beekissed, I would like to know, by also cutting the trachea with the carotid and jugular, causing it to basically suffocate, rather than fall asleep due to bleed out? (BTW I am not opposed, just trying to understand as we just did it this way on Monday) But Also, I noticed that although we didn't sever the head completely this time, the birds still significantly flailed about! I thought that perhaps if we tied down the bird, we don't have a cone and just line tie the birds, that it would keep it from flailing all over sputtering blood in all directions, but that was not the case at all. When we did this a few months ago, we line tied, severed as 1 of us attempted to hold onto the body/wings to keep it from doing that because the first bird we did where we severed the head off and drained flailed. Well these birds are very very strong when dying it turns out, my hubby could hold the bird longer than I could initially, and it did not get easier. Just as when we tied the birds and sliced the carotid and jugular with trachea it flapped quite quickly out of it's bindings.
My mom says it is good for them to flap as it helps to work out the blood, as with the slicing vs severing, the heart is still pumping and releasing the blood easier and quicker...... However I beg to differ, perhaps we had missed a step, or a key note?

Your thoughts?

It will be a few extra days before I get to process my birds... dislocated my elbow, so I am one handed for a little while...

Soon though!

FaerieChicken said:

Hi Beekissed, I would like to know, by also cutting the trachea with the carotid and jugular, causing it to basically suffocate, rather than fall asleep due to bleed out? (BTW I am not opposed, just trying to understand as we just did it this way on Monday) But Also, I noticed that although we didn't sever the head completely this time, the birds still significantly flailed about! I thought that perhaps if we tied down the bird, we don't have a cone and just line tie the birds, that it would keep it from flailing all over sputtering blood in all directions, but that was not the case at all. When we did this a few months ago, we line tied, severed as 1 of us attempted to hold onto the body/wings to keep it from doing that because the first bird we did where we severed the head off and drained flailed. Well these birds are very very strong when dying it turns out, my hubby could hold the bird longer than I could initially, and it did not get easier. Just as when we tied the birds and sliced the carotid and jugular with trachea it flapped quite quickly out of it's bindings.
My mom says it is good for them to flap as it helps to work out the blood, as with the slicing vs severing, the heart is still pumping and releasing the blood easier and quicker...... However I beg to differ, perhaps we had missed a step, or a key note?

Your thoughts?

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When someone is suffocating due to an occluded airway, what do they do? They open a stoma in the trachea...just like cutting the bird's neck clean across vessels and trachea.....it's virtually impossible for the bird to "suffocate" when that trachea is open and the bird is hanging upside down...no way to suck that blood far enough into the trachea or even enough of it to occlude their airway. The blood is running downward and away from that opening, so the air is definitely being accessed.

The birds are going to flail about no matter how they are killed, so you aren't doing anything wrong...unless you physically hold them down~neck too~you will have a certain amount of flailing as the body signals a fight or flight reflex due to the loss of blood volume in the vessels. You can tie them, cone them, sack them, etc., but the flailing will happen regardless, so just let it happen...keeping the bird contained in a cone decreases the amount of movement somewhat to help decrease the blood spatter but there's always going to be some measure of it.

Nowadays I just cut one side of the throat, cock the head to one side for a bit to allow for a faster spurt of blood for a bit, then just let it go and let them finish out. Then I remove the head when they are done moving. I don't do that because the other method was faulty, but because it leaves a little less bloody mess around the stump of the neck when it's time to deal with evisceration.

Thank you so much, @Beekissed, this info and explanation is great! This truly helped us out for future ventures....

I was planning to butcher my excess roos this weekend, but my husband bought A&M tickets to the Arkansas game in Dallas, so it will have to wait until next weekend. Thank you so much for the video, BK, you always say they aren't going to be good, but they always answer exactly the questions I would have if I was standing there. I'm planning on skinning my first batch.

I appreciate this thread, it will be very useful next weekend! Thank you!