Can I kill my birds without taking away their food?

[Scooter&Suzie]

Glad to hear it went ok.

Enjoy those yummy quail

Thanks! If you guys have any ideas on how to prepare them let me know I just asked on the quail thread
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...urnix-quail-for-dinner.1309582/#post-21345926

 

[Scooter&Suzie]

Withholding food helps reduce the amount of possible poop and semi digested food mess during butchering. Choosing a best practice that doesn't involve using a knife too close to the intestines will help minimize risks too. Such as with quail just pulling apart the rib cage from the back. As animals pass away they can defecate and you could cause some to come out during butchering possibly contaminating your work surface and the meat. Not ideal to do it but if you have no choice, have some bleach and paper towels on hand and be ready to clean should any poop show up. It is definitely doable.

Hunted animals don't normally have access to the huge amounts of food we feed our domestics and normally don't have the volume of waste our food animals do. It's similar but not really the same thing. I think it's a waste to give that feed the last day. They won't get to process/digest it so it's like throwing money away.

All of that makes sense - thanks for sharing your knowledge!