How to Kill a Chicken [ how-to/ ]

I started this as a reply to "Chicken anyone?" but it got long enough for a post in its own right, and is, in any case, something I've been meaning to blog on for a long time...

Killing chickens is a necessity if you're going to keep more than one or two birds. If you allow them to incubate their own eggs, you're going to end up with half boys and half girls, and too many roosters is not good for the flock. Besides, you probably want to be a bit selective about which chickens you breed from. We carefully select our veggie seed for saving so that we eventually end up with strains that are well adapted to our local environment, soil and climate, resistant to the local pests and diseases. We should be doing the same with our animals. We don't really want some fancy breed of chickens from America or Europe; we want our local Big Black Mommas bred by J!

So, whilst I don't relish the job of chicken killing, I accept its necessity. It's also about taking responsibility -- what I generalise as "dealing with your own shit." I have little patience with people who are quite happy to buy and eat slabs of dead FactoryCow from the supermarket, just as long as nobody reminds them that it was a real animal that lived under appalling circumstances and die in the most demeaning and degrading way imaginable. No. Our chickens range free -- often too free! and die as quickly and with as little stress as we can possibly arrange. They die with respect, and with our thanks, so that we can eat. I take the responsibility. Then, too, they taste a hell of a lot better than bought chicken -- even so-called "free range" chicken is soft and tasteless in comparison.

In the past I used to break their necks by hand: tuck the chicken under your arm; hold their head in your other hand with your hand facing out, and snap down and twist -- very quick, very effective. But a rotator-cuff injury makes that painful for me now, and with some of our big roosters I didn't quite have the reach for as quick and clean a break as I would prefer. Then, too, we have bred-up a really big, healthy, self-reliant strain of chickens (to the point where we are a preferred supplier of livestock for people wanting to start their own flock) and their necks are very strong!

So now its a tree-stump and a blunt chopper. "Chicken anyone?" talks of using a meat cleaver, but my feeling is it would be too sharp, and will cut the head right off. A pretty messy business! The point is to break the neck, not necessarily to chop the head right off. Its a bit of a ticklish thing, judging the strength to use. On one hand you want a clean break, instantly killing the bird on the first blow. On the other you don't really want to break the skin, thus avoiding quite a lot of messiness. Two people makes the job easier than just one.

Then comes the tedious work: Plucking and butchering. I'll leave those for another day...

Technorati Tags: chicken, self-sufficiency, slaughter, culling, food

22.Mar.07 10:21 AM, SAST | Words (540) | 4 Comments | 0 Trackbacks | Link Cosmos

Comments on this entry:

Eurgh! Sounds less humane to me. With a chopper I sever the spinal-cord instantly; I can't see how bleeding the poor buggers to death can be quicker or less painful. (But I don't profess to be a Chicken Anatomist!)

Note that the chopper is not blunt blunt -- just not razor sharp. If I feel that I may not strike accurately, a place the chopper (gently) on the back of the chook's neck, right behind the head, and whack it with something else so that I'm as accurate as I can manage. Generally I'm holding the chook's neck, so that if I mis-strike I'll be removing bits of my own limbs!

Tue Jun 05 11:33:55 SAST 2007 Mike -

Hi,
Thanks for that. Yes, indeed my friend does chop the head clean off. He says that he has to hold the chicken for a while after as it thrashes about abit but that's it. However, I have not yet watched him do this, so I can't report on the details. I prefer the idea of using something blunt to simply kill the chicken, it sounds much less gory.
Thanks for the tips, S

Tue Jun 05 11:33:55 SAST 2007 smallholder - http://escapedchickens.wordpress.com

In Michael Pollan's recent book about factory farm foods, Omnivore's Dillema, he talks about Polyface farm where he says they use a cone to hold the chicken (with the head sticking out of the top), then cut the artery in the chicken's neck. The idea is to use the heart to pump out as much blood as possible while the chicken is still alive. I don't know if this is any more or less humane than a blunt chopper...

Tue Jun 05 11:33:55 SAST 2007 Patrick - http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog

<p>Well, they do tend to thrash about for a minute or so after they're dead, regardless of how the dirty deed gets done.
</p><p>
It's a lot easier on your clothes to not have blood spurting about everywhere.
<p>

Tue Jun 05 11:33:55 SAST 2007 Mike -