DIY HUMANE way to Kill Slaughter Chicken (Stun-kill, Gas)

[Dust Bunny]

Quote:
Yeh, thats what I thought too!

I do not at all think the brain would manage to stay alive long enough for the pain receptors to do their job, and when a truly traumatic injury occurs there's even more of a delay in the firing of that information. It evolved as a survival tactic so that the animal could get away from whatever was causing the injury before hunkering down and either wait out the healing process or die from the injuries. Has anyone ever been around someone who's had a limb torn clean off? When it happens there's a moment of, "What the heck? Where's my leg?" shock before the pain really begins to register.

Here's where I'll admit that, even knowing all that, I do not like to see the head doing it's weird death thing. Even though it only takes two seconds at most, that's two agonizing seconds for me. To ease my irrational mind, I have my SO help me dispatch them. We've worked it out to where he thwacks off the head, and a nanosecond later I have the head crushed beneath a large rock I use for the purpose. Even if I'm found to be wrong and the head can still feel pain after decapitation, I figure there's no way it can be feeling anything when the brain has been smashed to jelly.

i was thinking of the head smashing thing too, just like you said after dispatch, i ordered 10 meaties and im trying to figure out the best dispatch method BEFORE d-day i have read every post on this thread and much of it is good info, im not wild about the idea of killing but i still think i could do better than the factory farmers

 

[Carol.in.WV]

In a previous post back in Nov, I explained how I did it by the hanging, slitting with a new scapel (important not to bungle) and then pithing. Were I to do it again I think I would pith first, then slit. With the right instrument the pithing is fast and easy and they are brain dead right away, plus you can just pull the feathers out with your fingers, no boiling water etc.

 

[GBov]

Carol.in.WV :

In a previous post back in Nov, I explained how I did it by the hanging, slitting with a new scapel (important not to bungle) and then pithing. Were I to do it again I think I would pith first, then slit. With the right instrument the pithing is fast and easy and they are brain dead right away, plus you can just pull the feathers out with your fingers, no boiling water etc.

I have often wondered about pithing but, well, how much "Get On With It" does it take to shove a scalpal into its mouth and how easy - or not - is it to miss the brain? Taking the head off is easy for me, scrunch with the loppers and off its head goes

but I like the idea of easy plucking. Does it really make that much difference?​

 

[WalkingWolf]

I just started to use the broom handle method, I still knock them unconscious before breaking the neck, the last one I did there was no flopping just some minor twitching in the legs. But if you are going to stun a bird with a whack to the head make sure it is a good one or the bird will respond with squawking and attempting to flee. Done right the bird just goes limp. If you plan to stew the head then the best option is lopping off the head, I don't care much for this as I like my fingers. And also the blood flies everywhere when the head is cut off.

 

[ben_r]

Quote:
Came here to post this. As divers know, the panicky feeling of running out of air comes not from oxygen starvation, but from CO2 oversaturation in the blood. So long as galline physiology works in the same way (I'm not a vet, unfortunately, and cannot confirm), a chicken in a nitrogen environment would continue to breathe normally and gradually pass out and die. It wouldn't experience the "suffocating" feeling, because it would be expelling CO2 normally with every breath.

Consequently, assuming chickens and people have the same reaction to CO2, then gassing with dry ice or other CO2 source would be a Very Bad Thing, inducing the full feeling of suffocation. Nitrogen would be basically painless and would not affect the meat in any way.

 

[WalkingWolf]

Well, years ago I passed out from CO2 poisoning, I can say it was completely painless. The car that I worked in had a exhaust leak, and I spent about 10 hours in the care a day. Actually except for headaches afterward it was completely unnoticeable. The only other symptoms were feeling like a ongoing flu, when blood tests were done the co2 levels were discovered. I also inhaled water a few times snorkeling when I stayed down to long, and I can tell you it is the lack of AIR that creates the panic feeling. That is unless chickens are much different. I felt more panic as a child when given whatever gas they used to put me out for dental surgery.

 

[ben_r]

Quote:
Are you sure that it was CO2 (carbon dioxide)? Combustion engines produce CO (carbon monoxide), which will cause confusion, drowsiness, and headaches before it knocks you out. Elevated CO2 blood levels cause hypercapnia, leading to panic and hyperventilation:
http://www.answers.com/topic/hypercapnia
If you aren't breathing, the CO2 fraction in your blood increases, leading to hypercapnia, which causes the panicky "suffocation" feeling. This is why free divers often hyperventilate before diving, to flush the blood of CO2 and allow them to stay down longer before the CO2 build-up sends them to the surface:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-diving#Training

edit: one of my friends lived in an apartment that had a furnace with a cracked heat exchanger; she complained of the same symptoms you mentioned before it was repaired. The gas in that case was CO (carbon monoxide).

 

[WalkingWolf]

Quote:
Are you sure that it was CO2 (carbon dioxide)? Combustion engines produce CO (carbon monoxide), which will cause confusion, drowsiness, and headaches before it knocks you out. Elevated CO2 blood levels cause hypercapnia, leading to panic and hyperventilation:
http://www.answers.com/topic/hypercapnia
If you aren't breathing, the CO2 fraction in your blood increases, leading to hypercapnia, which causes the panicky "suffocation" feeling. This is why free divers often hyperventilate before diving, to flush the blood of CO2 and allow them to stay down longer before the CO2 build-up sends them to the surface:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-diving#Training

edit: one of my friends lived in an apartment that had a furnace with a cracked heat exchanger; she complained of the same symptoms you mentioned before it was repaired. The gas in that case was CO (carbon monoxide).

Could be, but it seems that the reports showed elevated CO2 levels in the blood, it has been 30 years. But I can tell you from experience from diving that that when you inhale water in place of air it causes panic, not pain. Anybody who has dived without the use of tanks, has experienced it. Tests have been done on animals that have been euthanize by use of CO2 and the common factors of panic are not present in the blood or tissue with CO2 used properly as a agent to dispense them. It is also common for the SPCA to use gas chambers with CO2.

 

[FeatherMoon]

Ok, I am newbie here, but I am really interested in this. My perspective on this topic has changed throughout the years, but I now realize it is a necessary and natural thing. If we are going to eat meat, as most of us do (as we are evolved to do), I believe that the honorable thing to do is to give them happy lives, treat them with respect, dispatch them as humanely as possible, and not waste what they have given us. I also believe that the eggs and meat from a wild or "happy farm" raised, free-ranging animal are vastly superior in quality to that of factory-farm production. The question here is obviously how to dispatch in the most humane manor. I unfortunately do not have time to read through every post on here, but I have read many and I think there are some interesting ideas. I ran across this site today in my search & found it very informative:

http://www.rogueturtle.com/articles/chicken.php

I like the idea of keeping them very calm, avoiding stress, & hypnotizing them; then inverting them slowly to make them "go to sleep" (prob due to blood rushing to their head) before you actually do "the deed." I don't like the idea of slitting the throats, it's too slow & painful IMHO. At least a sharp chop quickly severs the nerves in the spinal chord from repaying pain signals to the brain. The "Upside-down Brain Stab" method (similar to "Pithing a frog") that they mention, is supposedly the quickest and least painful method according to them & has other advantages too, but I don't know if I could do it honestly. I would be too afraid I would "miss."

I am looking more into the nitrogen thing methods above and might experiment with that eventually. I forget where I saw it a while back, but somewhere I read & saw pics of a board with 2 nails in it to slide the neck between for holding the head still (preferably with a small dark sac over the head to keep them calm) and a nail at the bottom of the board around which to pull snug & tie a rope attached to the feet. That way the bird can not wriggle and result in a "bad chop." I thought this was very clever too! Are the any other good ideas I am missing?

 

[Carol.in.WV]

Quote:

I am looking more into the nitrogen thing methods above and might experiment with that eventually. I forget where I saw it a while back, but somewhere I read & saw pics of a board with 2 nails in it to slide the neck between for holding the head still (preferably with a small dark sac over the head to keep them calm) and a nail at the bottom of the board around which to pull snug & tie a rope attached to the feet. That way the bird can not wriggle and result in a "bad chop." I thought this was very clever too! Are the any other good ideas I am missing?

If you have the right size knife (strong, narrow, fairly short, such as is often in a pocketknife) it is hard to do it wrong. Look in a chickens mouth (easy to do when a roo is crowing next to you) and you will see a vertical slit on the top. Just thrust in there and twist the knife. The bird will make a sound that indicates your success. The wings may still flap if not tied down but the bird is brain dead and anything else is just reflex.