How do you do it???

[SIMPleChick]

I am very new to chickens this year. We got them for fun, eggs, and meat if we need to in case of emergency or near the end of their laying life. So my question is...How do you do it? How do you let go of the "pet" feeling of an animal to eat it and how is the most humane way of killing them in a suburb area? I feel like I can do it when the time comes, I just want to do it the right way.

 

[<3ChickenForever]

Make sure you relax them first. Hold it by the legs and put your other hand under it to relax it. All I can tell you, cause I hated it when my Dad butchered a lot of the roo's. Just didn't liked to picture it. Good Luck. And after a while like after the hens stop laying and butchered them, the meat will be tough. It's best for chicken-noodle soup for the more rough meat.

 

[wsdareme]

Sigh. I don't. I will have a retirement home for my elderly chickens.

That said, you can search YouTube for some great videos of the proper way to butcher chickens. Just search for "chicken processing" or "poultry processing".

 

[TajMahalChickens]

That is a question that I never want to face. My hens got old, and stopped laying, and I knew they needed to go to make room for new productive chickens. But they had names and had been our first four chickens that got me started with poultry. How could I kill my pets? so, They went to the butchering place that I take my meat birds each year (butchering meat birds is a whole different story - no probs getting rid of them). The worst part was when we were rapping them in freezer paper when we got home, and you could tell the girls from the roasters (the girls were tiny in comparison to the roasters).

So to be honest if you do not have meat birds to send them off to the butcher with, I'm not really sure.

 

[Blaineiac]

I treat all my animals with respect. I pet and scratch all my hogs everyday during the afternoon feeding. I know they have a purpose beyond being my lil' composters. I take the best care of them I can while they are here. Then it is time for them to pay me back. It is the reason they are here. It will get easier when you eat some of the most flavorful soup imaginable. Until they figure how to surgically remove bacon, this is a reality I have to deal with. Good Luck

 

[booker81]

Quote:
This. As a society, we've gotten used to having prepackaged meat delivered in pretty displays. That said, there are still a LOT of people who still raise their own meat, and it's really about respecting and cherishing your food. I like to visit even with my little meatie chicks, and I enjoy caring from them (they are still little, only two weeks old). I liked the roosters I had that I processed).

I don't eat meat because I hate animals, I like animals because they give me meat

I do the killing and processing in the garage and kitchen, which was a must this winter when I was collecting roosters and other birds people didn't want. I think if you go to my page, there is info about how I process, which is indoors and makes minimal noise

 

[Mattemma]

When we did it in Hungary I recall grannie and her sister holding back the necks and cutting.Once they were dead we put them in boiling water and started plucking the feathers. Next we gutted and cleaned. Seems like s good way,but I would want to chop the head off I think. The cutting would be to hard to do. I have read online about somehow snapping the neck,but have not tried it.

 

[Gypsy07]

I either snap their necks or put them on the block and chop their heads off with an axe. First year I had chickens I couldn't face doing it, couldn't even watch it being done. It's something that you get desensitised to over time. First I watched a local slaughterman skin and gut one of our lambs that I'd bottle fed and kept indoors under a heat lamp when it was sick. I couldn't watch him killing it but I wanted to see it being gutted. Next time he came to slaughter another lamb I asked him to do one of my nasty roosters, and I made myself watch so I could learn how to do it. Next time one of my old hens prolapsed and needed euthanising urgently, I did it myself. Not nice, but I did it. I haven't killed anyone purely for food yet, but I will soon. I know most of my chickens as individuals, but only two of them have names. Giving them names makes it much harder IMO...

 

[f8thnjc]

Our chickens are all named "Buck" so that we don't have the attachment problem. Although our daughter named them anyway, it seems to work for the rest of us.

 

[JulieNKC]

My roo in my avatar is resting in my fridge right now. His name was Rambo, he was my favorite out of the chicks when they were little. He bucked up to my daughter. That was the end of him. I figure if I can eat chicken I should be able to get my chicken to the table myself. If I hadn't been able to do it I would have seriously considered becoming a vegitarian. I figured it was the nicest way out for him though. It's hard to find a pet home for a mean roo, someone else would have ate him I'm sure. At least this way he went out quick and at home, in his own enviroment.
My 2 easter egger chicks I picked up yesterday are now named nugget and drumstick, just in case.