Yesterday afternoon, while digging into the Thanksgiving leftovers, I looked at the large turkey carcass on the counter and really tried to look at it for what it was: a big dead animal that used to live and breathe and strut about. I did all the sort of thinking and pondering about the disconnect between source and consumer, and the environmental impact of meat production, and the moral implications of killing an animal, that any good leftie Portland kid should be doing. Then, typically, I shrugged it off and tucked into a hearty helping of dark meat and gravy.
Mere minutes later I got a call from Ida over at the Lazy Onion Urban Farm asking me if I could help slaughter eleven chickens that afternoon. I immediately knew that I would and should say yes, but told her I had to go to the dentist and would think about it and call her back. The largest thing I had ever killed was a trout, and that was over a decade ago. I don't really think of myself as a life taker, and felt conflicted. But I knew I would feel ashamed and hypocritical if I didn't go through with it. Two hours later, I was killing chickens.
There are (or rather, were) over thirty chickens at the farm. Five were enormous broiler chickens who's time had come, and six were elderly laying hens that had stopped producing eggs.
When I arrived, Ida was setting up the "killing cones," which as you can see are just traffic cones (cut wider at the peak so the chickens' heads would fit through) hung over buckets. Also present were some other lovely people named Ben, Kellyn, Kathrine, and later Aaron arrived.
This is me with Harold, the largest of the chickens, Standing high, he came up to my waist. He was one of the first three to be dispatched and the first, and only, chicken I would kill that night.
Here we see Ida lowering the first of the chickens into a killing cone. When chickens are held upside down by their feet they pass out, making it much easier to handle them. We let Ida do all of the steps with the first chicken, learning as we watched and she instructed.
We used the bleed-out method, which consists of cutting their carotid arteries in, hopefully, one swift slice. This is Harold's last moment before I did the deed. I learned quickly that a firm, dedicated stab and slash with a sharp knife was necessary for a quick and humane death. Unfortunately all we had were our pocket knives.
Harold bleeding out. Like humans, Chickens loose consciousness almost immediately upon loss of blood pressure to the brain. Unfortunately the brain stem continues to send innate impulses to the body for some time, resulting in much leg kicking and wing flapping. Harold was an impressive bird and we looked on in silence for a while as he went still. I didn't have any huge emotional event upon my first kill, but it was certainly a moment to be contemplated for some time.
The most bizarre and tedious task was plucking the feathers. First the chickens are submerged in water that is heated to approximately one hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit, and plunged up and down for roughly ninety seconds so the water could seep it's way between the oily feathers to the skin.
We then used a homemade sort-of rubber paddle wheel type contraption attached to an electric drill to quickly remove the feathers. Some birds this worked better than others, and much hand plucking was needed.
Here is the carnage that was the plucking station:
We used a machete to remove the heads and feet. Harold does not look his best here.
Removing the internal organs was highly macabre and rather challenging. Knowing how and where to make the proper incisions took much tutoring on Ida's part. After a good deal of grime and gore and being wrist deep in a dead animal, Harold was ready to be washed, bagged and weighed:
EIGHT POUNDS!!! What a big chicken!
We had killed and processed only three chickens out of eleven and the Sun had long set. We agreed to pick up where we had left it in the morning.
This morning I arrived a bit late and they had already slaughtered three chickens. I brought along some knives that I felt were much more suited for the job. A long, sharp, slim utility knife for the killing; a small but beefy deba bocho for the processing; and my mid range heavy duty Chinese cleaver for removing the head and feet.
One of the organ buckets:
The feathers and feet were all collected for various projects. Here you can see the immense difference in size between the laying hens and the broiler chickens just by comparing their feet side by side:
The blood was used as a fertilizer, the buckets waiting to be washed.
All told, I personally killed six out of eleven chickens. I took Harold home and put him in the freezer for dinner with my family next Sunday.
