Saw the chicken pusher today…
Awwwww…dang it to poop! I made you a movie of the Chicken Man’s chickens, but Pinnacle Studio is barfing it up when I go to render it (I love Pinnacle Studio, but it sure goes on the rag a lot). Now I’m late, late, late and no time to fix it.
Here’s a quick recap.
Went to see our chicken guy today. He had many fine birds, but no bantams. He’ll have some bantams in a couple of weeks, though they’ll be a bit older than I’d like. He doesn’t know what colors; his bantam guy gets ratty when he asks and never gives him the right answer anyway. Sounds like Bantam Guy has issues.
Chicken Man is a heckuva guy, though, and is really trying to make a go of it, so we bought lots of other stuff. Shavings. Corn. A run for the new girls to keep Mapp and Lucia from killing them when they’re small and tempting.
I’m casting around on the chicken forums and looking at local bulletin boards. Lots of people raise these things.
On the way home, we stopped in a little antique shop and got talking with the owners. Chicken people. Turns out Antiques Dude used to be a zookeeper and one of his jobs was killing chickens to feed to the animals. He demonstrated the pull-and-twist method, but really prefers putting an air gun pellet in their heads.
So I learned something!
The End.
Posted: March 31st, 2011 under adventure, britain, personal.
Comments: 13
Comments
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 31, 2011, 11:10 pm
You can’t say life’s dull when you’ve a weasel in residence.
To think.. I could have gone my whole life without ever having chicken and dinner cruelly separated.
Comment from Mike James
Time: April 1, 2011, 12:31 am
Clearly, pellet gun. With at least four or five buttons of your blouse unbuttoned. With your sleeves rolled up, but not over your red, white, and black armband. Which must never be obscured, because you are–
Swilsa, SheWeasel Of The SS!
And shiny black boots. Don’t care about a whip. But boots.
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: April 1, 2011, 1:21 am
My grandfather usually prefered to grab their heads two to a hand and whip-crack them up over his head. The bodies would drop around him and he’d toss the heads in the trash while Grandma collected up the bodies as they quit running around…..
He didn’t do it much around us kids, we were too CITYFIED, and it tended to upset us when we were younger……
later, we’d do the chores in the chicken run when we visited, collecting the eggs while fending off Buster, his prize rooster. That bird had one hell of a chip on his shoulder, and always seemed to know when you weren’t paying complete attention. And, I have to say THOSE DAMN SPURS OF HIS HURT!!!!!
Comment from JeffS
Time: April 1, 2011, 1:44 am
Scubafreak, when I was an ROTC cadet (lo, these many years ago), we had a short session of survival training at camp. This included, among other lessons, exactly the same technique you describe in killing a chicken. The NCO took a live chicken, and whipped it around, leaving the head in his hand, and the body running around, spurting blood.
This grossed out the cadets who had never seen an animal butchered. I had, but not chickens, so I thought it was cool, which really grossed out the cadets.
But the NCO decided to be “nice”: he gave the chicken head to one of the female cadets who was CLEARLY grossed out. It was a gesture many of us appreciated, and we made a point of rescuing the head from the garbage can a little while later, and turning it into our “Mascot For The Day”, by tying it to a stick, and creating our own totem.
The guide on had a blast hauling it around the rest of the day, and the cadre had a good laugh, whenever someone else was grossed out.
Couldn’t do that today, of course. We’d have the PC police all over our butts.
Ah, memories!
Comment from Oh Hell
Time: April 1, 2011, 2:08 am
My Grandmother had a pet chicken, which I found surprising as she was a farm woman and I’m sure she butchered more than a few chickens in her lifetime.
Comment from Mitchell
Time: April 1, 2011, 4:48 am
My Mom had a pet bunny when she was a kid. Then one day when she was at school her bunny escaped. She ate odd-flavored “chicken” that night.
Comment from The Dread Pirate Shaved Beard
Time: April 1, 2011, 5:16 am
Oh dear. Well, let’s not talk too much about how to dispatch cute fluffy (delicious) widdle bunnies, then 😉
Comment from Nina
Time: April 1, 2011, 5:48 am
Yah, I’m a squeamish one myself. I’d have to be a veggit if I had to do my own killin’. Most of my male kinfolk were hunters/fishermen, but I never had any desire to kill anything myself. You look up “pansy” in the OED and you’ll see my photo as the prime example.
Comment from Uncle Monkey
Time: April 2, 2011, 4:21 pm
Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING tastes better if it’s had a name first.
Let me qualify that – it would have to have a face and move around on its own. Eggs, fish and vegetables are an exception. Actually, you can name a fish but you have to do it fast. Eric works. Although Salmon always seem to be named Bruce. But I digress…
Most folks have no idea what a proper egg tastes like – chickens need to be running around and eating whatever they can get their little beaks on – none of this “vegetarian diet” crap.
Aw damn, now I’m hungry.
Comment from Ric Locke
Time: April 2, 2011, 8:28 pm
I don’t really mind killing chickens.
I despise cleaning them afterwards, the whole plucking/gutting thing. Chicken season here really begins at Easter, although the local suppliers are beginning to have chicks. My wife being in the nursing home, therefore no longer available to object (she HATES live chickens), I may very well put up a run. Uncle Monkey is absolutely correct. The whitish ovoids found by the dozen in the market are only “eggs” by technical definition.
Regards,
Ric
Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: April 3, 2011, 6:33 pm
Granny used to have this little blade that pierced their brainstems. It just shut them off like a switch.
They were easier to pluck too.
Comment from Formerly known as Skeptic
Time: April 4, 2011, 5:27 pm
Never killed a chicken, but did kill a bunny once in survival training. Named it Bobo and let it hop around camp all afternoon on a parachute cord leash. Simple technique was to hold it by its back legs and pet it until it calms down and the ears lift back up off its neck, then CHOP karate-style. Clean neck snap. Rabbit stew for dinner!
Comment from Sporadic Small Arms Fire
Time: April 4, 2011, 6:33 pm
If you baptized Bobo as “Fish”, you could have Fish on Friday. I wish I could claim credit, but the Catholic clergy thought of it several centuries before.
Snap a bunny’s neck and somewhere a weasel goes hungry. Now, there’s an unsettling thought.
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