|
|
Dec 04 - The First Kill Our "fattener upper" chickens grew quickly and after a couple of months it was time to kill and pluck them.
Despite all Dan's macho bravado (and a mispent youth shooting sparrows in the back garden), he was really quite nervous about doing this.
Just before we left the UK, Dan's brother Richard bought us a shepards crook for chickens and a pair of dispatchers (a bit like a pair scissors but the "blades" butt up to each other as opposed to cross over)
At the time, Richard thought the shepards crook was more of a joke, but in actual fact has been one of the most used (and lent) tools in our garden.
Having caught the chicken, it was now time to kill it - this simply involved putting the dispatchers around the chickens neck and then squeezing together.
The neck is broken instantly and within a couple of seconds the bird is dead and then flaps wildly - Dan was shaking like a leaf at this point and the sweat was clearly visible.
Once the bird was dead and stopped moving, it was time to do the plucking.
Given that this was the first time, Dan and his parents (his mum, Mavis is shown above) all had a go and it took almost 3 hours to pluck and prepare the bird!
Eventually, having followed step-by-step instructions from 3 different books, the chicken was ready for the oven.
Since the first bird, the killing, plucking and gutting process has gotten much faster and is now a routine task for us.
View The Blog Read All Chicken Stories |
