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

[Fire Ant Farm]

Tomorrow or tues i will do that. But today i am done. Tomorrow may be a day of epsom salt baths and my heatin pad. Degenerative disc disease in neck and back are such the life. :/. By the time we were cleanin up all the things my hound had his helper vest on and was bein my support to keep me upright.

Oh, I hear ya' - neck and back stuff here as well (though in early stages for me). What's worse, I have wrist problems (carpel tunnel) that flare with over use. I woke up at 1am in severe pain from all of that dry plucking, and spent a few hours pacing around the house and cursing until the pain meds and Voltaren gel kicked in. That's why I'm on now - still hurts too much to sleep, so I'm watching Star Wars and reading BYC. Part of why I pushed so hard to finish today (well, ok, I suppose that's technically yesterday now) is that I knew I didn't want to have to be doing any of it tomorrow (or today).

Buwwets are expensive. The hard part i could do just to cut and bleed out.. today though... the birds were too large for the makeshift cones we had so their heads wouldn't go down them all the way. so beheadding it was. I was just so afraid i would miss and that i couldn't do.

Before I culled the first time, I sorta over prepared. Because I knew many of my birds would be big (large Naked necks, selecting for size), when I got my regular cone I also got a "turkey" cone. Had to use the turkey cone for all of them yesterday... Some folks use a feedbag with a hole cut in it for the head rather than a cone - apparently works well.

I use these now - Husky flexible tube cutters ($15 at Home Depot, very sharp), on the recommendation of someone else on BYC. Works REALLY well!

- Ant Farm

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Buwwets are expensive. The hard part i could do just to cut and bleed out.. today though... the birds were too large for the makeshift cones we had so their heads wouldn't go down them all the way. so beheadding it was. I was just so afraid i would miss and that i couldn't do.

I should add - no reason to do that tomorrow, as it's generally a good idea to let them rest in the fridge for several days so they aren't too tough.

 

[Molpet]

we raised meat chickens once, my dad did the hard part. not sure if i could do it in a traditional sense, but overall i felt really bad for the Cornish cross, they where just so lazy, they wanted to do nothing at all, just sit and eat. not much of a life if you ask me.

but for the butchering process any body use a .22lr or .410 to the head then just let them bleed out. just sounds so much easier to me then cutting them to bleed out.

Depends on how you raise the CX... There are a bunch of us on BYC that limit the feed and make them free range... save a few for breeding.. they are almost like a regular bird, but still short lived... mine was a week shy of 1 yr old when her heart gave out.. some have over 2 yrs

I had a BBB Turkey that I emotionally couldn't cull.. my buddy shot him in the head, 22 cb cap, after the 3rd shot the poor thing was trying to crawl off... never again

 

[sfgwife]

I hope your hamds are bein more nice today. I will tell the mister bout the cutters.

 

[itsasmallfarm]

Only two years - a lot of it you learn by doing. A lot of it I got from this thread combined with videos and blogs. I over prepared. I would recommend doing just a couple the first day - more than that when working alone can be tiring even when one is experienced. I actually had a post in this thread back in 2015 where I posted what I learned. I will say that I used to slice the neck and let them bleed out - it was hard on me, even though I had experience. I decapitate with a Husky tube cutter now - very fast, so the emotional component is now reduced SO much (at least for me).



Actually, you can separate the parts of the skinned ones into legs, thighs (which can be bone out or not), wings, and the breasts (including the tenderloin bit). I taught myself to do that thanks to Google and several food blogs and videos. I like roast chicken, sure, but it's nice to have my own boneless skinless chicken breasts in the freezer as well. (I've also canned them.)



Depends on your situation. In the city, I don't think it would be advisable for me to fire a gun repeatedly - especially since it's so easy to just decapitate them with a quick snip of the tube cutters.

- Ant Farm

i would have to agree with you, its just that i never killed anything (that i have raised) so close as a hunter maybe the closest shot i ever took was maybe 5 yards (at a rabbit with a 30-30 but that's a different story), i just don't know i could just cut the head off of an animal i raised (wild animals are a different case but then again am shooting them from 20 plus yards/meters)

Buwwets are expensive. The hard part i could do just to cut and bleed out.. today though... the birds were too large for the makeshift cones we had so their heads wouldn't go down them all the way. so beheadding it was. I was just so afraid i would miss and that i couldn't do.

ya when my dad did it we brained them first (sticking a knife in the back of there head to kill them then bleed them out).

Depends on how you raise the CX... There are a bunch of us on BYC that limit the feed and make them free range... save a few for breeding.. they are almost like a regular bird, but still short lived... mine was a week shy of 1 yr old when her heart gave out.. some have over 2 yrs

I had a BBB Turkey that I emotionally couldn't cull.. my buddy shot him in the head, 22 cb cap, after the 3rd shot the poor thing was trying to crawl off... never again

when we did the CX i followed everything it said in all the books i read, give them food for 12 hours then no food for 12 hours, still they where lazy and only a few ever went outside, (in there run).

and sorry to here about your turkey, it sucks when ever something does not die in that first shot.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

i would have to agree with you, its just that i never killed anything (that i have raised) so close as a hunter maybe the closest shot i ever took was maybe 5 yards (at a rabbit with a 30-30 but that's a different story), i just don't know i could just cut the head off of an animal i raised (wild animals are a different case but then again am shooting them from 20 plus yards/meters)

It's always going to be hard to deal with killing something you raised (and in my case, hatched) if it's new to you. Usually though, in practical terms, there isn't another option. For instance, the cockerels were beating on each other and making the pullets miserable, and I have no place to house all of them, so it's not like not culling them was an option. But I used to do it the slow way, and that IS harder emotionally, IMHO. Decapitation is so swift that you blink and it's over, than then you set yourself to the work of processing.

(I still dreamed of chicken guts last night though - that's what happens when I spend all day doing it...)

- Ant Farm

 

[Molpet]

when we did the CX i followed everything it said in all the books i read, give them food for 12 hours then no food for 12 hours, still they where lazy and only a few ever went outside, (in there run).

and sorry to here about your turkey, it sucks when ever something does not die in that first shot.

Yes the books on CX are for the fastest most meat, but unhealthy for the bird.
I feed them all they could eat in 10 min 2x a day and they would have to go eat bugs and grass/weeds because they were still hungry.. another person just feeds them once a day and skips a day a week for the breeders.

Ended up chopping the poor turkeys head off anyway...

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

@itsasmallfarm - There's a REALLY good thread on BYC about raising Cx to run around and act like real chickens (and be more healthy, less gross, and have a better life) - can't remember the full title, but it's something like "Meat chickens for the first time, so excited". I was going to do that, but ended up going a different way and now raise Naked Necks as my "meat" chickens (though they are really both for meat and eggs, doing both so well).

 

[Molpet]

this one https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...sh-cross-meat-birds-and-super-excited.896158/

 

[Sally Sunshine]