Chickens Watching Chicken Processing

[DoozyWombat]

I apologize for the noob question. I figured it had been asked a bunch of times, but I don't see it anywhere. I'm planning my layout for next year, and I'm trying to decide where my processing will take place.

Do I need to shield the processing from the other birds? I.e., after I process one bird, will the other birds see me as a predator and freak when I get close to them? Does it disturb them to see other birds processed?

I'm trying to decide if I (a) need to set up processing on a completely different part of the property, (b) could set up in the chicken yard, but shielded so birds can't get in there and can't see what is happening, or (c) if I can just ignore the other birds, because they won't care.

TIA

 

[bobbi-j]

We take them out of the coop and lop heads and gut them right there. The survivors don’t seem traumatized at all. As a matter of fact, if a piece of gut misses the bucket, the others are right there to clean it up. I think the biggest effect of processing day is the change in flock dynamics. They’re confused for a few days until they get the pecking order straightened back out.

 

[Peepsi]

Yes, shield your birds from it. Don't let them watch another bird get processed. That can stress the live birds out, as most of them know a bird in their flock is being "attacked".

 

[BantyChooks]

My chickens free range, so quite frequently they're around when I process other birds. They don't seem disturbed. They try and steal bits of the liver and other extra fleshy parts. I once had a young layer run off with the entire digestive system of a CX.

I would, however, keep the bird that's being processed from flopping around on the ground post-kill. I generally restrain them with my arms until the muscles stop spasming. My birds are quite hawk-wary and the sound of flapping wings is an instant cue to run for the woods and hide for the rest of the day. It's just good practice in general to keep the meat from being bruised.

 

[getaclue]

I do my processing in a separate area, so the flock can't see what's going on, and smell the blood.

 

[Eggscaping]

I apologize for the noob question. I figured it had been asked a bunch of times, but I don't see it anywhere. I'm planning my layout for next year, and I'm trying to decide where my processing will take place.

Do I need to shield the processing from the other birds? I.e., after I process one bird, will the other birds see me as a predator and freak when I get close to them? Does it disturb them to see other birds processed?

I'm trying to decide if I (a) need to set up processing on a completely different part of the property, (b) could set up in the chicken yard, but shielded so birds can't get in there and can't see what is happening, or (c) if I can just ignore the other birds, because they won't care.

TIA

I agree with the previous two that you don't let the chickens see their fellows being killed...but if I remember correctly there was someone who said they killed out of sight but processed where the flock was and the other chickens fought over the 'tasty bits'. (little cannibals!)

 

[wyoDreamer]

My laying chickens can see the killing cone - it hangs on the fence post about 25 feet from the layer run. I put the chicken in the cone, do the job and walk away until it is done kicking. My chickens ignore the whole business. As soon as I let them out to free-range, they run right to the fence post to see if I missed cleaning up anything. Once I forgot to remove the blood bucket and they tipped it open and tried to clean it out.

I don't think they are fazed much by the processing. They do react when I first grab the chicken and it squawks, but I don't put the chicken into the cone until it has calmed. The feather plucker is usually set-up right next to the fenced in run and they ignore that once they get used to the noise it makes.

I keep them locke up while I process because I worry that they will be underfoot and make the process that much harder for me. It is not easy for me to end a life, but it needs to be done when you raise meat chickens, so I do it.

 

[Mosey2003]

They are not traumatized in the slightest. If you are pulling the birds you're butchering from the group you're doing it in front of, they get a bit upset basically as you're catching a bird, but once you walk out, they're back to not caring.

The sight and smell of blood does not traumatize them, they will eat their own flock mates if given half the chance.

Mine all line up on the side of the pen nearest where I process because they know I'll toss them the hearts and testicles.

It's a total non-issue. Chickens don't think in such a manner that they would watch a flock mate being butchered and have any thoughts of themselves being butchered. Friend turns to food real fast.

 

[BantyChooks]

Excellent, clear and incisive. This is along the lines of what I've been thinking about it. It's more about what they perceive than about what we think or feel about it. And we have a hard time guessing their perceptions; all we can do is judge reactions to actual events.

Great comment, thanks.

Exactly. And, if I may go on a tangent again, in my experience, I've found I absolutely cannot predict their reaction to situation by looking at their reaction to a different one. Like I said, animals have spotty event perception and where those spots occur is sometimes entirely random-seeming. The capacity for something in one situation does not in any way mean it's going to be applied in another. They can be both prey animals whose entire lives revolve around staying alive (they are) and opportunistic little vultures that line up to watch you gut their flock mate for the chance to steal a few scraps. It's not a contradiction, it's just perception. While birds in a flock do look out for each other, by and large, it seems a selfish act. I do not mean that with the negative emotional connotations it often has. I mean they're interested in personally surviving, in personally passing on their genetics; it doesn't seem to come from a place of altruistic empathy for the other birds like it does for humans. Again, I am AM NOT saying they can't form bonds with other birds. I am not saying they're purely instinct driven robots. I'm saying that the experience I have with this situation points to there being a spot here, particularly in larger flocks. Whilst chickens can recognize many, many individual birds, the importance attached to the individual seems to go down rapidly after, hmm, about five? If you butchered one bird out of a pair or a trio in front of the other/s, I'd not at all be surprised if there were a different reaction. Their flock would suddenly be massively different. If I catch a hen from the main flock, none of the roosters bat an eye. If I catch a hen from a breeding pen with only a few birds in it, the rooster freaks.

Properly restrained death throes won't cause alarm, as it sounds like wiggling noise, not flapping. Chickens don't seem to react to the smell of blood either, not like horses will. Chickens are alarmed by sudden, sharp movements, loud noises, and aggressive body language, among other things. I do my best to keep the entire process calm for their sake, my sake, and the sake of the bird being butchered. By the time they know something's different from any other time I pick them up and hold them, they're unconscious or nearly so. It's not like a hawk attack where the unfortunate victim shrieks in distress and flaps around very vigorously and for much time before being silenced. All of that is a clear warning to the live birds that something's wrong and they could definitely die too, so they clear out.

I still need to figure out how to edit this to make it clearer, but I wanted to get it posted before going out to feed the chickens, so if one intends to quote this post to tell me how wrong I am I'd appreciate if you waited until I've refined the language to what I actually mean. I realize I've said a lot of contradictory things in here to the opinions a lot of others have said, but it truly is not meant to step on toes, only to share some of my reasoning behind earlier posts.

 

[DoozyWombat]

What a fascinating collection of answers which are both helpful and contradictory!

Thank you all for your replies.

Let's see if I can summarize. The concerns I hear are that (1) live birds might be traumatized because they see what might happen to them someday, (2) live birds might be traumatized because they smell blood, (3) live birds might be traumatized or scattered by flapping wings that suggest an aerial predator, (4) live birds might see the process as an attack on the flock, engendering panic.

Yet three of the replies said they process right in front of the other birds, with no visible trauma, except the one concern about flapping wings possibly signaling the presence of a hawk.

While I agree with the human sentiments of not exposing the birds to the processing, that's about what I would feel, not necessarily what a chicken would feel. I find it hard to believe the chickens would be able to project into the future based on what they are experiencing now, but I don't find it hard to believe that they might decide someone they don't know is a predator. And I suspect the actual experience might trump.

Let me ask, does anyone have experiences of a chicken visibly being traumatized by seeing another chicken processed? I'm wondering how much of the concerns are reflections of our own feelings, as opposed to those of the birds.