Processing Day Support Group ~ HELP us through the Emotions PLEASE!

[Happy Chooks]

I don't have much to add, some great advise before me. Killing is certainly the most difficult part. Once it's dead, it's like a grocery store chicken - with feathers and more guts inside. The smell got to me the first few times, but it doesn't bother me now. It's a strange feeling to have it warm inside.

Definitely pick a method you are comfortable with and realize it may not go as smoothly as you hope. It's a learned process. My first kill was awful, and I reAlized that the method my husband uses doesn't work for me. The body will move a lot more than you think - the phrase "running around like a chicken with your head cut off" is pretty darn accurate. Watch videos of processing and be as prepared as you can be. Joel salatin has some great videos.

 

[jajeanpierre]

My husband is an animal lover. I can't fault him for not being able to help because his love for animals and the chickens is what allows me my extensive hobby....but he can not help with the killing. Maybe when the feathers are gone he can help me with the cleaning, but I will have to clean up the site for him to enter...if that makes sense.

I can't put it off. It If it doesn't happen in the next ten days, the rooster will start to be tough and then what little hope of support from my family will evaporate.

I am slowly coming to terms with this. All the advice and encouragement is priceless.

If your husband is an animal lover, it is all the more reason to help you. This is the dilemma I continually beat myself up over--if I truly love chickens I should raise all my own chickens for meat. Give them a good life, a happy life, and as quick and as stress-/pain-free death as is possible. Have your husband research what really happens in a slaughter house and how commercial slaughter (and egg-laying) chickens are raised. If he truly loves animals, he should thank you and support you for doing this very brave thing he is not able to do.

Toughness is a matter of cooking method. If you leave it too long, use a moist, slow cooking method. I'm going to cook Coq au Vin this week with the cockerel I just processed. Also, make sure you age the carcass in the fridge for several days. I aged the 11-month olds five days before I froze them.

There really is no rush although an artificial deadline might be good for you. I'm the queen of putting off slaughtering my cockerels. I put off culling a group of Ameraucanas until they were 11 months old. I'll never do that again--they were incredibly hard to process. I've only skinned birds and it took incredible strength to pull the skin off. I had to use a knife to release ligaments when I pulled the guts out. Even separating the crop from the neck was a challenge. The cockerel I did Sunday was a few days short of 8 months old. He was much easier to clean but not as easy as the 6 month old Silkies.

My Ameraucanas are from show/breeding stock so I was able to justify (to myself) putting it off because I wanted to see them grow out. Their breeder told me, if I remember correctly, that they would be very good eating birds at 6 months.

[Maybe I should just shut up and stop giving you excuses to put this off!]

Coming to terms with this is a process. Our society has distanced us from our food. We don't want to be inconvenienced with the knowledge that that tasteless mush in the cellophane wrap was once a living, breathing and thinking animal.

Take your time with coming to terms with what you are going to do. If you've never been raised with slaughtering your own farm animals or hunting, it is really hard. In the end it is a good thing.. Your family will get much healthier and tastier meat (you'll be really surprised at how much more flavor your older bird has) and your "meat" will have a good life unlike the mush in the grocery store.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

Learn what a dying chicken looks like. It's not pretty but it is better to be prepared. I think a decapitated chicken struggles more at/after death than one that is bled out, but I've never decapitated one so I really don't know from my own experience.

This is very true. I have done both the chop method and the bled out method. I am not sure why but the convulsions with a decapitated chicken are much more violent than with one that is bled out. A cone helps a lot for the convulsions, but we have even decapitated one in the cone and it is definitely harder on the bird than a quick slit. Once the bird has bled out and is for sure dead (there are a few natural convulsions, more like twitches than flapping around), we then remove the head. I would just not recommend the old-fashioned chop block method (especially for a newbie) unless that was your only option, and yes practice is very important.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

I don't have much to add, some great advise before me. Killing is certainly the most difficult part. Once it's dead, it's like a grocery store chicken - with feathers and more guts inside. The smell got to me the first few times, but it doesn't bother me now. It's a strange feeling to have it warm inside.

Definitely pick a method you are comfortable with and realize it may not go as smoothly as you hope. It's a learned process. My first kill was awful, and I reAlized that the method my husband uses doesn't work for me. The body will move a lot more than you think - the phrase "running around like a chicken with your head cut off" is pretty darn accurate. Watch videos of processing and be as prepared as you can be. Joel salatin has some great videos.

LOL the first time I put my hand in a freshly killed bird, I freaked a bit at the warmth. Very different than a refridgerated chicken LOL!

 

[ronott1]

If your husband is an animal lover, it is all the more reason to help you. This is the dilemma I continually beat myself up over--if I truly love chickens I should raise all my own chickens for meat. Give them a good life, a happy life, and as quick and as stress-/pain-free death as is possible. Have your husband research what really happens in a slaughter house and how commercial slaughter (and egg-laying) chickens are raised. If he truly loves animals, he should thank you and support you for doing this very brave thing he is not able to do.

Toughness is a matter of cooking method. If you leave it too long, use a moist, slow cooking method. I'm going to cook Coq au Vin this week with the cockerel I just processed. Also, make sure you age the carcass in the fridge for several days. I aged the 11-month olds five days before I froze them.

There really is no rush although an artificial deadline might be good for you. I'm the queen of putting off slaughtering my cockerels. I put off culling a group of Ameraucanas until they were 11 months old. I'll never do that again--they were incredibly hard to process. I've only skinned birds and it took incredible strength to pull the skin off. I had to use a knife to release ligaments when I pulled the guts out. Even separating the crop from the neck was a challenge. The cockerel I did Sunday was a few days short of 8 months old. He was much easier to clean but not as easy as the 6 month old Silkies.

My Ameraucanas are from show/breeding stock so I was able to justify (to myself) putting it off because I wanted to see them grow out. Their breeder told me, if I remember correctly, that they would be very good eating birds at 6 months.

[Maybe I should just shut up and stop giving you excuses to put this off!]

Coming to terms with this is a process. Our society has distanced us from our food. We don't want to be inconvenienced with the knowledge that that tasteless mush in the cellophane wrap was once a living, breathing and thinking animal.

Take your time with coming to terms with what you are going to do. If you've never been raised with slaughtering your own farm animals or hunting, it is really hard. In the end it is a good thing.. Your family will get much healthier and tastier meat (you'll be really surprised at how much more flavor your older bird has) and your "meat" will have a good life unlike the mush in the grocery store.

The last bird I processed was a breeder rooster that I was not going to use again. He was over a year old and I skinned him. It was an adventure.

A trick to getting off tough skin is to use a paper towel to help grip the slippery parts when pulling. It is also harder to get the innards out on old ones.

I pressure cooked him and made chicken and dumplings.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

My husband is an animal lover. I can't fault him for not being able to help because his love for animals and the chickens is what allows me my extensive hobby....but he can not help with the killing. Maybe when the feathers are gone he can help me with the cleaning, but I will have to clean up the site for him to enter...if that makes sense.

I can't put it off. It If it doesn't happen in the next ten days, the rooster will start to be tough and then what little hope of support from my family will evaporate.

I am slowly coming to terms with this. All the advice and encouragement is priceless.

I agree with the others, your husband being an animal lover is all the more reason why this is a good idea. Unless he is a vegetarian/vegan then butchering your own meat is the best way to insure that what you consume is treated with dignity. It is hard to butcher, it is not meant to be easy. My husband doesn't like to kill, but he still helps with the process. He helps catch and sooth the bird and hold them while I do the deed. The best feeling is sitting down at the table and eating a meal that you prepared yourself, don't let him miss out on that no matter how hard the emotions!

Your birds are so much better off than the poor things that we are used to eating, good luck. If you guys were interested in a road trip I would be happy to let you join in on one of our butchers! I am about 6 hours from you though

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

The last bird I processed was a breeder rooster that I was not going to use again. He was over a year old and I skinned him. It was an adventure.

A trick to getting off tough skin is to use a paper towel to help grip the slippery parts when pulling. It is also harder to get the innards out on old ones.

I pressure cooked him and made chicken and dumplings.

I am learning to caponize to avoid the tough-old-bird thing. I also want to avoid the stress of having a deadline to butcher. Plus capons are just awesome!

 

[Bazy]

I am so glad that I asked this group for help. I have gotten a little and a lot from every single reply. I am going to set a tentative date this weekend and I am going to talk to my husband again about helping. I mentioned it yesterday and he went so far as to admit that he might help once the chicken was dead. Once it's dead, what else can you do but not waste it? It's actually holding the knife and taking it's life that's hard.

Do you think it matters to the chicken if you use the cone rather than hold it upside down? I like the idea of a cone just so I am not holding it when it dies..distancing myself from it.

One last thing, Do you think I should apologize to my son for chastising him over wanting to decapitate and put it down to watch it run around? I mentioned that to someone who said they had done it and they said it was not as amusing as they thought it would be. My son is 14 and I feel like I've made a mistake with him. His feelings were very hurt, but the idea of watching something die that way just horrified me. Now I'm thinking that I was wrong to squash his curiosity. He is not violent child. Just very realist.

 

[Double Kindness]

I bought the latest issue of Cook's Illustrated with their best chicken recipes and I read it and look at my 25 dp meatie chickens, 5 which are roos; in hopes that I am not a huge emotional mess when it's time to process them. My bf unfortunately named several of them, I had to stop him, b/c I get attached to our critters.

I bought these chicks for several reasons

*1* to learn how to caponize, as I paid .80 each for these 25 chickens, opposed to much more for my white bresse and ayam cemani chicks.

*2* to learn how to raise meat chickens, I would have gotten cornish x or rangers but I absolutely couldn't get them in my area, believe me I tried very hard!! I got a bunch of straight run chicks at the feed store. Out of 27, I lost 2 to my dog Sagan. I was furious and cried, 1 is still in the freezer with feathers in many many bags... I too am procrastinating and it was dead from my dog... I plan on making stock with her.

*3* I hate the way grocery store food tastes like chemicals, like a replicated copy of an idea that someone had after reading what food tastes like, but never having it and making artificial food... I'm a huge foodie, so I need the best ingredients.

*4* I love my chickens in my laying flock, and am an animal lover. I saw on amazon prime food inc with my bf, we watched it several times as well as a few other videos/movies on amazon like ingredients, david vs Monsanto and I really wanted to give my meat the best life possible and be a good steward and example for my friends, neighbors, family and strangers. Even on just .5 acre in the city, I can raise enough meat, fruits and veggies for my family and extra, and it's way better nutrition and tasting than spending a whole paycheck at whole foods, trader joe's meat is expensive as well. My bf also thinks everyone working there is part of a cult.

*5* to prepare myself for a shtf or zombie apocalypse type situation. Ok that's silly I know, but I'm retired from big corporate America being a former venture capitalist, stock broker and former vp of a national mortgage lending bank and have been for 9 years and I'm 41. I'm much happier now raising critters and plants than I ever did even with the biggest deals and making more money than I knew what to do with.

I grew up in Alaska, my dad was career military and hunted and fished and gardening while raising me, a girl by himself in Alaska, Honduras, Italy, Brazil, Washington state.. he raised me to be able to survive in the wild and in any situation (for fun I used to play with salmon guts blowing balloons) and used to help dress, clean, package and process our meat and garden stuffs. I miss that life, so maybe now I'm regressing to a simpler/happier time in my life, as my father is elderly now and it makes me sad to remember him being bigger than life, to see he's so withered now, but I digress...

I need to cull my wheaten ameracuna Jeanette, she hasn't laid an egg in 4.5 months. I plan on making coc au vin with her, but I have never processed a bird before. Other 4 legged and swimming critters yes... stuff with feathers never.

I have 3 friends coming to help in 4 weeks to process 3 muscovy ducks, and 27 chickens who have experience. I am paying them in chickens.. but it is to get my bf and I comfortable with how to do things by ourselves. I'm scared silly, but I keep looking at them as food.

Thanksgiving is soon. I promised to make a duck and a chicken and a ham. For 30-50 ppl. Everyone is excited but me, as I feed my birds everyday, dream about the delicious food they will give me soon, then burst into tears.

 

[fisherlady]

I am so glad that I asked this group for help. I have gotten a little and a lot from every single reply. I am going to set a tentative date this weekend and I am going to talk to my husband again about helping. I mentioned it yesterday and he went so far as to admit that he might help once the chicken was dead. Once it's dead, what else can you do but not waste it? It's actually holding the knife and taking it's life that's hard.

Do you think it matters to the chicken if you use the cone rather than hold it upside down? I like the idea of a cone just so I am not holding it when it dies..distancing myself from it.

One last thing, Do you think I should apologize to my son for chastising him over wanting to decapitate and put it down to watch it run around? I mentioned that to someone who said they had done it and they said it was not as amusing as they thought it would be. My son is 14 and I feel like I've made a mistake with him. His feelings were very hurt, but the idea of watching something die that way just horrified me. Now I'm thinking that I was wrong to squash his curiosity. He is not violent child. Just very realist.

Dealing with a youngsters curiosity is a personal believe thing and a parent knows their own child best in regards to their maturity and understanding of what is going on. There seems to be a natural curiosity (some may say even morbid curiosity) in kids about death and the processes or stages of it. You could talk to him about it again and explain that your initial reaction was based on your personal feelings of seeing such a thing but if he feels it is something he needs to see then it has to happen at a time when you aren't there. Also explain that if you are butchering with the intent to use the meat for dinner then there is an increased chance of (unnecessary) damage being done by allowing the chicken to flop around uncontained. To me it is also a matter of dignity or respect for the animal which (in my case) was often raised as part of the flock and given great care and sometimes even emotional involvement as they grew. But no matter what parts (if any) of my post you choose to make use of it primarily just needs to be an open conversation with him and let him express any opinions (or even reservations) he may have over the process....

My preference is to place the bird in a restraining container... be it a cone, a used large bleach type jug or even a pillow case with a hole cut in a corner. The birds will try to flap their wings and if they are able it seems they get themselves into a panic but when their wings are snugly contained they seem to remain much, much calmer. A secondary reason would be something I mentioned above. The less they struggle and possibly strike out against nearby objects with their flapping then the less damage potential for the meat.