Squeamish in my old age

[Pye Wacket]

It occurs to me that IF I can find a town where I can actually have a coop (I have another thread on the subject of a town that passed backyard chicken ordinances that seem to make it impossible to keep chickens given the size in fact of the majority of lots in town) - I am not going to be able to slaughter my spent hens anymore.

The truth is I've ALWAYS been a bit squeamish - I quit eating dark meat at the age of 5 after I bit into a drumstick (which up to that point I LOVED) and found myself staring at a great big ol' dark stringy vein. And yeah, I knew EXACTLY what I was looking at. I do eat chicken thighs now but lets face it, modern factory chicken "dark meat" is, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from white meat because they virtually never move their entire 6 to 8 week life. 57 years later and I STILL can't even think about eating a drumstick, even wings gross me out more often than not so I've stopped eating buffalo wings also.

Nevertheless, while my chicken-jointing-and-filleting skills never matched those of Martin Yan, I could disassemble a chicken carcass handily and without much distress in just a few minutes. I've plucked a fair number in my childhood, and when I kept my own, I've skinned a few (easier and less smelly than plucking).

But recently I bought some whole chickens which I'd gotten out of the habit of because (a) I haven't seen a stewing hen in decades (in a grocery), (b) I never cared for roast chicken so haven't bought a roaster in the same number of decades, and (c) for many of those decades I would only eat chicken breasts anyway. Not only did I make a hash of the the disassembly, I got SERIOUSLY grossed out. And now that I am thinking of keeping a few hens (for the first time in a couple decades) I find contemplating slaughtering the spent hens is ... well ... not to be contemplated.

I'm starting to understand that perhaps the work involved in keeping them was not the ONLY reason my grandmother stopped keeping chickens.

Has anybody else out there struggled with this, becoming LESS able with time to do the deed?

Keep in mind, it isn't eating my spent hens that is at issue. If someone ELSE were to do the slaughtering, I'd be good with the eating. Hopefully on the meat forum I'm not upsetting people who keep hens as pets.

But there is no way I'm going to be able to handle doing the deed myself anymore and I'm not really sure why. Anybody else had to struggle with this?

 

[Ridgerunner]

My suggestion would be to find someone that can butcher and part them for you, maybe giving them half the meat?

To your basic question

Has anybody else out there struggled with this, becoming LESS able with time to do the deed?

my answer is no. That has not been an issue with me. I now use a hatchet instead of an ax, they are easier to handle but that's physical, a hatchet is lighter. I do understand that we change with age. When I was a youth in my 40's or even 50's I had no fear of high places, now I do not like high places at all. They don't have to be that high.

Don't beat yourself up about it. We are all different.

 

[Pye Wacket]

If you feel so passionately about being squeamish, why do you need to kill them? I feel the same way about their meat (I can only eat the breasts as well) and I’m going to let my hens just live out their lives. You could making your hens pets so you don’t feel like your feeding them for nothing. I have done that and they provide me with many laughs and smiles. I like them better than my cats or dog.

Look, no offense, but I don't keep livestock as pets.

I got REALLY tired (when I had acreage) of people trying to foist their no-longer-cute easter lambs off on me that had grown up to be full-fledged rams that wanted to sit in your lap.

Pets are pets. Livestock is livestock. I can only keep 5 or 6 birds and I expect them to lay for me. If not - they are for the stew pot, and if I can't put them there, that's a problem.

I have never ever named any of my livestock and I don't plan to start now.

EDIT:

Just as an aside - I do keep pet birds and I DO NOT allow them to fly around loose out of their cages. Of course they have HUGE cages that they can actually fly in, but I still get flak from people who think I'm a big ol' meany for not letting my finches and parakeets fly around loose pooping wherever they feel like. I don't want to have to go around searching for each and every splat to keep my house clean, and quite frankly, I don't want to be in the house of someone who doesn't. (And while we're at it, I think clipping wings so they can't fly is even worse than keeping them caged - what good is being loose in a large space when you can't fly but just have to hop around like a kangaroo?)

This is why I don't keep any bird larger than a parakeet - I don't have the space to allow them a large enough space that they can still fly around in, where they are still confined and easy to clean up after, and I won't let them loose in the house. Chickens are right out. They are MEANT to be tasty!

 

[CanadaEh]

I think you will get used to it. It just like cleaning (caught) fish before it can be eaten - there is no eating it if someone is not gonna clean it first. And then of course someone needs to cook it. Totally not a restaurant-like.

 

[Pye Wacket]

I hear you on not eating blood vessels, they gross my out, I'm super picky about what parts I eat (no gristle, blood vessels, tendons, cartilage, anything odd textured or colored) and I don't like eating meat of bones and I don't care what kind of animal it is.

As for getting squeamish, I think I could get there quite easily, so far I've managed my way through everything I've needed to, but thinking too much about the animal makes thing pretty hard. I raised 20 meat birds once about 12 years ago, took them live to a guy who sent them back packaged and frozen, that was nice.

Maybe you could find a local butcher, or a bird sale to sell off your culls?

There are no local butchers any more. A few places that will dress deer, beef, or hogs, but not poultry because it requires "re-tooling" - and they simply make a lot more money on the larger animals. One meat processor of which I am aware isn't even doing deer this year, just beef and hogs. And nobody wants to buy culls. 20 years ago there were a few "experimental" FDA approved processing plants for poultry for small producers but as soon as the grant money ran out, each and every one of them closed.

I'm with you on the ick factor in meat. I'm not a vegetarian, don't get me wrong, but I really don't much care for meat. I guess the issue should be how I EVER managed to process chicken, not why I can't do it any more, LOL!

My dad grew up during the depression which left him a lifelong respect for food that bordered on being OCD. I used to watch him gnaw every single last bit of everything off the bone of whatever he was eating, it didn't matter, chicken bones, ribs, even steak bones. He would eat anything but brains and turnips - even he couldn't get over the yuck factor involved in brains, and he said he had entirely too many "Hoover apples" growing up. The man ate souse, aka HEAD CHEESE which is literally a chopped up pig head suspended in gelatin and then sliced like lunchmeat. You could still see ears with hair on them in that stuff. EWWWW! And not just because it appeared on his plate. He LIKED the stuff!

For years he would always eat the coconut chocolates left in a box of candy, that none of the rest of us would touch, and I thought he liked coconut. Turns out, NO. He hated coconut as much as the rest of us, but growing up hungry and on the edge of starvation as he had he couldn't stand to see them "go to waste". It turns out I'm allergic to coconut so I'm betting we all hated coconut because of an unknown allergy - but he ate them anyway.

 

[iwltfum]

The man ate souse, aka HEAD CHEESE which is literally a chopped up pig head suspended in gelatin and then sliced like lunchmeat. You could still see ears with hair on them in that stuff. EWWWW! And not just because it appeared on his plate. He LIKED the stuff!

I love head cheese. A chef friend of mine made some and brought a small jar as a gift to my farmers market stand a few years ago. It was absolutely amazing. i highly recommend it.

 

[Pye Wacket]

I’ve raised meat birds, but I would never process or eat them myself. I’d sell them, though.

Yeah, if and when I manage to find a place where I can actually have a coop again, I think the only plan that will work is to buy more birds than I need, sell off the ones I don't want to keep about the time they'd start laying (because buying less than 25 birds is stupidly expensive with shipping) and then keep doing that every year, selling off a couple of my 1 or 2 yo birds to rotate them out. Given I'm not up to culling them. And a 1 or 2 yo bird still has plenty of life left in it for egg-laying.

I will miss the great stock from old stewing hens though.

I think you will get used to it. It just like cleaning (caught) fish before it can be eaten - there is no eating it if someone is not gonna clean it first. And then of course someone needs to cook it. Totally not a restaurant-like.

Ummm, no. No, I will not. I can't even joint a grocery store carcass. I WAS used to it, now I can't get over it. I've been there. There is no place for sqeamishness in this. You need to kill the bird quick and without hesitation. Otherwise its incredibly cruel to everyone involved, the human as much as the chicken.

Also given I'd be in town this go-round, I'm pretty sure it needs to be a TOTALLY stealth operation. Me wretching while a half-killed bird screams would be both cruel AND non-stealthy. Its got to be done quickly and cleanly. The smell alone from plucking would be a dead giveaway so they have to be skinned. I'm pretty sure doing one bird at a time QUICKLY and CLEANLY would work (because slaughtering ALWAYS has a smell that gets worse with each bird) but ... the Q&C is not in me any more.

Oddly enough, with fish its the exact opposite. I have no trouble CLEANING them, but catching them grosses me out. Give me an already dead fish, I'll clean it ok (though my filleting skills are pretty much gone), but I don't want to have to catch them.

Cooking is ALWAYS OK.

EDIT: I guess that's not actually "the exact opposite". But sort of. In neither case can I bring myself to kill the animal, but I can still clean and cook a fish but not the chicken.

 

[Pye Wacket]

I'm sure you're trying to be helpful - but ... misinformed? REALLY?

I have done this before. I prefer killing cones myself. I just no longer feel like doing it any more.

Blood and guts smell. If you don't notice it, good for you. But most people do. And there is NO WAY I would bleed a chicken out inside my house. Yuck! Not for me.

At any rate. I was wondering if it was just me. Someone who was not particularly bothered when butchering before but has gotten to the place in old age where now its a big hairy deal.

Apparently it IS just me, LOL!

 

[Pye Wacket]

My suggestion would be to find someone that can butcher and part them for you, maybe giving them half the meat?

To your basic question

Has anybody else out there struggled with this, becoming LESS able with time to do the deed?

my answer is no. That has not been an issue with me. I now use a hatchet instead of an ax, they are easier to handle but that's physical, a hatchet is lighter. I do understand that we change with age. When I was a youth in my 40's or even 50's I had no fear of high places, now I do not like high places at all. They don't have to be that high.

Don't beat yourself up about it. We are all different.

I don't know how, but I TOTALLY missed this. Another sign of old age, I guess, LOL!

I thought of that and frankly even when I last had chickens I had a friend who came over to help. But we were both working at it, he didn't do it FOR me. I could be wrong ... but I sort of assumed that there are a ton and a half of city chicken keepers who are already flooding the market, asking someone to do it for them, that the few folks left these days who still know how and still do it are probably as tired of being asked to kill things for someone else as I was of being asked to take on unruly adult rams.

Since I normally kept my hens for at least 4 or 5 years, I suppose I shouldn't worry about this so much right off the bat, but I'm big on having things IN PLACE beforehand and not scrambling like an idiot at the last minute. When I seriously started thinking about how to manage culling the flock, it was only then that I realized I wasn't going to be able to do it, even with just a small 5 or 6 bird flock.

Come to think of it, my dad was the same way. He grew up during the depression and did a lot of farm labor as a kid to help his family (they lived in a tarpaper shack in a shanty town, he started working as farm labor when he was about 9). He used to say the time he hated the most was hog killing time. I won't describe it further. He told me about getting his first rifle and going out with his friends to shoot squirrels. He shot one and never touched that rifle again. He gave it to his younger brother after that, who had no such qualms.

Maybe its genetic, LOL!

EDIT: I just noticed in your sig:

" This too shall pass. It may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass. "

LOL! So true.

 

[Friendly_Lurker]

I’ve raised meat birds, but I would never process or eat them myself. I’d sell them, though.