Hesitating with dispatching them

[CascadiaRiver]

I've pushed off dispatching twice, just a total shutdown I was extremely confident going into this, but now that it's time to buy a nice pair of shears and sit down and do it, I'm second guessing myself. What if I don't have the stomach to eat them? What if I feel sick gutting them? I wanted to start with quail since they're smaller and easier than say a rabbit or chicken but now that it's time I'm feeling guilty and icky. If I feel sick and unable to eat them, it's a life wasted. I'm not sure if someone would buy cockbirds, I'm doing a final sexing today. I wanted to do this, but now I'm just I guess geeked out. Anyone been in a similar boat? Easier once you've done it? Advice? Do I just need to man up?

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Or you look around in your area for a butcher or meat processor who takes them live and whole, you go out for coffee, come back a couple hours later and collect nice meat packages wrapped in brown paper. You may have to go to the outskirts of the city but most places have a business like that in the area. I think I paid about $5 a bird. A friend and I went in together so the price was cheaper as the amount of birds usually factor in the cost.

I can dispatch a bird if I need to. I can gut okay as my grandma taught me as a child on the chicken farm. I hate the smell and hassle of plucking. I blame it on my bad back and some arthritis in my hands, but honestly if I never smell hot soggy feathers again it's fine with me. Ugh.

You might be lucky and have a mobile butcher in the area who comes on site with a big truck. Daddy would bring a calf home from his hobby ranch and raise it in the pasture by the house until it was beef size. Then we'd call the mobile butcher.

There is more than one way to get a job done.

LofMc

 

[Tstraub]

When I butchered my first chicken I was a pretty nervous about it. I had cleaned the fish I caught as long as I could remember so I thought it wouldn’t be any different. When the day came it did feel different at first.

As soon as I make the first cut everything just seemed pretty normal to me and had no regrets. I was just overthinking the situation I guess. I give them a good life while they are here then a quick death when the time comes.

 

[kattabelly]

Do you know anyone who's either done this before or something similar (hunting or fishing maybe?) who could help you, or even just be there for a bit of moral support?

 

[CascadiaRiver]

It's gonna be at most 4-6 quail, it seems like it should be small and manageable and yet it makes me freeze up now thinking about it! I was so confident in this previously, I'm not sure the butcher near me would take such a small amount of animals, and the cost would be over $5 a bird. Nobody that lives here has done this, but I used to hang out with my dad when he would gut fish (he isn't here anymore). I'm sure my mom would accompany me if she absolutely had to, but I know the whole concept of growing & butchering your own meat would gross her out entirely, she has already stated she couldn't eat the meat from them regardless so I wouldn't want to make her attend their final moments.

I swear I'm not even that attached to them, the ones I suspect are boys have been not as tame & affiliative, and ultimately I know I just want 4-6 females which means the boys gotta dip. The only friend I know who has dispatched anything is a friend on the east coast who has done chickens via axe & block so a little bit different but I'll reach out to him anyways. I truly did not expect this when I was planning this project, I spend 3 years planning it out and suddenly I've lost my nerve

 

[CascadiaRiver]

I went out & one has a head injury from being picked on, some of the ones I suspect are girls have some feathers missing on their heads. It's just time, I know I really should do it today. I know my covey will be significantly easier to manage afterwards, I have 2 boys in their own large enclosures and about 8 mixed sex birds together (two older hens & the young ones now mature) it'll be awesome to have it more manageable with one enclosure, one food, one water (the two solo boys are SO MESSY). I'm going to try and work up my nerve, I know absolutely worst case scenario I can dispatch and just dispose of them if I feel sick for processing, it just feels like such a waste, but I know once it's done it'll be a weight off my shoulders...

 

[Taranakian]

The only birds I've despatched so far were our ducks. I would've loved to have kept them, but we had geese we got at the same time (from the same farm) and the geese hatched out some goslings. The drake was always a bully to the geese (who I vastly preferred over the ducks) and started going after the goslings - that was the final straw for me.

I locked up the drake to let him clear his bowels, but then the remaining duck freaked out when she realised she couldn't find him, so I made the decision to cull her too. It felt wrong to have a single of any species (with an exception reserved for my dog which may also be wrong, but given she doesn't really like other dogs I have my justifications for it).

The day of the cull, I cut the end off a feed bag, fed the drake's head through the opening, and just stared at him for awhile. It was the calmest he'd ever been. He just sat there, checking out the world while I had him in that bag. No fighting, no signs of stress or concern. The whole thing creeped me out. Here was this creature that, while terribly cute, was also terrorising my preferred livestock and was at least a contributing factor to the loss of every single gosling that hatched out. I stared, and stared, and stared and then, at some point must've been at least 15 minutes later, I realised that I wasn't going to let him go back to terrorising my geese, so I had to go through with it.

I tried dislocating his head from his spine with a sharp pull. But I also don't know that I did it well enough, so immediately picked up the axe and put him on the block I'd preprepared and chopped his head off. The duck was actually easier. I don't know how these things work, but I worried she'd smell the blood and the death and understand her fate so I was compelled to just get it over with as quickly as possible as a sordid kindness.

I cleaned them out quite quickly, but it took me hours to pluck. I just kinda oscillated between not knowing what I was doing and also just feeling bad about taking another animal's life. It was a sad day all around.

I am pretty pragmatic though. I'll worry about something until it happens, and then when it happens I drop the worry and simply respond. No use carrying on about something that's in the past. I also knew if I wasted that meat we'd have to buy meat from somewhere else, and I could all but guarantee the quality of life would have been much worse for whatever meat we bought. I didn't think twice about eating them, and they were delicious. Just getting them into the freezer was much harder than getting them out.

I have since convinced my husband that we should start our own self-sustaining dual purpose flock. So while the experience was sad, we can assume that it wasn't traumatising - at least for me.

 

[Anon112]

I don't have experience culling for food, only for putting down a dying bird for the sake of a humane death.

But one thing that is certain is that when you begin you must remind yourself that a firm hand and decisive action is necessary. Hesitation could result in a painful or unnecessarily prolonged/chaotic death for your birds, and they don't deserve that (even the annoying ones).

My guess is that if you get one on the chopping block and tell yourself "Clean and firm" and swing, you'll be okay. And once you've done one, I imagine that the rest will be easier.

Any time I lose an animal, I always tell them "Thank you for your spirit". If you have some little message or ritual that helps you say goodbye, that could help it seem more like you're in the flow of it.

 

[FunClucks]

I raise chickens for meat and eggs. Some of the eggers get names and are pets, and I spend time with them, but my meat birds do not get named, as they are not pets. I clean their enclosure and care for them, and that's it, because at the end of it they're dinner. They had a good life, and now they are done. I always say a prayer to thank them for their sacrifice, and then I make it quick. Any life I give them, regardless of how short, is 100x better than anything they would have had commercially. If it weren't for my desire to raise meat birds, they wouldn't even have had a life.

If you end up dispatching but can't eat them, your dog or cat would love them. Or your compost heap. Fertilizing the yard is not wasting them. Or you can boil them and feed them back to their flock mates. I'm not kidding - chickens (and I assume quails) are omnivores, and very happy to eat raw and cooked chicken (any meat really). They will also eat feathers, skin, bone meal, etc. They have no qualms at all about it and will descend upon the delicacy with great joy. They need protein in their diets to be healthy, and will happily consume frogs, mice, snakes, insects, fish, and anything they can catch. I generally feed them the leftovers when I roast a chicken once I get all the meat off the carcass.

What some folks do, is go to the store and buy a number of commercially raised chickens/ chicken breasts (or quail would work), then package them the same as the home raised ones, so you can't tell the difference. It helps with the guilt, because you don't KNOW you're eating the chicken you processed. I think the home raised ones taste so much better, and once it looks like the whole chickens sold in the store, the ick/guilt factor is done for me, as then I'm on familiar ground. Once it's plucked and gutted it looks like food, and doesn't bother me much if at all. I know what to do with a whole chicken - been cooking them for years. And once you've done the processing for a while, it gets easier. Because darn they're tasty!!! And so incredibly fresh. So much better than anything I ever bought at the store!

Good luck with it. The first time is hard.

 

[cassie]

Stop overthinking it. In fact, don't think about it at all. Just do it. One step at a time.