Chickens Watching Chicken Processing

[muddy75]

I carry larger birds to a different area for processing more for my convenience than theirs......we pop the heads on the quail right in the aviary and no major issues as a result. it would be too much risk of escape and loss of efficiency to do it differently.

 

[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.

 

[BantyChooks]

I don't know about disease spread. I certainly wouldn't feed them chicken as as a part of their regular diet, but I haven't had issues with occasional scraps from healthy birds. If I see an issue with the meat or guts, neither I nor the birds will be eating it!

 

[Mimi13]

@BantyChooks, I agree wholeheartedly with your post #42.

 

[igorsMistress]

We kill the birds in my enclosed garden. Those not being processed are kept in a small enclosed yard until the culls are ready for plucking.

The reason I do this is because if they come out and run around the outside of the garden the culls get upset and everyone starts making a lot of racket. Easier for us not to deal with it.

I feel guilty sometimes, but I've learned not to turn those human emotions into chicken emotions.

 

[aart]

I separate the birds the day before and keep them in the barn where I process. Mainly to get them off feed....

Same here, have crates set up over a poop hammock and grab them off the roost the night before. But I only process a few (3-5) at a time. I do cover crates with towels mostly just to keep them calmer during the flapping that happens as I lower a bird into the cone.

They don't think like us...can be hard to remember that.

 

[BantyChooks]

@BantyChooks, I agree wholeheartedly with your post #42.

It's okay, you can quote it because you're saying nice things.
I only mention that because I've had issues in other threads where I write a post, leave so I can mull it over and think of corrections, only to come back and see replies from someone hot and bothered over something that I never intended to imply at all. Disclaimers cover my butt until I can fix 'em... which is usually about a day later, so simply leaving the post content in a draft makes me seriously late to the conversation. I need a proofreader.

 

[DellaMyDarling]

My experiences with the fall meat bird harvest is that the birds waiting their turn could sense *something*.
The more birds I had in crates, watching, smelling, being near processing, the more stressed they all became. Each bird got a bit harder to physically handle into position and fought more at the cone.
The last two times I processed, I kept the waiters out of sight and smell range (the darker barn) from the event at hand. Those waiters processed much smoother and calmer at their turn. I hold fast to the idea that these "dumb meaties" are smart enough to know they are about to die.

 

[aart]

My experiences with the fall meat bird harvest is that the birds waiting their turn could sense *something*.
The more birds I had in crates, watching, smelling, being near processing, the more stressed they all became. Each bird got a bit harder to physically handle into position and fought more at the cone.
The last two times I processed, I kept the waiters out of sight and smell range (the darker barn) from the event at hand. Those waiters processed much smoother and calmer at their turn. I hold fast to the idea that these "dumb meaties" are smart enough to know they are about to die.

I've seen this too..last time the last one got away from me, luckily garage door was mostly closed and I grabbed him up quick.
I'm sure they 'feel' anxiety both from the birds flapping and the killers(us).
We know this from just handling birds, the calmer we are the calmer the birds are.

 

[Mimi13]

leaving the post content in a draft makes me seriously late to the conversation. I need a proofreader.

Ah, I’ve been let in on a secret. I’ve often wondered how people get in on the conversations so quickly. I am a die-hard, tried and true “muller” and a lot of times when I’m reading threads I say to heck with it, because I know some other horse has already won the race before mine even leaves the gate! Yeah, now how’s that for an analogy? Not to mention I’m always on my phone and not a computer.

I also have a bad habit of feeling the need to read through an entire thread before commenting so as not to duplicate or triplicate an answer and then never catch up and then think, “Dang it, I should’ve just gone ahead and posted.”

Oh, sometimes life is just so hard!