The chicken was culled quickly, but I knew there had to be a better way! The head ripped right off, the bird flopped everywhere, I was traumatized and my family room floor was covered in blood. I was told it would be easy and mess free. The method I used the first time I had to euthanize a sick young chicken, was the broomstick method. There are many different culling methods for chickens and I've tried several over the years with mixed results.
#Broomstick method chicken how to#
If you're ready to learn how to cull a sick chicken humanely, keep reading. If this kind of conversation bothers you go ahead and click right here to visit some of my more fun chicken posts! You might want to bookmark this page for when the time comes though. You know you're still human because it HURTS you to have to do this to your feathered friend.I'm going to talk about my preferred method for culling a chicken along with methods that I have tried but not had as much success with. The hunter taught me that it's never because you WANT to do this, but because it's a necessity. To me, this is the way it should be, and I don't want to buy chicken from a commercial farm ever ever again! I'd rather do this than eat a bird I bought that has been debeaked alive and boiled alive. I say, I'd rather do this than support factory farming where the birds live in cages they can't stand up in and are not raised in love. But I always tell them that first of all (I'm very Native American about it) I tell these birds I LOVE them and NO part will be wasted and I'm sorry to do this but they will nourish my body and it will not be in vain. I had friends who have chastised me some for killing my own birds. Make sure if you're keeping the gizzards to take the layer of membrane off of the stomach otherwise it'll taste nasty! Then we dipped them in paraffin wax to help get the rest of the feathers out. After the birds were done moving we plucked them after dipping them (for like a second) in boiling water to make it easier to pluck them. We put the birds heads in between two nails on a stump and used a hatchet to chop it off. I killed my first birds with a neighbor who was a hunter. Got up and walked wasn't immediate, but a few years later he became a vegetarian. As I stand there with that poor birds head in one hand, and a dripping knife in the other facing my son, who is pale and white as a sheet by this point. I can feel the splatter drying on my face and shirt as I turn around slowly. One wing disjointed and broken with a bone protruding. When it finally finished it's death throes, it slowly rocked back and forth. The flapping bird was spraying and flinging blood all over me and everything within 15 feet. One leg was flopping around and then one of the wings snapped in two and a bone stuck out. I tried to catch it while still holding the head and it kicked a leg free. The bird started thrashing around flapping its wings. Same old Same old.I hung it up, but this time I accidentally cut a bit deep and the head came off in my hand. "That wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be!" I took the bird to the water, scalded it, hung it back up and looked at my son. Hung it up, made two cuts, held it as it bled out, it shook just a bit and it was done. He said he thought he would stay.and so I did just that. I'm about to go get a bird, hang it on that string, cut it, bleed it, scald it and then process it." You can stay if you want, or you can go in, but here is what will happen. Finally all my prep work was done and I told him. I even had water in a pot to do a scalding so I could pluck them. I hung some twine pieces in a tree to hold them while I work. My son (roughly 11-12) was sitting on the lawnmower just watching and not saying anything. The birds were of age, and it needed to be done. I had a big star on the calendar, "BUTCHER DAY." Everyone knew that we could not have plans that day. I bought chicks specifically to raise and have eggs, and some that were purposed to eat just so I could re-familiarize myself with the process.Īnd THIS is the story I tell anyone that asks me, "do you ever eat any of them? How do you do it?" I just had to take them home and learn to butcher.įast forward 20 years later, I decide I want chickens for me. As expected, his placed and made the sale and he got to keep the money and mine definitely did not. As you would expect, the show time came and I prepared the 2 cages of birds, cleaned and groomed them and got them to the show on time. I was in charge of feeding, raising and caring for them.
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25 for me, and 25 for the neighbor kid that never once did anything to them.
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It wasn't my idea and my step-dad bought 50 to show. I raised chickens when I was a teen and hated it.