So I was telling my mom today about our slaughter day recently (12 rangers from JM Hatchery. Succulent. 3.5-4.5 dressed at 10 wks. Will go a few weeks longer next time) My mom tells me that she remembers my grandmother killing chickens. This would have been my Korean grandmother in Seoul in the late 40's to mid 50's. My mom said my grandmother would "grab them by the wings a certain way" and they would flop over dead, and then my grandmother would cut their heads off and let them bleed out. Is this possibly a real thing? Or is my mom's memory just a little off?
I've never heard that one. I don't know if it's true or not. Here's one I heard- some older folks used to kill birds using a crochet-type hook in the birds' mouth. The hook would go into the mouth, hook up into the base of the brain through the roof of the mouth, hit a certain nerve and cutting it, causing instant death, but also causing all the feathers to loosen in their follicles so the birds can be plucked with almost no effort. Can you believe that one? I didn't believe it.
Chances are, "grabbing by the wings in a certain" way involved a quick jerk to the neck that she didn't notice.
Quote:That's called pithing, and if you do a BYC search, you'll find a couple of pretty long discussions about it. It's a real thing, but something that takes some practice to get right. I got it just right once, then tried several more times with varying degrees of success/failure. I'm going back to whacking off heads, not because pithing is bad, but because I'm not very good at it.
My grandmother used to pith chickens. She could dry pick a chicken in five minutes or less. Unfortunately she didn't teach me how.
I've heard that the Chinese sometimes kill chickens with a strong alcoholic drink called mao-tai, supposedly it makes the chicken more tender if they die drunk than die from other means. Maybe grab both wings and snap the chicken back so it gets whiplash.
Interesting info everyone - thanks for your input. I think I will stick with the killing cone method for the time being. It seemed pretty humane. Although I am intrigued by the method where you break their necks without breaking the skin, and they bleed out into their neck skin, which seems less messy.
