How to butcher a chicken and not feel guilty?

[scooter147]

My suggestion after you have decided to do it is to make chicken salad out of the roos, that way it helps not to have a "body" or "bones" and the meat is hidden by the mayo, celery etc. to remind you of the roo.
I learned this trick 30 years ago after i butchered by first roosters. I made a batch of chicken soup and I had a hard time with the bones when I deboned it and the meat as I ate the soup., never finished the pot.
Now for the last 20 years or so I put 50 meaties in the freezer, cull older laying hens (although I have some 7 and 8 year old hens running around the place

) and cull all but one rooster out of the chickens I hatch myself.
It does get much easier after the first time or two.

 

[Chicky Tocks]

Quote:

Thank you for that.

 

[katkat92]

I cant kill and eat something that I have looked in the eye and taken care of.

My 2 cents is that maybe humans should look their food in the eye. To many people are out of touch with where their food comes from. You pick up the little styrofoam package at the grocer, detached that there was a death, and usually not a very good life, for you to get that fancy package.

I take comfort knowing the animal had a good life and died as humanely as possible. I appreciate that I was there with it to the end. I would want whomever cared for me to be there at my end.....

If something, god forbid, were to happen to our way of life, the true survivors will know how to find, kill and process their own food. It comforts me to know my kids can handle a weapon and can butcher food.

P.S. - Not trying to put anyone down just my humble opinion. There's nothing at all wrong with being sensitive.

And yes, they are delicious.....

 

[Sunny Side Up]

This is a dilemma for many living in our modern urban culture, the idea of personally killing animals for ourselves to eat, killing animals we may actually be fond of, animals we're not afraid of or threatened or disgusted by. This isn't such an issue in many many other cultures, and wasn't not too long ago.

I myself was raised in an American suburb & even was a vegetarian during some of my teen years. Now I am pleased & a bit proud of the food-raising skills I've learned in the past few years since moving to a semi-rural acreage community. Some folks ask "how can you bear to eat a chicken that you've raised from an egg?" My answer is "how can you stand to put something in your mouth that you have no idea of where it's been or how it got to your plate?"

I started keeping chickens to have fresh eggs, and kept a few roos as flock husbands. I still haven't gotten to the point where I could cull any of them for non-performance, but imagine I could with future flocks. I recently learned how to process chickens in order to make good use of the extra roosters my broody hens would hatch. It certainly was a bit unsettling the first few times The Deed was done. I never felt guilty, but it took a bit of getting used to.

Now I can view my meat birds like I do the produce grown in my garden: I tenderly care for their needs from their tiny beginnings, admire their natural beauty & abilities, and take pride in their healthy growth, all the while keeping in mind their Purpose In Life which is to feed me & my family. It would make as much sense to raise meat birds to maturity & then let them live & die of natural causes (or predation) as it would to let a pumpkin sprout, grow, ripen, & wither on the vine because I couldn't bear to eat it.

One of the reasons chickens have been kept domestically for thousands of years is their dual purpose, eggs & meat. Like someone else said, with a flock ratio of 1:10, fully 90% of all roosters hatched have a purpose on someone's plate. Even more than that percentage if you think of all the egg farms without roosters. Even if you're a vegetarian, if you eat eggs or dairy you're supporting the meat chicken & beef industry.

One of the many benefits of raising & processing my own chickens has been the increased appreciation I have for the sacrifices made in order to put meat on my table. Sacrifices from the animals who had to die and the humans who labored to raise & process it. That's not something you often consider if you just buy your meat in plastic-wrapped packages at the store, or drive to a building and holler your order into a microphone by a menu and minutes later have a hot meat sandwich in your hands that only cost a dollar.

If you can do that without recognizing it for the amazing gift that it truly is, that's when you should feel guilty.

 

[cmjust0]

If consuming meat products required a license, and if part of the licensing requirements was a training course in either hunting or raising, then killing, then processing a variety of different animals, there would be a WHOLE LOT MORE vegetarians in this world.

Heck, I'd even grade on a curve! If you can make it through catching or raising, then killing and filleting a fish, you get a license to eat fish...if you can raise and butcher a chicken, or kill a wild duck (or grouse, or quail, or whatever) and process it, you can have your drummies and hotwings...if you can get through a deer or some other large mammal, you can have cheeseburgers and ribeyes all day long..

Otherwise...well, who doesn't love a good salad bar, right!?!

I came to that conclusion after I killed my first deer. You simply cannot appreciate the gravity of a simple cheeseburger until you find yourself elbow deep in the warm chest cavity of a large, freshly killed mammal...watching steam rise up out of the blood, like the very spirit of the animal itself, drifting off into the cool November air just as the sun's coming up... It's an experience I firmly believe everybody who eats meat should go through, and if they can't bring themselves to go through with it....well, that's when *I personally think* (just my opinion!!!) eating meat sorta becomes an exercise in hypocrisy.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

The key is to remember and remind yourself constantly WHY. Why we raise our own birds and harvest them. You want to feel less guilty, just watch the videos on commercial producers. There is a website called Kentucky Fried Cruelty, watch and see how the commercial birds are treated. They aren't even treated as living beings. Packed into hot nasty houses and thrown into small cages to be slaughtered on an assembly line.

After continually reminding yourself, look out at your birds and see an animal that got to be a living thing. The sun, grass, bugs, a breeze, the little things that matter. You care for them the best you can, and bring their end swift and with respect.

Yes, I feel guilty at times. When I walk out my back door and all my extra cockerels and roosters are there waiting for any handouts. To watch them grow from eggs, to fluffy butts, into beautiful birds. When I catch myself getting upset or guilt-ridden I remember and remind myself thay they have 8 acres of grass, sun, and bugs, a chance to live before their end. And THAT, that is what makes the difference. The respect they receive during life and at their death is the difference, to us they are living things, not inanimate objects..

This is how I get past my guilt anyway. I realize this thread was old, but that's my two cents.

-Kim

 

[brandywine]

Well, I don't think I can help you not feel SAD. I always feel sad when I slaughter an animal. When I shoot a deer I usually blubber like a baby for a few minutes. I still feel a bit sad about the cornish that we processed a few days ago. I liked them, they were sweet, simple birds. I also felt sad, but less so, about the nasty guinea cocks, which were perhaps more like your roosters. It's okay to feel a little sad. That means that the gravity of taking a life is still with you, as it should be.

I do not mourn them the way I mourn the loss of a beloved pet or animal working partner, though. (I am mourning the death of my first SAR dog still, five years on.)

But guilt is a different emotion. Guilt is what we feel when we believe we've done something wrong.

To feel less guilty, contemplate the life of your mean rooster vs. the life of every industrially-raised chicken you've ever bought wrapped in plastic. (Warning: this could end up making you feel guilty about buying and eating commercial chicken, so is not without its perils.)

Assure yourself that your roosters have had a good life, and that you care for them so much that you will personally ensure that their deaths are as distress-free as possible. Then make it so -- review all the good advice here on humane slaughter, and mentally rehearse the way you are going to do it. If you make a mistake, fix it quickly and move on. Understand that it still beats being trucked to a processing plant after seven weeks of a miserable existence.

Give thanks to the birds, to their spirits, and to whatever deities you credit with their presence on the planet. Approach the slaughter with a sense of grave mindfulness. If prayer is part of your belief system, now is the time. Dress them carefully. I find that it helps that not one bit of the bird goes to waste here. The dogs eat the heads, feet, necks, lungs and giblets. The innards go into the maggot-bucket for the benefit of the other birds. The blood (put some water into the catch-bucket so it stays liquid) goes onto the nitrogen-greedy vegetable crops. The feathers go into the compost. Everything is reclaimed. I can mollify myself with the assurance that we respected the gift of the bird as thoroughly as possible.

Here's a thoughtful blog post from a writer who was faced with a tough call on a pet rooster:

http://www.dolittler.com/2009/05/23/The-REAL-“omnivore’s-dilemma”-notes-on-my-first-slaughter.html

 

[frugal]

I raise and harvest my own meat; rabbits, chickens, ducks, lamb and goat. In addition I harvest deer, bear and on occasion moose. I've never enjoyed taking the life of an animal and don't believe I ever will.

Harvesting meat seems no different to me than pulling a carrot out of the ground. Every time you pull a carrot you are ripping its life sustaining root system out and killing the carrot. I expect that if a carrot could communicate it would prefer to stay in the ground and live and not be eaten by a vegetarian or a carnivore.

---john

 

[jaku]

I don't really mind the fact that all of our food is available at the grocery store, prepackaged. That's convenient, and is a nice bit of progress from having to hunt and kill or grow every meal. But, it is contributing to the wuss-ification of America.

Think of it this way- if God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them almost entirely out of meat.

 

[lakeshorenc]

Thank you Brandywine!!! I needed to read that.

By the way, I love your signature. Brandywine tomatoes are my favorite.