Killing Chickens

[mnjrutherford]

I like the sound of your method Bertie. Tell me, how do you bleed the bird? We are very unsure about our methods. We have used, with some success, cutting first the jugular then piercing the brain with a knife. The bird is then hung upside down.

Supposedly, this allows the heart to pump most of the blood out before stopping. I don't feel very confident about the entire process though. The videos and photos I've seen are not sufficiently graphic

Shooting sounds like it would eliminate cognitive function; therefore pain, the fastest. Could you, would you, do you, then cut the jugular and then hang the bird? How much time passes for each successive step?

[bertiefox]

After shooting we almost immediately cut through the jugular vein with a sharp knife and hang them up to bleed. I know that the theory is a creature's heart should still be beating to bleed completely but we have never found this a problem and the flesh seems fine. Usually we dispatch four or five birds at the same time and get the entire process through plucking, and even butchering, done in a couple of hours.
I hate killing any animal or bird, but trying to avoid them any possible suffering, mental as well as physical is important. That's why small holders killing livestock at home is usually far more humane than industrial scale killing at a huge slaughter house.

[mnjrutherford]

I totally agree. The animal is going to be food, it seems bad form to treat it badly before consumption.

[michaeljohnson]

In the UK chickens are almost always killed by the neck break method, which is quite instantaneous , you pick up the chicken by it's legs and let it hang downwards and then carefully grasp the head in the other hand-place your thumb at the back of the base of the head, and with a quick downward thrust and a jerk backwards on your thumb it snaps the neck in one go. a good chicken killer well practiced in this method can average 30 or 40 chickens an hour.

You then drop the chicken onto the deck for a minute or two to let it finish kicking etc, very quick and easy, they even do geese and turkeys by the same method, although in those cases they nearly always use a brush shaft over the neck at the critical point and put one foot on either side of the brush shaft to hold it down, and just pull upwards on the legs- you have got to be a bit on the tall side though as some of them are quite a stretch from neck to legs, you have to also watch out for the wings flapping afterwards on turkeys and geese as these can really hurt you if you do not drop them quickly onto the deck.- hate gutting chickens though afterwards as they usually stink like hell "Phew"-Yuk.

Commercially over here in the UK, almost all poultry is killed by an electric stun gun with two prongs and electrodes to knock them out and then they are hung up by the legs and the jugular cut to finish the job, jewish halal meat slaughter is a whole different ball game of poultry, sheep and goats.

[johno]

I have a hard time taking lives. Once an animal is dead, it's just meat to me and no problem from there on. That's why my flock consists of layers and dual-purpose breeds - I get a fairly regular supply of more protein than we need in the form of eggs, and there are some hefty birds for the stew pot if need be. But we have eaten a couple of roosters that were meat-breeds bought by mistake, and they were delicious.

A co-worker once told me about his method (I haven't tried it). He tied the birds to a clothes line by their feet, then removed the head with bolt cutters (or some similar tool, I don't remember for certain). He said this way they didn't roll around, etc., and they bled out quickly.

[DiggingDogFarm]

I've killed upwards to 15,000 chickens....we used to sell pastured poultry.
For home butchering I use the clothes line method, much prefer that to cones....just loop a rope around the feet.
I like to use a killing knife...insert the killing knife into the mouth and sever the jugular.
Because I use as much of the chicken as possible, leaving the head and feet attached makes cleaning them a lot easier.

Killing knife, notice the very thin blade.
There's an edge on the tip, both top and bottom.





~Dig

[wildseed57]

I've killed several chickens, guineas, ducks and geese which I usually pull a bag over the body and tied so there isn't any flapping or bruising of the meat I will either chop the head off, with a very sharp meat hatchet or using the same hatchet to cut the jugular vein if some one wants the head left on, feet are also optional. Its quick and the animal suffers very little , when its all said and done the birds are pretty clean, depending on who wants one and if the head and feet are still there. I have killed a little over a hundred chickens in one day by the clothe line were the chickens are hung upside down with wings tied then the neck is cut the bird dies pretty fast. Cleaning that many really wares a person out especially if you have to pluck and clean also.

[gabriel]

I prefer using cones so that they can't flail around and spray everything in reach. I'm not sure that they feel much as long as you make a good cut the first time. I've cut myself to the bone, and also put a drywall screw into my hand (don't ask) and felt nothing either time for roughly 30 seconds.

[bev]

For several years we slaughtered roasting chickens, started with about 150 and the last few years 1000/yr. We used killing funnels made from 1 gallon plastic jugs (like a bleach jug). We cut out the bottoms and some of the neck and screwed them upside down on a board on outside wall of a shed. Catch the chicken, insert in funnel, pull head out bottom and cut it off with a sharp knife. As gabriel said, no flailing around so less mess and damage to the carcasses. We left them into the funnel until bled out.