Mentally Preparing For Processing Meaties

[greenfamilyfarms]

I need to mentally prepare myself for the processing and consumption of our meat chicks. Is there anything you do to prepare mentally for this fact of life? The last roos we processed I couldn't eat.

 

[chirpchirp]

idk, but if you figure it out let me know! i am getting 16 meaties in june and it will be my first experience with chickens let alone raising my own food - i am worried i will have the same problem.

 

[Want2BFarmer]

I was worried when I got my birds that they would be hard to kill but after 6 weeks of food, water, more food and poop clean up I am looking forward to some fresh chicken. As my grandfather tells me .... his mother would chop the heads off of the chickens and through them out into the yard to die. Then she would pluck and clean them. I'm taking pride in the entire process of raising and butching the chickens and trying to step back into the shoes of my ancestors.

 

[EricShane]

my bro Got a few Cornish X's he expects us to eat.. hes even taking them to get butchered.. I just dont know about all that though..

 

[dadof4]

Try to keep sight that they have not been designed to be long lived animals. Taking care of them humanly and then dispatching in the same manner should make you feel good about eating what YOU have grown for your family and yourself. Look at them the same way you would a good crop of corn.

 

[dadof4]

Ohh, and good luck to you.

 

[MaineChickens]

You have given them a good life. Short, but they wouldn't live much longer anyway without putting them on a severely restricted diet.

If you really want to feel better about it, check out some of the commercial operation videos. Home butchered birds get a lot more care, and in the end, a lot more respect.

The older mine got, the more they looked like stuffed roasted birds walking around to me...

 

[Huny]

I think the best thing, is to start eating someone elses home grown processed birds. Because the meat has more "flavor" than store bought, I sort of gagged on it knowing it was one of our birds. If I was used to the flavor without knowing it was one I raised it would of helped.

Next, maybe have one person do the killing, another the skinning/plucking and the other gutting. Then switch places. Then I knew Oh this is the one I KILLED. Or Oh this is the one with the Gross thing in its crop/gizzard. Doing it all start to finish had too many flashbacks in my head.

I was good a few months later when I took it out of the freezer, but when my preschooler said "This is BBQ's leg" (He named one BBQ) it really stopped the meal that night

LOL! Takes practice, and not getting used to the birds and their personalities. We only had 8 so we knew who they were and what they were like, and it made it harder especially after my preschooler named them all. I think if I had like 50 birds, I wouldn't know the difference between them, and I would just be more mechanical about it.

 

[FrenchHen]

Once they're clean, they're just chicken.

Really fresh tasty chicken.

That tastes, gasp, like chicken.

 

[ssledoux]

I don't know but I was just about to post whether anyone has ever just, pardon the pun, chickened out on the butchering.

I feel like, at this stage of my life, if I am going to continue eating meat, I should take responsibility for what that entails. And aside from that, I won't purchase meat from a grocery - and we don't have a lot of sources around here for poultry.

However, when I spend the afternoon out by the barn and watch all those chickens just enjoying life and being chickens, and following me everywhere I go, and coming up to me to be petted, I don't know if I can do this. And our cornish will probably have to be done in about 10 days (the rangers a little longer). I feel so sorry for them. It's a horrible feeling for me to know that they will die because of US.

And all the while I'm thinking that if I can't pull off the butchering of the chickens, there is NO WAY I'll be able to pull off the butchering of the rabbits. I may wind up being a vegetarian after all.