Posted on 09/17/2010 5:20:15 PM PDT by Bean Counter
I stumbled across this very well done set of three videos the other day and I know a number of Freepers will be interested in viewing them.
There are a lot of urban legends and improper methods out there for what should be a simple and humane way of harvesting the food God gives us. I am putting this up strictly as an educational tool, and so I have a bookmark for it myself.
This young man is demonstrating the proper way to humanely slaughter a meat bird, and it is a handy skill to at least be familiar with.
Certainly not for everyone, but many will be interested in how to do this properly and humanely.
ping
And people wonder how I manage to be a vegetarian.
Can you smoke some medical wannna with the chicken first and get them all relaxed and then chop their head off? /S
My mom used to hold the chicken by the feet, step on the head and take a butcher knife to the neck. Very humane way to do it.
I take a whole dressed chicken, set it up on end and cut the backbone out on each side. Splay it open, and rub some Cajun Seasoning on the inside, lift up the skin and rub some on the meat of the breast and legs.
Then I put it in the smoker with Mesquite and some Hickory chips for about four hours or when the thermometer tells me the temp I want. Let the meat cool, debone it and make smoked chicken salad with it.
Serve it up on some fresh bread and a cold beer and you have supper!
Thanks!
I’d rather clean fish then chickens any day. The hardest part is keeping the cats away.
Thanks for the info, it will be good info to have when Armegeddon comes.
I saw your header. I raised chickens. I have had to kill chickens. You take a chicken to the stump and turn it upside down. It will always stick it’s neck out, so you chop the neck off on the stump. Want to know how to kill a 12 year old family dog that is eaten up with cancer? .22 to the back of the skull after the hug. Then start digging. My Babydog is 17 years old. She has been everywhere with me and protected me many times. She can’t handle her bladder too good anymore, and she will crap too. I put up with it.
Now, Do you see the difference between a chicken and a dog?
I learned from my mother when I was just a kid (when killing and cleaning the chickens became my chore).
I had to catch one, then hold it by the legs and lay it out on an old cottonwood “round” we’d haul around the garden.
She showed me that if you stroke the back of a chicken’s neck with the edge of your hatchet without ruffling its feathers, the bird will relax and stretch out its neck; almost like it’s falling asleep. Works on ducks, geese, guinea hens, and turkeys as well. Works with a machete too, but I still preferred to use a good sharp hatchet (I used my old hand-me-down Boy Scout hatchet, still have it somewhere).
Once the bird relaxes, it’s just one good WHACK! My town friends didn’t think it was quite fair - to “pet” them, then chop them - but I knew it was the quickest way to kill ‘em - ‘cause my mom told me so. Never bothered me a bit, and didn’t make a serial killer out of me either.
Then I had to carry the bleeding chicken over to whichever tomato plant she had put a big open-ended coffee can around, and set in there so it would bleed out over the plant. Then on to the next bird (we slaughtered and froze a month’s worth at a time).
BTW - My mom grew legendary tomatoes. Bigger than a grown man’s fist.
Kinda nice to know how to do them all, instead of expecting it to come on Styrofoam.
You have to shoot grouse, clean them on the deck, and the fry them up!!! The blood is excellent as gravy!!!
My grandmother had an egg ranch. When my brother was about 12, he pestered her to let him watch her kill a chicken. She had the chicken tied by its feet, hanging upside down, and she slit its throat. Then made chicken and dumplings. Boy, was that good - but my brother wouldn’t eat it. My brother later became an Army Ranger and part of the survival training at Fort Benning was killing and dressing chickens and rabbits.
Want to let everyone interested in this topic about a new book by James Beard award winning food writer Deborah Krasner. The book is titled “Good Meat”.
Good info....
See the “neck stroking” technique I commented on earlier. We never had any problems getting feathers out from the birds “plumping up”, because our chickens went to their maker dreaming... Never knew what hit ‘em.
The only problem I ever had was when I let my little 105lb wife talk me into letting her try to slaughter a 30lb tom turkey with a machete.
Admirably, she caught him, wrestled him over to the block, held him up, calmed him very nicely by stroking him with the machete.
Then, she made a 1/2-hearted swing, hit him with the flat of the blade and only cut his head 1/2 way off.
When I could stop laughing, I walked over and stopped the blooy wrestling match by grabbing its flopping head and yanking. To her credit, it didn’t scare her off of the chore, and she killed many other birds and even helped butcher a couple of hogs. It did scare the hell of my then 3yo son, though.
And yeah, you only dunk a dead bird. The hotter the water, the better.
“blooy” = bloody...
You gotta remember I had over 50 chickens for over 15 years. I knew every chicken. My brothers would b amazed when I could call a rooster or an important hen. They knew me because i fed the little turds every day, in the rain and the shine. When the snow was 3 feet deep I was there every morning. .....I miss my herd.
Your mother sounds alot like my grandmother. She was rather tough, out of necessity, during depression era Kansas, on her eight children, but was a real softie with her 20 grandchildren. I was her eldest grandchild (yep, I’m old) but I remember her taking suckling pigs and calves into the house to feed them from bottles during blizzards....I helped with that.
But when it came time to feed her large family, she did what she had to do.
Out of her eight children, two became physicians, one was a veterinarian, three military officers (my Dad is in that category), and two teachers. Her goal in life was to see that each child got a college education.
She was a remarkable woman, and only had an eighth grade education.
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