Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sounds wonderful. A good life. You do your own slaughtering? I have a book describing the different animals.... looks difficult.

Here's a site for anyone interested in butchering a chicken: Best I ever found..http://www.butcherachicken.blogspot.com/. This dubious pleasure is still ahead in my future. Never done it but figure I will have to learn one day.

easy as plucking chickens

Chickens are wonderful critters, but wild critters think so as well. (hijack alert!)

At one point my darling and I decided that if we were to eat chickens, it would be more ethical to give them a great life running free in our acre or so, then kill them quickly. We started with ten or so and, after that worked out, ordered 100 chicks. In due time, these arrived by mail and were happily ensconced in their little brooder in the acacia grove.

For three days they seemed quite happy; eating, drinking, and pooping as chickens do. But on the fourth morning when I opened the lid to look in on them they seemed a little quiet. Then I put on my glasses and noticed that while about 25 were huddled under the lights, the rest lay about, not sleeping, but slaughtered by a night marauder, many missing their heads.

We weighted down the board that normally closed the entry at night. The next morning ten remained alive. Most of the rest lay uneaten. While I'm fairly mellow and don't mind sharing with some predator, I object to wanton slaughter and waste. Object strongly. I was PISSED!

We moved the brooder beside our deck, ten feet from our bed. I placed a log of firewood, the best weapon I could find for throwing, on the rail. We piled wood around the brooder to block any access. And we went to bed.

Midnight. Someone shaking me. "Wake up!"

"Huh? Wha?" (mostly asleep)

"Something is after the chicks!"

Sleep fled. I launched and ran out onto the deck wearing what the good lord intended, picked up the log, and waited for the predator to emerge. And waited. And waited.

Meanwhile I heard it going round and round inside the box until I couldn't stand it any more, ran down and whacked the side of the brooder, stepped back, saw movement, and hurled the log. Then nothing.

"Where is it? I can't see it anywhere!" I yelled. Then my darlin' shone a flashlight on a still black and white form with it's head driven into the dirt and I became aware of a certain heaviness in the air, a certain indescribable, gut-grabbing, invisible thing that would need several days to drop down to being a stench. Fortunately, it was undirected and did not hit me.

But we never had another skunk kill our chicks.