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

[Happy Chooks]

tough to get through as in the knife was hard to get through him but we need a sharper knife. It was sharp enough to get the job done but still, it took forever. To kill him, my husband used a hatchet with his head stretched across a log. The problem wad, his head didn't come off on the first blow and it was traumatizing for me and I felt beyond horrible. I'd really rather use a kill cone and learn to cut the veins instead. I want to make sure they die quickly with as lurks pain as possible and I feel like I failed him in that aspect. Don't get me wrong, hubby, got him killed very quickly but for me, it seemed so much worse than it should've been.

Your husband will get better at it too, he was likely nervous. I had a similar experience with my first kill with a hatchet. Your husband will get better at it. My husband prefers the hatchet method, because it's instantaneous. He can do it now without a single sound from the bird. I'm a bad swing, so it doesn't work so well for me.

 

[ronott1]

ok but do I wrap him in anything or just set him on a pan to rest? Do I cover the pan or just let the air to him. I want to do this right lol.

I use a ziplock bag for small ones and a big two loaf bakery bag for big ones. The cold water with ice bath is to chill them quickly while outside. I kill in the garage and process in the kitchen so the refrigerator is a very good choice for me. I only process a couple or so at a time so I do not have to worry about running out of room in the fridge.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

Your husband will get better at it too, he was likely nervous.  I had a similar experience with my first kill with a hatchet.  Your husband will get better at it.  My husband prefers the hatchet method, because it's instantaneous.  He can do it now without a single sound from the bird.  I'm a bad swing, so it doesn't work so well for me.

he was very nervous. He told me that he almost backed out but before he knew it he was swinging. I'm sure It didn't help that I was crying and panicked not knowing what to expect.

Everyone, thanks for the advice. I think I may get him out of the cooler and bring him in to the fridge. This cooler thing is a bit of a pain. Expecially since it's been getting rather cold out lately.

 

[Amina]

I wonder if you rushed the process and didn't let them settle down first. They need to be hanging and relaxed before you do anything. If they are not relaxed, they will be fighting their capture, they will be hyper vigilant and struggle when you do anything with them.

I wonder if an older bird, especially a cockerel, takes a bit longer to settle hanging upside down. My feeling is that older birds, are just smarter (more life experiences) and more prepared to control their environment--i. e. struggle or try to escape.. I think younger birds are more passive.

I don't use a cone. (I watched a Joe Salatin video and freaked at the racket made by the 6 or 8 chickens he had bleeding out in the metal cones.) I have a thick cotton rope that I make into a slip knot for their ankles and hang them from a tree branch. It isn't a normal rope you buy in a store--it was part of a parrot toy--but it is really soft and thick so won't hurt the bird's ankles. I hang them by their feet while both the bird and I calm ourselves. I won't do anything unless we are both really calm. If I pull the skin tight around the throat and if they struggle at all, I let go and wait.

I have never noticed that they react to the actual cutting of the neck. My vet, an avian vet who wanted to be a poultry pathologist until he realized he liked chickens too much to only deal with dead ones, said I could put some sort of local anesthetic cream/ointment (I can't remember the name of the drug) on their neck before I cut and the meat would be fine for consumption. I never have, partly because I know that when I cut myself, the cut really doesn't start to hurt for a long time unless there is some trauma other than the cut itself.

As far as the sharpness of your knife, did you test it on paper? You should be able to slice through the paper easily with no effort. A dull knife will grab/dent the edge of the paper before it cuts. I can't describe this very well, does someone else have a link to a picture or better description of what I'm trying (and failing) to get across?

I suspect your knife was too dull, but that might be unrelated to the crying out.

How did you sharpen it? What kind of a knife did you use? I got a lot of advice about knives from hunters/farmers and went to a hunting store and bought a knife that although really sharp just wasn't as good as I wanted so I replaced it. They don't stay sharp long. I'll buy a new knife for my next cull and send the two I have off to be sharpened professionally. Even a brand-new expensive knife will need some work to make it really sharp even though it has never been used. I change knives when I process so the knife I use to bleed them out is not dulled in any way by cutting tendons, ligaments or nicking cartilage and bone.

Hope that helps. Just be assured, that even if you didn't do as good a job as you had hoped it was a kazillion times better and kinder and less stressful for your chicken than at any commercial slaughter facility.

I suspect you're right, that I didn't wait long enough for them to calm down. I'll wait longer next time. Other than that, our methods for tying them up sound identical. I got a nice soft, thick rope to do it. I'm reasonably happy with the way I'm tying them, although since I don't have a cone to restrain them, there is a significant amount of blood spatter when the death throes begin.

This is the knife that we used:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GAVOUU/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The knife sharpener was something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/AccuSharp-1-0...id=1415661696&sr=1-2&keywords=knife+sharpener

Prior to killing these three guys, the knife was only ever used one other time, on the cockerel we culled a few months ago.

We did try to test it on paper, and it cut it without much force... but honestly we don't really know what we're doing with that test. I'm not sure what a "good" knife would do. A video would be really helpful.

 

[jajeanpierre]

tough to get through as in the knife was hard to get through him but we need a sharper knife. It was sharp enough to get the job done but still, it took forever. To kill him, my husband used a hatchet with his head stretched across a log. The problem wad, his head didn't come off on the first blow and it was traumatizing for me and I felt beyond horrible. I'd really rather use a kill cone and learn to cut the veins instead. I want to make sure they die quickly with as lurks pain as possible and I feel like I failed him in that aspect. Don't get me wrong, hubby, got him killed very quickly but for me, it seemed so much worse than it should've been.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

He might not have felt anything. Many people who have suffered massive injury have told me they didn't feel any pain immediately after the injury. Probably a survival mechanism, so that no matter how injured a person/animal is, they can still flee. Your body doesn't register pain for a bit. Your husband might have effectively decapitated him even though the head was still attached by skin and ligaments. Definitely not pleasant for you at all. Really sorry you had to go through it.

You say, "the knife was hard to get through him...." What parts of the process? Butchering (cutting up the carcass) is a skill. A sharp knife is important but knowing where to cut is also critical.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Your husband will get better at it too, he was likely nervous. I had a similar experience with my first kill with a hatchet. Your husband will get better at it. My husband prefers the hatchet method, because it's instantaneous. He can do it now without a single sound from the bird. I'm a bad swing, so it doesn't work so well for me.

Practice. Someone who uses the hatchet method told me if I wanted to do it that way to practice with a green stick, and keep practicing and practicing so that my aim and the force would become second nature.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

Oh, I'm so sorry. 

He might not have felt anything.  Many people who have suffered massive injury have told me they didn't feel any pain immediately after the injury.  Probably a survival mechanism, so that no matter how injured a person/animal is, they can still flee.  Your body doesn't register pain for a bit.  Your husband might have effectively decapitated him even though the head was still attached by skin and ligaments.  Definitely not pleasant for you at all.  Really sorry you had to go through it.

You say, "the knife was hard to get through him...."  What parts of the process?  Butchering (cutting up the carcass) is a skill.  A sharp knife is important but knowing where to cut is also critical.

I truely hope you're right because I can't handle the thought that we may have caused him extra pain

well since this was our first time, we weren't sure of any of it and we were reading instructions from a book. I would've so much rather had someone showing us how to do it but I don't know anyone who processes besides people on here and they're all too far away. We left the body whole. Just didn't want to even bother seperating into parts. It took forever to cut down and around the rectum but I think mostly because hubby was going extra slow through each layer to make sure he didn't clip any intestines or anything. Another thing that threw me off was the colors of his insides. I honestly don't know what part is what but the last thing I expected to see was something bright blue! What was that anyway?

 

[Happy Chooks]

I truely hope you're right because I can't handle the thought that we may have caused him extra pain

well since this was our first time, we weren't sure of any of it and we were reading instructions from a book. I would've so much rather had someone showing us how to do it but I don't know anyone who processes besides people on here and they're all too far away. We left the body whole. Just didn't want to even bother seperating into parts. It took forever to cut down and around the rectum but I think mostly because hubby was going extra slow through each layer to make sure he didn't clip any intestines or anything. Another thing that threw me off was the colors of his insides. I honestly don't know what part is what but the last thing I expected to see was something bright blue! What was that anyway?

Little green bubble like thing is the gallbladder. You don't want to rupture it. The large hard mass is the gizzard.

 

[Double Kindness]

I took some pictures yesterday of the work we did

as for the bleeding out. I held the wings during the death throes. I hope next time goes better with faster plucking and not tearing the skin as much

 

[jajeanpierre]

I truely hope you're right because I can't handle the thought that we may have caused him extra pain

well since this was our first time, we weren't sure of any of it and we were reading instructions from a book. I would've so much rather had someone showing us how to do it but I don't know anyone who processes besides people on here and they're all too far away. We left the body whole. Just didn't want to even bother seperating into parts. It took forever to cut down and around the rectum but I think mostly because hubby was going extra slow through each layer to make sure he didn't clip any intestines or anything. Another thing that threw me off was the colors of his insides. I honestly don't know what part is what but the last thing I expected to see was something bright blue! What was that anyway?

I know you don't feel it now, but you should be very, very proud of yourself. It is a HUGE thing you did. You gave him a good life and as good a death as you could. Although you suffered a lot of angst for weeks over this decision, your chicken did not. He went about his happy life being a chicken. He had a good life and one bad day. Hopefully that bad day lasted all of a second or two or ten. You and your husband should be proud of yourselves.

The blue is the gizzard (ventriculus). It is where the food is ground up. You'll find stones in it (to grind the food) if you cut it open. It is a good idea to look over the internal organs because you'll get a read on the health of the bird, which translates to the health of your flock, but I do understand you not wanting to. If you ever process a Silkie, you'll be really surprised by the jet black of some of the organs, bones and muscles.

I, too, hope your bird didn't suffer.

He might have had an instant of fear, but I suspect he didn't suffer pain. His fear level might not have been any higher than if you suddenly grabbed him up, so don't beat yourself up over it. Figure out what you did that you want to change and then put a plan in action to fix it.

I think being calm and not doing anything until both you and the bird are ready is not emphasized enough. There is no rush. I work really hard to calm myself. Killing is very distressing for me. If I'm not calm, I step back and regroup mentally. If the bird is not calm, I step back and wait until BOTH of us are calm.

The other point that can't be over emphasized is that you need more force than you think you will need whether using the bleed out method or the chop. This is the time when you can't be timid. With the chop method, you have to be careful not to use too much force because the more force you use, the less accuracy you'll have. The stronger you are, the more force you can use and still be accurate. It's a balance between accuracy and force--and you'll need more force than you think you need since the feathers act like armor and padding. I know that I can't use the chop method because I've just had wrist surgery and neck surgery.

In the "how-to" videos, I don't see it mentioned how important a lot of practice is. You can use something like a small green branch to practice your aim and force. The feathers act like armor, so chopping a branch isn't quite the same as chopping off the head of a cockerel with all his glorious hackle feathers. Also, if you were to practice on chicken necks from a store, remember they are 8-week old birds with very soft bones so it isn't anything like the bone strength of an older free-ranging bird.

You also want to be sure your chop is to the back of the neck. Below is a diagram of a vertebrae. If this were a vertebrae of a chicken neck, the chicken would be lying on its back. The windpipe and esophagus would run along the body of the vertebrae (at the top of the diagram) and the spinal cord would run through the hole called the vertebral foreman at the bottom of the picture. So, you can see, that the spine is least protected at the back of the neck.

I've thought long and hard about how to kill as quickly, kindly as possible. The hatchet method in some respects seems to be the most humane however, the body responds extremely violently to having its head lopped off. I believe that they are harder to pluck, too. Some species of animals, birds especially, all struggle at the time of death. I was shocked when a favorite hen struggled when I euthanized her by injection at the vet's. The bird was unconscious and had been for some time but still put up a fight at death. (When euthanizing the hen, the vet--an avian vet--injected the drugs into her abdomen. They were absorbed more slowly than in he had given her the drugs IV, hence the hen was unconscious for some time before death.)

I've always wondered if the more violent death throes of a decapitated chicken was related to the amount of blood in the body--hence more oxygen--at time of death when compared to a bled-out chicken.

It would be interesting to see research in the stress hormones in chickens post slaughter from a variety of methods, but I don't think that research has been done although the research has been done in cattle and pigs. I know that you can test blood post-slaughter and gauge the amount of stress a cow or pig went through by testing for certain stress hormones levels and probably other markers as well. Some slaughter facilities use those blood measurements to monitor how well they are doing their job. (An animal stressed before slaughter will have poor quality meat. Have you ever noticed that sometimes, especially with pork, the meat will be mushy and tasteless? That's called Pale, Soft. Exudative meat, and is related to stress before slaughter.)

I believe I read that tests on chickens using decapitation had higher readings of some stress hormones, maybe adrenaline. I wonder if that is related to them seeing an axe about to hit them. I wonder if their eyes were covered so they didn't see it coming, if their death throes might be less violent. I know if I were going to use the chop method I would make sure they couldn't see anything. I know that heart rates and stress levels in captured wild falcons are much lower when they are hooded, so why not with a chicken? They must have an instant of fear as they see the ax about to hit them in the head.

Killing is never easy, and I'm not sure I would like myself very much if it WAS easy for me to do. Be proud of yourself. Your chicken's life and death was so much better than any commercial chicken's. For your chicken, it was just a few bad seconds in an otherwise wonderful life.