There comes a time when our chickens were big enough to slaughter, but having never killed or plucked a fowl before… oh my, what a fiasco! But so funny, I just have to share it with you.

 

Amateurs can be taken in so easily:

No wonder that guy selling the wee little chickens at the petrol station was selling them. The breed was the type ate and ate and never got fat. Just fibrous muscles! 

• And they were all white male chickens. The original farmers ten-to-one had kept all the females chickens as layers and got rid of the roaster chicks! 
• So as farmers you must know all the types of the breads available. When choosing a breed, choose ones that can be fatten up for Christmas dinners, or choose a breed that are good layers. 
• And if you have a breed that eats and eats and never gets fat, you will lose profit in the long run. The time you grow them up must be as short as possible. That is, time since birth to time for sale. 
• And if the young teenage chickens are not getting fat and are running around over a long period, the fowl’s muscles will be touch, just like an old fowl. And who wants to buy and eat a tough `old’ bird?! 

Some terrible memories:

My husband, having never killed a fowl before, thought he would do the act. But he had some dreadful memories of his father do it as a child… 

He and his younger brother wanted to save their pet fowls their father was going to kill. So they hid with the Bantam fowls under a bed, with the little fowls tucked under their arms.

I thought that was cute for children to do, don’t you!? 

But fowls squawk as you know, and their father found them and the two brothers landed up witnessing the fowls running with their heads chopped off, and blood squirting all over the place! 

That may seem an exaggeration… well that’s how my husband remembered it. 

So now came the time to kill our chickens:

Shame my husband was in a dilemma. He stripped off most off his clothes so he won’t get blood on them. You might laugh if you are used to killing fowls regularly…  But I will forgive you. You see we laughed too. Because that isn’t all…!! 

Hiding in the bushes:

Secretly he took his chosen fowl into the depth of the bush surround the reservoir. Just out of interest, the reservoir was already there when we moved onto the farm plot. 

He put the fowl on the ground, with one foot on the chicken’s head and the other foot on the chicken’s feet. Then raising his axe, he closed his eyes and brought the axe swiftly down on what he thought was the fowl’s neck. 

But on opening his eyes, there was no fowl. Only a couple of feathers lodged under the blade of his axe! To this day he declares the fowl is still running out there, somewhere!  

…Go on have another laugh! We still laugh about it ourselves. So you see farming isn’t for the faint hearted! 

Okay so how do you do it?

The next morning I asked our youngest son and our eldest daughter, to ask friends at their new high school in town.  

And this is the advice we got back:

The first advice was: Take the fowls under your arm and wring its neck by twisting its head around and around and around, until it breaks.  

Well I have a lot of imagination, as you must know. So in my mind I could see when the head was let go, the head would unravel quickly in a dizzy whorl.  

Still intact and unharmed but dazed only. That was so, so funny to me, I giggled. 

The next advice was to tie the fowl’s legs over a wash-line, and then swing your axe at its neck. Somehow they forgot to say hold its head tightly in your hand.  

And, well there went my imagination again… (Oh, I can’t even stop laughing as I tell it).  

All I could see in my mind’s eye, was the fowl whirling around the wash-line, around and around and even sparking like a Kathrin-wheel cracker at Guy Fox time! 

And shame, when it came to a standstill, it would still be alive, poor thing! 

I suppose it’s the way people describe things, that can be so funny. But farming is for the birds, if you don’t know what you’re doing. 

So what did we do with the chickens in the end?

He he! We took them to the village auction on the Saturday and sold them. And then drove into town to the supermarket and bought plump frozen chickens already killed, plucked and washed! 

It isn’t fun or nice to kill those fowls that you personally fed and cared for! And what a lot of fuss and mess the feathers make when you pluck them! Oh, no… not for me. 

What an introduction to farming that was… We had many more silly things happen… but I will tell you of that sometime later in this series on homesteading. So stick around for more…