Axe/hatchet method of chicken dispatch - is it the most humane and cost-efficient method?

[NatJ]

Maybe one day, but unfortunately right now where I live, butchering must be done in a garage or other enclosed space. I live in the city.

Ah, that makes a big difference.

In that case, I agree that catching the blood neatly in something like a bucket makes perfect sense-- keeps your work area tidier, and lets you rinse the blood into the compost pile at the end instead of down the drain.

 

[Penpal]

We always hung the chicken by the legs, then cut the neck, just on one side. They would bleed out while alive with no complaining. They fall asleep, then die. I made cones out of leftover fabric.

 

[Molpet]

If you're doing dispatch in a garage I would tape up leaf size garbage bags around the kill site. Blood does splatter.

Maybe one day, but unfortunately right now where I live, butchering must be done in a garage or other enclosed space. I live in the city.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, I know chickens don't drain out a ton of blood each,

My suggestion for that is to have some absorbent material in the bucket to catch the blood. It will dry out fast. You won't get enough to pour much of it out though I guess you could wash it and pour the wash water on the compost.

As far as not wasting I bury the stuff I want to bury in a fenced in garden in a place I won't be disturbing for a while where a dog or coyote can't dig it up. When butchering I have two buckets for the parts I don't want. One bucket is what I feed back to the remaining chickens: fat, bits of meat, gonads, lungs, and such. I also cut the intestines into 2" pieces for them to eat while inspecting them for roundworms or tape worms. I keep enough of this so they can finish it off before dark so it doesn't attract predators.

 

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

If you're doing dispatch in a garage I would tape up leaf size garbage bags around the kill site. Blood does splatter.

Thanks for the advice! Maybe I'll just throw a tarp down.

 

[Molpet]

Thanks for the advice! Maybe I'll just throw a tarp down.

Also about 4ft up.

 

[Morrigan]

Also, I remember your thread from a couple of months ago, contemplating getting CX in a suburban setting. I'm glad you decide to give it a try. I hope you keep us posted when you get your chicks this Fall.

 

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

Also, I remember your thread from a couple of months ago, contemplating getting CX in a suburban setting. I'm glad you decide to give it a try. I hope you keep us posted when you get your chicks this Fall.

Thanks! I'm glad for all the advice everyone on BYC has given to help me get to this point. I think I am mentally prepared to do it. I will definitely share my experience when I get them!

 

[RiverOtter]

I'm not sure what cone method everyone is thinking is complicated or takes a long time?? I must be missing something. When I had a cone, I had it nailed to a beam with a bucket under it. I put the chicken in, the head and neck come out the bottom. I took a machete and decapitated it. Exactly the "hatchet" method, but no fussing with stumps and nails and aim and flailing, just whack and done. Honest truth, I usually wrap the head in a paper towel as soon as the bird is in the cone - it never sees anything and I don't have a head staring at me from the bucket.

Lacking a cone, and having enough hay twine to macrame the entire farm, I take a loop of hay twine, put one end through the other, put it around the chicken's ankles (individually if it's a large bird) and hang the twine from a hook on a beam and do the same thing, but without a cone. There's not a huge amount of flapping, but if it disturbs you, cones are easy to make. Before they were a thing you could buy, people used old traffic cones and corners of sturdy burlap feed sacks before that.

 

[3KillerBs]

Maybe one day, but unfortunately right now where I live, butchering must be done in a garage or other enclosed space. I live in the city.

If you have to work indoors I suggest the broomstick method, which contains the blood in the skin of the neck where the spine has been severed, instead of any method that involves cutting the head off and having the blood spatter the work area.