Duck Responsibilities (aka Slaughtering Our First Duck)

[Iceblink]

Dangerous- How great (not actually) that your husband now won't eat duck! Now that my girls have finally started laying, my DH has decided he doesn't like eggs in any form and refuses to eat them. I am drowning in eggs.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

I'm not even sure how we're going to slaughter our chickens when they've finished laying, we had already decided to use our first flock of chickens as layers until they reach only 25% of their laying, and then they get slaughtered for either us, or the dogs. I was looking at things in the berry hill catalog, and we'd decided to go the first time with the knife method, I'm still so uneasy about eventually doing it. The only thing is, we cannot afford to go and have them processed, and then not knowing what kinds of conditions, or what will be put into the meat at the processor. Our friend is going to take hers to the menonites near her to slaughter them, but I'm not certain there are any that would do it near us.

What did you use, are you going to use to de-feather them, in our homestead book it says to get a scalder, or to heat your water to 160F and scald them, and then get the picker and pick the feathers.

Your post was touching, and at the same time kind of puts me at ease a little about slaughtering our own, we know it's going to save costs, and most importantly, we know how the chickens will be treated, and that they will be treated well. It's kind of nice to know that someone else is slaughtering their own livestock, I was thinking we'd be the only people!

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Quote:
This seems a little more workable, I wouldn't feel so bad If I slaughtered my chickens this way. Your grandpa does indeed seem to know his stuff! We're going to slaughter some broilers before our RIRXCol. Rock's, we're getting broilers next summer to feed up, and slaughter for the winter months when chicken gets really expensive in the stores here.

I don't eat beef, pork, turkey, lamb... any meat other than Chicken, and I eat a bit of trout.

Not really a meat eater, mostly vegetarian, by choice, and only because we have the ability to grow our own vegetables, huge very fertile vegetable patch out back of the garden

and a smaller one going in the front of the house. Unfortuantely, not growing any veggies out back this year, we're moving to the new place (place with the big patch) and we decided not to grow at the old house, and sadly cannot grow at the new house until next year, because last year the farmer planted hay, and it's coming back.. so at least we'll have 40 bales free of charge

less the expense of buying a scythe, cause we're cool like that.

 

[Cetawin]

Excellent post....sorry I did not find it sooner. I hope that I could have the strength you do. I did when I was younger but I seem to have mellowed in my older years.

I stand in the woods, put arrow to bow, pull my arrow back, take careful aim and let the arrow go...steady as can be. It is after that it gets me, it hits and the deer drops or runs a bit, I cry like a 2 year old who lost his favorite toy. That is a wild animal that I did not know, did not name and did not raise.

 

[greyfields]

Quote:
If you are looking for more moral justification, waterfowl is incredibly ecologically sound to raise. They do not require tons of feed and do very well on grass and forage alone. So, this saves you the expense in dollars and carbon emissions of hauling grain all over the US in order to make feed to give to your poultry. So, on environmental grounds, ducks and geese hold a distinct edge over raising broilers or turkey.

 

[ninjapoodles]

Quote:
Even the wild mallards that my husband hunts have plenty of meat on them for a family meal. Sadly, I have not yet figured out a way to cook it that my daughter and I enjoy, but he eats it. All the recipes we find seem to use the strategy of DROWNING the meat in the fat of something else, like bacon, pork-fat, butter, etc. Then, to me, it just tastes like greasy, fish-infused liver or something. Bleah. I've even tried soaking the birds whole in buttermilk for 48 hours prior to roasting. No luck.

I'm not giving up yet, though. I just posted in the recipes section the other day asking about this, and got some a couple of good ideas involving apple cider.