Chickens Watching Chicken Processing

[Mimi13]

One of his legs seized while I was cooking him and he kicked the lid off the crockpot

What? That bird was possessed!

 

[Mosey2003]

No way!! Really?

Yep! Not like it flew across the room, but the lid was popped off the side and canted over, ready to fall. I was stunned lol.

What? That bird was possessed!

Even in death, he had to get one more lick in

 

[aart]

Yep! Not like it flew across the room, but the lid was popped off the side and canted over, ready to fall. I was stunned lol.

Hmmmmm.....was bird a fresh kill or frozen, rested for how long.....questions abound, but gotta go. Later.

 

[Mosey2003]

Hmmmmm.....was bird a fresh kill or frozen, rested for how long.....questions abound, but gotta go. Later.

I rested that mean sucker at least five days I remember, if not more. He never did loosen up. Not frozen at all. I tried to dispatch him with an axe and it went really, really poorly. Never again.

 

[Kusanar]

I don't have chickens, but I do have horses who I'm pretty sure most people would agree are typically smarter than chickens.

Touching and interesting. What catches my attention with this is that the ones who saw the roo die were quiet, but not looking for him. The ones who didn't were looking for him. So, were the first ones sad because they saw him die, or were they just not calling because they knew he was gone? I agree with the conclusion that the second ones were calling because an important member of their flock wasn't announcing himself.

I had a horse that had to be put down in the barn when the others were outside. The herd leader screamed and ran the fences looking for him, so I caught him, took him in the barn and let him see the body. He literally came around the corner, stopped, sniffed, turned around, went outside, checked the rest of the herd, and that was that. No odd behaviors from any of the horses in the herd after that, nothing that would seem sad or upset. They were looking for him and couldn't understand why he wouldn't answer when they called, once they knew he was dead, they went about life as normal. I had another one die of unknown causes in the field. Took me a while to find the body as the rest of them were acting as if there was nothing out of the usual at all because they knew he was dead and likely had watched him die.

Even in death, he had to get one more lick in

There was a horse that died at a vet school and due to being there, they use the very fresh dead horses for surgical practice for the students. Well, they took the nice and warm body in and started opening him up, someone touched his hind leg and he kicked them in the head and killed them... this was a dead and mostly gutted horse that did that... My vet probably thought I was weird when I had to put one down and once he was gone I was tucking his legs in to make it easier to move him (wasn't moving him until the next day and didn't want him stiff with legs all over the place) but I was standing out of range and kicking his feet and tapping his legs before I touched them to move them. Didn't want to be nailed by a dead horse... try explaining that at the hospital...

 

[muddy75]

Aha! When in doubt just Google it! I’m showing my age here, because I’m used to looking things up in the encyclopedia. (You know, the set of big books from A-Z.) And this type of info would not have been found under ‘Adrenaline,’ or ‘Beef,’ or ‘Slaughtering,’ or ...you get the point. But here it is for us today, spelled out perfectly.

https://www.grass-fed-solutions.com/cattle-stress.html

I guess kids of today are smarter than I was, if they have access to the internet that is!

unfortunately most kids today would never look this stuff up.....they are way too exposed to bias....for example the “elected official” that said” we don’t need farms, because we have plenty of grocery stores!”

 

[DoozyWombat]

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

Me, too. You must have edited before I got to it, because it looks great to me.

 

[DoozyWombat]

Aha! When in doubt just Google it! I’m showing my age here, because I’m used to looking things up in the encyclopedia. (You know, the set of big books from A-Z.) And this type of info would not have been found under ‘Adrenaline,’ or ‘Beef,’ or ‘Slaughtering,’ or ...you get the point. But here it is for us today, spelled out perfectly.

https://www.grass-fed-solutions.com/cattle-stress.html

Fascinating article! I do wonder about how much science stands behind the claims, but all of it makes sense, and the science quoted makes sense, too. I had not thought about adrenaline affecting the eating quality, but this is one area where I would expect that chickens and cattle would have similar physiological reactions.

I did a little further reading from a few ag university studies, and the dark-cutting beef (from long-term stress before slaughter) does have a shorter shelf life, and is usually used in the food industry because it isn't as appealing to customers, but it may not actually taste different from regular beef. Between 1-2% of beef is dark-cutting.

But short-term stress right before slaughter is different, and might well cause toughness issues in the meat. That's a guess, not from the research.

 

[DoozyWombat]

Not sure if they were sad. Maybe Subdued
The next day I took down the fence and let the hens decide what coop they wanted to live in. The hens that witness the event, went to coops they had been in before that night. They didn't stay together. The hens that hadn't seen it stayed in the rooster-less coop for a couple days, before going back to the coop they originally were from
The coops roo is what I think they went to

While we can't read too much into it, that suggests to me that the hens that didn't know the roo was gone were just trying to reconstitute their flock, and the others didn't care because they knew he was gone. Still speaking from ignorance here, so take it FWIW.

 

[DoozyWombat]

unfortunately most kids today would never look this stuff up.....they are way too exposed to bias....for example the “elected official” that said” we don’t need farms, because we have plenty of grocery stores!”

That's hilarious, but (fortunately) not true:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-trudeau-canada-american-farmers/