We’ve had chickens for a while now, and recently acquired some ducks. I’ll do a post on their behavioural differences later, but this post is going to concentrate on some of the more explicit differences between the birds which are now in my freezer. So vegetarians, look away.
One more time if you missed it: This post is pretty graphic and involves killing things to be eaten.
Farming
Our quarter acre in Canberra has felt (and smelt) more and more like a farm this year, managing up to 9 chickens and 5 ducks. Cranking up the numbers has illustrated something I suspected but had not really experienced; that farming necessarily involves death.
Actually I have had some experience of that, when I was about 10, breeding mice and selling them to pet shops. Things that breed frequently die frequently and I had to come to terms with the carnage as part of the game, but also realise that mice do some pretty gross things.
And so it has been with chooks. We’ve lost a couple to illness and dealt with an outbreak of mutual, consentual, vampirism, a problem I thought I would never have to solve.
It sounds terrible, but once you realise that death is a necessary part of farming it makes taking the next step, and one we were very keen on learning about, much easier to take. Killing your own animals for food.
Ducks
Five free ducks appeared on a local bulletin board; a breeder near-by had a ridiculously successful breeding season and had given away 30 already. Of indeterminant breed, but suspected Saxony, we put them in a small pen behind the chook house and fattened them on chook food and regular free-ranging from 10 to about 14 weeks of age.
The timing was a mistake as a young duck (drakes too, I’m refering to both sexes throughout) is much easier to pluck than an older one. Apparently at 6-weeks their metabolism changes from putting on fat and muscle to growing their serious new coat of feathers. That means they are difficult to pluck as the tough, water-proof outer feathers are lined by ‘pin-feathers’, short feathers which have only just broken the skin. Much like plucking a short hair and pulling out the follicle. Pekin ducks (for Chinese cooking) are almost always killed at 6 weeks to avoid this.
Callous as it sounds, I saw them as food the whole time.
The ducks were physically hard to kill too. Tim’s preferred method for chooks is breaking their neck while holding the feet. Two fingers under the skull tension the neck away from the feet, then pull the head back and slip the vertebrae and usually sever the carotid artery. For reasons beyond me this action was really tough with a duck, requiring a burst of strength, and sadly, a couple of attempts on one bird. Sorry mate. The last duck though I made sure of it and, ah, pulled the head all the way off.
It takes a bit of set up, so killing a few birds at once makes more sense. A big pot of hot water on a fire, a wheelbarrow under a tree branch for plucking, then a plastic table and bucket for gutting, trimming and cleaning. Water is used to scald the feather insertion points and make them come out easier. So, it’s worth keeping the head on so the water doesn’t get crook and bloody. Next time for ducks I’ll put the bird between my legs and wring the neck with both hands. Should be more frequently successful and very fast.
The Process – Ducks or Chickens
In an ideal system then, the run of process is this:
Kill the bird, preferably by breaking the neck. Make it fast. We kept ours in pillow cases, which keeps them very calm, then make the time from picking them to death as short as possible.
Dunk in hot water. Try and wet feathers through.
Hang in a tree and pluck feathers into wheelbarrow.
Move to the cleaning table – cut the head off first.
Then cut the neck and retain. Chook necks are good for some Asian dishes.
Open top of chest cavity a little to remove the large muscle of the crop and any other tubes you find in there.
Cut the knee on the inside, fold back then separate completely with a sharp knife. Takes some practice but this should leave a nice neat drumstick leg.
Cut a square around the cloaca, trying not to puncture the bowel. Then open the cavity and slide your hand in under the rib cage, over the large mass inside and pull the whole lot out. Keep the livers if you’re keen.
Clean up any daggy bits or any tubes and things that make it look dodgy.
Bind the feet and put in individual bags for the freezer.
How Chickens are Different
They’re much easier to kill and hardly put up a fuss.
Rubbing removes most of the feathers easily, with some plucking necessary for wing feathers.
Chooks don’t have any wretched pin feathers.
Lastly, they’re a better weight at that age too.
A quick and dirty post, but I just wanted to get the details down. I’ll do a more detailed post of the whole process later when I take some pics. For now, here’s a photo of some experiments with removing the pin feathers. Yes, that’s an oxy-acetylene torch.
EB
Me and my husband started off with 3 chickens, and then expanded, we now have 10, they are easy to keep and lay enough eggs to keep a family of four well stocked and we have surplus which we sell on. We have had trouble with foxes, but we have found that as long as you put the chickens in the shed around teatime, that they are pretty safe. It is a great feeling to be eating fresh eggs rather than the kind you get in the supermarket, there is a massive difference, there is also a massive difference to the way the meat tastes when you cook them. Well worth the trials and tribulations along the way! Great blog.
I am thinking about keeping chickens and I was wondering if you could recommend a good starter kit. I only have a small back garden, so I am only wanting to keep around 2-3 chickens. I understand that foxes can get into them quite easily no matter what you do, but I am wondering if you have any advise for me, that would help me to both set up and secure my coupe many thanks.
Have you read this post?
https://evcricket.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/keeping-chooks-the-easy-version/
The short answer is that a couple of chooks will be happy in a little house. About 1 square metre each is fine. It would be great for them, and your lawn, if you’ve got a little house you can move around on the grass. Chooks like grass.
Yes, foxes are a problem, but in suburbia they’re more opportunistic than persistent. So if you just make it hard for them they’ll move on. By that I mean locked in a sturdy house is plenty, and that they are unlikely to spend much time trying to dig under a cage. So a sturdy A-Frame, on the grass will be plenty.
EB
I am trying to become self sufficient, I so far have chickens, pigs and ducks. I have made the back of my garden into an allotment. I am wanting to do more but don’t seem to have enough time in the day for it.
I understand where you’re coming from Joanne, it seems like there is a lot to do!
Back in the day I was an industrial engineer, and my job was all about re-designing things so that there was less labour in each process. Doing the same in the backyard means more free time for other things. They’re all little things, but think about the jobs you do all the time, that could be replaced by some design work. So, I’ve got an automatic waterer for the chooks, which is pretty simple, and bulk food storage so I hardly ever have to do food or water. The run is a sealed system so I never have to put the birds away. Some times I buy seedlings from the markets which avoids some potting time. A lot of these jobs will take longer to do the first time, but the benefits pay off for a long time.
Ev
We have been recently builing a chicken coupe so that we can get our own free range eggs, however, we have now decided it is a little late in the season for getting chicks. What time of year would you recommend for duck chicks.
They’re pretty hardy animals, but with all young ones though, it’s cold and wet that will kill them. We got our ducks at about 10 weeks, and I was surprised by how big they were; I reckon they would have been fine in winter here. So, for ducks, I reckon just about any time of year.
For chooks, I’d just buy point-of-lay pullets. We raised ours from chicks and it was a bit of a pain. Much easier to buy them ready to go.
Ev
Interesting on the differences, Ev. One thing – I’m not convinced by the neck-wringing argument, especially given your experience of multiple tries on one bird (sad). We’ve (by ‘we’ I mean ‘Stuart’, who does the killing – I pluck & eviscerate) always cut the head off in one clean chop. We hang them briefly before dunking in the hot water, and haven’t ever noticed any issue with bloody water really. I think too that Stuart (and me hypothetically) isn’t that keen on the intimacy of wringing the neck?
And as for the feathers question – I can never get them all out (or lack the will to fuss that long) either and do the tweeze bit before cooking. Zoe skins for that reason, but we like skin too much.
Dude. . . never seen an oxy torch used in this process but keen to learn. Can you recommend it?
Not at all. The fat in a duck is close to the surface and the feathers quite deep so it seeps out faster than the hair gets cooked. It smelt nice though.
When I prepare them to cook I’ll just go over the skin with tweezers. It’s much like pulling the bones out of a fillet of salmon. You could skin it too, but that seems like a waste with a duck.