Chicken Slaughter and Farm Tour

Well, it's finally over for those chickens. I know I've been eluding to it all week. The meat birds reached 11 weeks old, so they were already a week overdue for the slaughter. A mobile slaughter team arrived here around 8am this morning and got to work. I offered to help out this morning for a few reasons: I didn't have anything else to do, I want to be helpful, and I'm looking to have new experiences. This certainly was a new experience. First, we had to finish moving the chickens from the coop to the barn so that they were close to the mobile trailer. When it pulled up, it looked just like any other full-size trailer hitched to the end of an over-sized pickup truck. However, this trailer had a rack to hang the chickens up by their feet, an electric stun-knife, a tank to scald the dead chickens in (to make the feathers easy to remove), an agitator that removes the feathers, a cold water bath, and a long counter for butchering, weighing, labeling, and bagging the birds. It took a crew of four people to keep the operation running, and they were very efficient with their work.

After the trailer was set up with electric plug-ins and a water source, it was our job to take chickens from the barn to the back of the trailer. Then an older man with yellow waterproof overalls, rubber gloves, and an electric stun knife would take the bird and hang it upside down by its legs. He'd then touch the bird with the dull end of the electric knife to stun it. After the bird was stunned, then he slit it's throat in two swipes. Apparently, this takes a bit of experience and precision. You want to get the major arteries in the bird's neck so it bleeds out quickly, but you don't want to cut it's head off or slit the esophagus since this can allow for bacterial contamination. The worst part of this process for me was that as I handed him birds, the would flap a little bit, and then they'd flap a lot after they had their throats slit. This was an involuntary response, even though they were already dead. Unfortunately, all of that flapping spattered around the blood dripping from the necks of the birds hanging on the same or nearby hooks. I had chicken blood speckled all over my shirt, hat, and face. Not pleasant. Plus, the rest of the blood dripped onto the trailer and started to turn into a coagulated mess by the end. Rebecca said that I looked queasy after looking down at that. After the birds are slaughtered, they are defeathered and butchered. Defeathering means scalding them in 160 degree water, then agitating them in a machine so that the feathers come out. Then the heads, feet, and organs are removed before they are put into a bag. Connell, Brian and Rebecca's Irish wolfhound, snuck off a few chicken heads throughout the whole process.

While I found the entire experience interesting, I have to say that this has just further affirmed my vegetarianism--I do not feel a need to ever eat meat ever again. Also, I will never ever purchase eggs or meat for guests that is not free range. As I mentioned earlier, the life and death of these birds was nothing but humane. When we carried them to the slaughter trailed, Brian even tried to make sure they faced away from the carnage so they didn't have to look at it. Of course, they wouldn't understand what they saw anyway, but you could tell that everyone really respected these animals. In fact, while I don't mind describing how this all went, I didn't think it was appropriate to take pictures of what happened because I felt like it would be distasteful.

The second half of my day was a bit less gruesome. I got to do a farm tour at another organic farm in the area. This guy was seriously organized. He had a lot of efficiencies built into his techniques, his rows were perfectly straight, and they never let the weeds get ahead of them. It made for a beautiful farm:



After the tour, there was a potluck dinner. I had no clue there was a potluck, or even dinner, afterward, but apparently I was told and just didn't process it. I hate showing up to something like that empty handed, particularly because I love any excuse I can find for cooking. Luckily, someone else I carpooled with didn't have a dish either, so we stopped off and brought a bottle of wine. That worked out just fine:


Then we stopped by an outdoor festival after dinner and listened to some live music.