I think they had it coming....














Lots of carnage.















There were multiple people involved.

good times

i miss that. I bet great eating

Done that myself a time or two. Good eats ahead for you.

No Confederate flag? Must have been those antigovernment right wing types then.

Yum..

I have to cover my entire coop and run or the hawks get more than me.

Got about another 5 - 6 weeks for our chicken jihad.

Are you lopping heads with a pruner?

Your hanging method disallows the entertainment of the headless run!

Yep! The only place I've ever seen them leave the heads on was at the 'chicken plant'. They saved everything there, sent all the scraps to the rendering plant and made , yea you guessed it... chicken feed!

Wheree the heckk wS that,.........we executed chickens, ducks turkeys, geese via electrocution.... and then slashing and scalding...........

We are of the hatchet and bucket method.

These were only 7 weeks old. I had a heck of a time keeping the birds intact during their death flop the way it was. I'm going to line up a killing cone if we do this again.

The pruner worked pretty well for removing the non-edible part.

"Ahead of"
Are you trying to be clever, or something?




I used to get SO mad at grandma when I was little.
She'd drop the axe then carry by one leg and set it gently in the pile.

That's just wrong.
Deprive a young boy frm seeing all that floppin and jumpin and kickin.

Even grandpa get on her ass about it.
"Just throw it and get the next one!"

Only 22? A farmer who lets me hunt his property asked me to help him butcher chickens. We did 80 one day. My hands were never so sore from pulling guts.

If it saves just one chicken...........

I don't think we should kill chickens when you can buy them at the store.

My sis thinks the same way.^^^

Grandpa ran the fire. Keep the pot boiling and strip 'em off.
Me and kid sis ran the hooks as dad pushed 'em to us.

They ran to us cuz we fed 'em... and from him cuz they're smarter than they look.

We'd drag 'em over to granny by the stump with 2 ten penny nails driven in to poke their head between then pull and chop.

Granny was old and scrawny and that hatchet heavy.
Sometimes she'd hafta chop two or three times to get 'er done.

After grandpa dunked and stripped 'em, it was over to the picnic table where two old aunts waited with butcher knives and buckets.

A regular assembly line production operation..

The old aunties could part 'em out faster'n a mexican auto chop shop.
And they'd save and sort various sizes yet to be shelled eggs, too.
Big ones are good eatin.
Little ones are excellent catfish bait.
And the guts go to trap lined down on the river.

These elders mine, spoke more German than they did English..

I prefer all my meat be grown at markets. Killing is so...barbaric.

When I was a lad we raised turkeys one year and after they got so big we let them run "free range".
Butchering time came and as can be expected they were quite wild, though the first one was fairly easy to catch. They were too big to hold by the feet and wing tips in one hand in our traditional chicken chopping method. I had to hug the turkey from behind with my arms pinning the wings down and then bend over towards the chopping block while someone else chopped the head. I guess I didn't think far enough ahead, you know what happens when the head comes off... the neck curled back shooting hot blood all over me.
I shot the rest in the head with a .22.

Cornish hens?

My mamma was the best i ever seen at ringing a chicken head off in ten seconds.

Brings back a lot of smelly memories

mmmm, hot wet shicken fedderz...

my favorite smell in the world.

lol.

Some sort of fast growing butcher chickens. I can't remember the name.


The smell brought back a lot of memories from my childhood.

Shot'em with .22's and chopped a few, as singles for dinner.
Nothing like burning your fingers on scalding hot chicken feathers.
Lovely smell too.

WB, for chickens, gallon milk jug with the bottom cut out work well. They can't flap their wings and it's got the handy handle too, as blood is slippery.

that's how we do ours anyway

My Mother in law has one of the wickedest hand wringing motions i have ever seen.

Lots of wrist action.
When done the best fried chicken around.

they're called Cross??? something

we raised some to butcher as well and waited too late, the fat bastids some couldn't run away when we went to butcher them. And as hard as it is to believe they're even dumber than a standard chicken.

White chickens matter! !

I have 31 of them going to the butcher in 4 weeks. They will be 9 week old chickens. I can buy chickens cheaper, but I can't buy a better tasting chicken anywhere. I get them butchered for $3 bucks a pop, all bagged up and no feathers left on at all. I don't bother doing it myself cause I can go to work for a few hours and make that money . I think it would take me all day to butcher 31 chickens.

Yup, in addition to what my granny raised, we raised a bunch one summer as kids to make some money. Granny was hell with that hatchet and a stump. Last 10-20 or so we're so wild we couldn't catch and they hit head-shot.

Good times!

Traffic cones work in a pinch for killing cones

[/quote]


they're called Cross??? something

we raised some to butcher as well and waited too late, the fat bastids some couldn't run away when we went to butcher them. And as hard as it is to believe they're even dumber than a standard chicken. [/quote]


We raised and butchered some of those last year. Goofiest chickens I ever raised. They couldn't hardly get up they were so fat. We didn't butcher them soon enough. Some of them weighed 13 pounds dressed out. Took the wife and I 8 solid hours to butcher 23 of them. Not my favorite sport. They were good though.





They were old enough to have eggs.

Brings back a funny memory. My buddy wanted his 5 year old son to come out to the farm and see what butchering chickens was all about. The boy's mom didn't think it was a good idea but my buddy insisted. He took the first one, chopped it's head off and let it go, it ended up heading right for the boy who took off running. My buddy was thinking he was going to be in huge trouble for traumatizing the boy but the young lad ran in a semi circle and yelled "Get him dad, get him!" We all thought it was the funniest thing and I still laugh everytime I think about it

Doing 30 tomorrow. Call me a sissy, but I rented a chicken plucker.

I surely didn't get these chickens to save money. WAY cheaper to get them in the store.

I want my little 3-1/2 yo bear cub to be around animals, have chores and understand that meat doesn't come from the grocery store. Start him off young.

We will be using a chicken plucker for the next batch.

I still have the big knife my grandma used to lop off heads when butchering chickens. Granpa make a row of mounted cones for the recently decapitated to be dropped into. Used to love fresh fried chicken.

Look like Cornish Cross meat chickens to me.

They grow so fast that they end up as lazy lumps that done do much moving around except to eat.

If you want to keep them from being too fat , just let off on the feed a little bit every day. They will thin down. If you keep them so fat they can't walk they will die when it gets hot, like 90 degrees. I hate having big dead rooster Cornish Cross chickens die when they are 6 lbs and just a few days before I take them to the butcher.

Cornish Rock Cross or something was the breed.

We only let them eat 12hrs/day. I guess the legs break if they are allowed to eat at will. 25 birds were drinking 5+ gallons of water per day.

It was impressive to see them get bigger everyday.

Get the float bowl controlled auto water hooked up to a hose.
Only let them have food for 15 minutes a day, or it attracts rats.

I used to raise 50 cornish cross a year, but did not kill that at 8 weeks and 2 pounds. I would let them grow until they were twice the commercial frier size. It was a day's work for me and the wife to get them in the freezer.

I would:
0) Don't feed them for a day. The guts are empty and they are easier to catch.
1) cut off the head with pruning loppers.
2) Hold the wings back [so they can't flap, which makes the meat tough] with one hand and hold the legs together with the other and let their neck stump spray my shoes with blood for a minute.
3) I would pull off the skin
4) I would pull out the guts and save the liver and hearts [the cat loved the hearts, but would not eat store bought]
5) I would cut through the ankle joints and throw away the feet.
6) I would cut through the hip joints.

I would get ~ 6 chickens in a big pot and carry it to the house. The wife would pick off any feathers I messed, cut them into smaller pieces, wrap them in plastic and freezer wrap, weigh the package, mark and date the package, and put it in the freezer.

By the end of the day I was covered in blood and talking to the chickens, "Hold still this will be over fast.."

Could you detail your method.

ClarkM, I didn't know the meat would get tough if the wings could still flap. A big cone seems to keep them from flapping while ya cut their heads off.

Flapping & running around bruises the meat ... doesn't it???

I'm going to control the flapping better on the next round. Even hanging them by the legs and holding as best as the helpers could, caused some broken wings and other bruising. My help was old-school and believed in letting them 'flap' to pump the blood out. I wasn't going to scold free help.

I haven't killed a chicken in 30+ years but after this round I know what to do better. We just butchered whatever hens that were around as available while growing up. These are a whole different game.

I grew up with cows, pigs, chickens and a good sized grain farm. I still have the farm but rent out the acres and do my construction work for a living. The critters are just for fun and fresh food.

Thanks to all of you for the advice and lessons learned.

BTW they scaled at about 5# cleaned and freezer ready on my cheap kitchen scale so +/- a little. We could have let them grow a bit more but the help was available so......

I kept all of the necks, hearts, gizzards and livers (pate) to cook up later. Not a fan of liver but I'll give it a try.

I call the Cornish Cross meat birds "freaks of nature". They are the best tasting, most vile, filthy creatures ever engineered!

Hips will break and hearts will asplode because they grow so fast. We were going o try the red rangers or what ever they are. They grow a little slower and take an extra week or two to make weight and act like real chickens. Not like these lazy things that park at the feeder. Red ranger arrival dates didn't fit with our schedule, so we are left with the freaks of nature.

A frind recalls growing up on the farm in Kansas and he and his brother would whack birds two-at-a-time trying to get the runners to collide. They'd fall over laughing when it would happen.

Randy - I'm going to have to remember the milk jug trick and try that.

My brother welded a big cone for me, but after a few years, I just held the Cornish Cross wings back with my left hand clamping the wings and my right hand clamping the legs.


The big turkeys I would stand on their wings while they were on their backs. Some could launch me into the air when I snipped off their heads.

Cornish Cross chickens are so stupid they can't sit on a perch to sleep. A great horned owl can haul away a lot of them in one night. If the Cornish Cross are kept with smart layer hens, the hens will make noises when the owl is there. I have shot owls out of the trees with stingers and out of the air with a 12 ga.