We did it!
As the weather got colder, we knew it would be time for the older hens to go. They were our very first chickens, the ones given to us by Linda-Brook back in April. She had pulled them from her flock because they were getting beaten-up by the roosters. When they came to us, they were missing a lot of feathers which never grew back. We are grateful for the many eggs they provided for us during these last 8 months, and now we will enjoy them as soup stock.
How did we do it?
We carried each one over to a rope Mike set up hanging from a tree and hung them upside down by their feet (poultry become docile when you carry/hang them upside down). Then we each killed one. We stretched out the neck/head with one hand, then sliced through the neck with a knife in the other hand, then stood back. Even though the bird is dead, it twitches around a lot afterwards before it finally stops.
We left them to drain for a while, then dipped them in a pot of hot water for 30 seconds before plucking, this helps to separate the quills from whatever holds them under the skin. Then we plucked them. Mike did most of the work from that point on as I tended to dinner and the kids. It was a lot of work. He carefully cleaned them out and prepped them for cooking. It was so cool to see the organs, different sizes of forthcoming egg yolks, and to discover there was actually a little more meat on them than we had anticipated. Declan watched each step of the slaughter and cleaning and was interested to see how chickens and humans share some of the same parts like hearts and livers.
I found that the act of killing the chicken was no big deal after all. The anticipation was a lot more intense. I just didn’t have any idea about how it would go, but it was pretty easy. But like I said, it’s the work afterwards that is tedious and time-consuming. Mike did a great job!
This slaughter was always the plan when we got chickens: that we would gather the eggs, and when the laying hens got old, we would slaughter them for stock. The hens that we raised from chicks continue to lay, albeit at a slower rate in these cold-weather months, and we’ll probably slaughter them next fall/winter or the following year, depending on how they’re holding up.
These are the hens we killed today (photo from April, 2007). There are three in this picture – the one in front dropped dead after a heatwave this summer.
Erica goes in for the kill.
Mike cleans and preps.
