Killing Cockerels and Future Poultry Plans

In May I bought 12 day old La Bresse chicks. They grew on to 7 cockerels and 5 hens. My plan is to breed from these birds and produce a batch or two of meat birds each year. I killed 3 of the cockerels and put them into the freezer two weeks ago. We ate one last week and it tasted great. There was lots of leg and thigh meat and a reasonable amount of breast meat. The dark meat was very dark and had a nice dense quality, not like the pumped with water supermarket birds. I was very pleased with the finished quality.

Saturday we decided we would slaughter two more cockerels the following day. That leaves us with 5 hens and 2 cockerels for breeding next year. I am keeping two cockerels as a back up plan in case one of the cockerels gets sick or is in fertile etc.. We seperated the two chosen cockerels after dark on Saturday night and kept them on tarmac with water and no food so as to clear their crops and digestive systems to make cleaning them out easier.

The chosen two

Sunday afternoon we got around to doing the job. When originally deciding on a method to dispatch the birds I chose the "cone method." It seemed the most humane and straightforward method to me. The first time I slaughtered the birds I did a batch of three. The first bird didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked but once I had learned the method I was happier with the other two. If I had just planned on killing one bird I would have dreaded doing the next batch a few days later but I am glad there was more birds to do straight away so I could get it right. This time around I felt much better about doing the job. It also helped to have two hunting friends to give me advice on the plucking and gutting. I took a video of the job and our homemade cone. I am not claiming this is the "best" method available it is simply how I chose to do it and it is open to criticism and comment. The bird is placed head first down into the cone and his head is then pulled through the bottom of the cone. I then pull the feather back to reveal the birds throat. I then make a cut each side of the neck to sever the two arteries on either side of the neck. The bird then bleeds out into a bucket. The bird should pass out from blood loss in 2 or 3 seconds and then die in 5 to 10 seconds. The bird normally makes one last "squak" and then flaps around in the cone. Once this happens the bird is dead and I usually leave the bird in the cone for about 30 seconds to make sure all the flapping is done with and then remove the bird. I also put a piece of wood into the top of the cone to make sure the bird doesn't flap it's way out of the cone. This is a video of a chicken being killed so if that will upset you don't watch it.

The laughing and noise you can hear is because the bird we slaughtered before this one started flapping (you can see it in the background) even though it was already dead and gave some of us a bit of a shock. I just wanted to make it clear no one was laughing about killing the bird or anything like that.

Now that I am left with my 5 hens and 2 cockerels from my meat birds I have moved them in with the laying flock for the winter. This will save the grass I had them on and also make feeding easier when the evenings start to get darker. They seem to be getting on okay. Not much bullying etc at the moment so hopefully it will stay that way. Next year I plan to seperate out the birds for breeding and hopefully set 2 batches of 24 eggs in an incubator. One batch in the spring and hopefully by the time they are out on the grass, I can set a few more into incubator and bring them on until it is time for the first batch to be slaughtered. Then the second batch can go out on the grass and maybe they will be ready to go about this time next year. Well that's the plan anyway but we will have to wait and see how that works out.

I have an update to make on my wines and prosciutto which hopefully I will get to put up later in the week.

Until then.