Hey! Guess what? We had backyard chickens. We don’t anymore. This post is about killing them. So, uh, if you want to be detached from your meat, may I suggest you don’t read this post? There are photos. With blood n’ stuff.
(Are the people who think chickens have an organ called the “tender” and come from the freezer of Kroger gone?)
(Now?)
OK. So, first things first!
Gregg and our friend Dan killed the chickens this morning. We (and by “we” I mean “me”) decided to kill them earlier because the chickens were continuously brutalizing each other. They were plucking out each others’ feathers and would emerge from the coop each morning bloody and bruised and scared of each other. We tried several different approaches for months (food supplements, chicken treats, distractions, letting them out of the yard to graze in other places, etc.), and it only got worse. I wanted to give them away, but honestly, they were just going to do it to other chickens if we did that. Chickens are mean at best to each other, but these were true sociopaths.
Still, murdering animals, even as a meat eater, was a new frontier. I was worried. I wrote on twitter, “Do kids who cull chickens end up as sociopaths or Republicans? Asking for a friend.”
Then I added, “It may already be happening. To entice sick kids to eat, we have Gogurt in the fridge for the first time. Folsom here we come.”
Then I started to get nervous tummy. Then I told Gregg that I was staying inside, like a chicken. Which, duh, no wonder they’re scared of everything. PEOPLE MURDER THEM.
Sure enough, when Gregg started to get things ready in the backyard, the chickens all perked their heads up, all excited. “Oh hey! Hi hi hi!” they said with their tiny little wobbly, soon-to-be-detached heads. Because every time we come out there it’s to give them treats or food or water, you see. They thought we were going to give them TREATS.
This is just like Charlotte’s Web, but without Charlotte, and Wilbur dies. Kirkus gives it no stars.
I had to go inside and hide while they set up the chopping station. In case you are in the unique niche of people who have chickens in their tiny backyards who decide to brutalize each other and then you have to kill them to save their souls for Chicken Jesus or whoever, what you need is: a very big pot of boiling water, another pot, a hatchet, a wood block to, er, chop, and a garbage can. And nimble fingers. The hot pot of water is to soak the chickens after they’re beheaded, because it makes their feathers easier to remove. The rest is self-explanatory, right?
Well, I know I said I stayed inside, but once the chopping started, and since my seven-year-old was brave enough to watch, I also took a few peeks. It…wasn’t bad? Not bad at all. Chickens on the Green Mile aren’t nearly as sad as people, probably because they’re too dumb to know they’re on the Green Mile. Probably colorblind or something.
So, you have a friend with a hatchet holding the head of your chicken, and you’re holding the body, because yes, they totally run around after they’re beheaded, and then, maybe your friend didn’t sharpen his hatchet and he has to chop a few times to get the head off.
But after the heads are off, and the chickens aren’t moving, and you’ve soaked them in a pot? You take a photo of your husband standing over your garbage can full of chicken heads and blood n’ stuff, defeathering chickens.
And then this is what the chickens look like:
That black stuff on their feet? It’s chicken poo. SERIOUSLY DON’T EAT CHICKEN FEET.
So, yeah, I chickened out on murdering my sociopathic flock, but I do suddenly want to eat a Gogurt. Mmm, FD &C Yellow #5, come to Momma. Guess this means I’m going to jail soon.
(And while I didn’t kill them this time, I think I’ll try it for next time.) (Yes, we’re getting more chickens.) (Alert the chicken SVU.)
And! Guess who gets to disembowel these babies? Yeah, I got the worst job.
You ARE crazy. You hated the existing chickens but you’re going to get MORE. Silly Shalini.
As for renaming your blog, if you’re getting more chickens, you won’t have to rename it.
I feel scandalized.
There’s this thing we have in our garage called a ‘chicken dispatcher’. It’s handheld (though I think they were originally wall-mounted) and you put it round its neck and just squeeze and it kills it quietly. We had to kill our rooster, beautiful though he was, because after a gentlemanly wooing period he got nasty and started spurring the hens – he nearly took one of their eyes out at one point. We also use it if a hen is really sick and obviously suffering a painful decline. Might be a less messy alternative to the wooden block if you’d rather cut out the neck-chopping part!
By the way, in the entire of the paragraph above, when I say ‘we’ I of course mean ‘my stepdad and occasionally my mother’. THAT kind of ‘we’.
Chicken. Dispatcher. That’s awesome.
I was doing fine until I got to the disemboweling. Set-on-the-prairie novels always seem to stop with the beheading. I’ve never really thought about what’s next. (If you chop some heads next time, does Gregg have to do the disemboweling?)
Gregg thought the disemboweling was way worse than the beheading. I thought it was EXTRA COOL. But smelly. Very smelly.
Mother of god…
I literally haven’t checked up on Google reader for MONTHS, so of course the first thing that would pop up on my return to blog reading is chicken slaughter. I can’t even cook meat once it’s been all fileted and crap. I can’t imagine chopping off it’s head and de-yuckifying it. Props to Gregg and Dan.
Uh, sorry? Sorry!
No worries! You gave fair warning and I looked anyway…HAD to look. Was amusing…and sort of horrifying. But mostly amusing.
Oh dear. I don’t even know what to say about this. Except is your husband and/or his friend still wearing his watch and wedding ring while murdering chickens and pulling out feathers?
I think they both were. I took mine off for disemboweling, so I guess I know who respects marriage more.
Keepin’ it real, baby.
So, I, of course, loved this. RAWR! Real women disembowel their OWN chickens! FCKYEAH! You guys are so cool.
And now, strangely I want Doritos. So, go figure.
Probably colorblind! Ha. My Granny beheaded many chickens in her day, so it always seemed like something that cool ladies did to me.
I CANNOT believe Gregg did this!
I CANNOT believe it was your idea and my poor son had to do the dirty work!
I CANNOT believe they didn’t cut the feet off!
I CANNOTTTT believe you are getting more chickens!!!!
I do NOT think you got the worst job.
How long did they run around?
…and you said raccoons were murderers????
xxx, me
The bloody chicken at the end looked disgusting, but your descriptions are hilarious. And now I will not be buying chicken this week! Killing the meat had to be done and it was done in a humane manner, which is what counts.
Yeah, I ate tofu for dinner last night.
You know what – I think I can understand why my parents are vegetarian now. But good for you and your husband for doing the dirty work and seeing what it’s all about
Yes Sweeny Todd the kids WILLLLL BE Republicans!!! Pap
My dad grew up on a farm and has told me about killing chickens. He was a Republican for a while but isn’t anymore.
My husband grew up on a farm and has killed many a hog. He turned out ok. However, his brother is a Republican.
So what I’m saying is that you probably turned one of your kids Republican. Sorry. There’s probably a support group.
I’ve killed many a chicken. I’d put in in the high hundreds range. I find the least disturbing method to be a quick cervical dislocation (neck breakage), followed up by head chopping. Seems like it would be hard to chop a head while the chicken can still move?
I’m fascinated by the [metaphorical] distance between farm and food in this country. There was an interesting This American Life recently about the Portland Meat Collective, and how much vitriol it garners from both vegetarians and meat eaters alike. I got a lot of shit in college (and even now) for working with animals, and it’s always struck me how the humane society commercials asked for 10x more than the adopt a starving kid in Africa ones.