Comment by cco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cco | Hacker News Reader

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Having slaughtered my fair share of chickens on a relatively small but not back yard operation, there is a much easier way!

Buy a t-post (any 3-5 foot rigid metal pole will do but a t-post has perfect geometry). Next, you'll grab your chicken, lay her down on her back or stomach [1], once she has settled down you're going to lay the t-post gently across her spine just a bit behind her skull.

Now place your feet on either side of the t-post to secure it, grab her legs, and in one swift motion pull and stand up.

You will very quickly decapitate the hen and once you do it a couple times it'll be very low stress for both you and the chicken. This latter part is key, if you're stressed, unsure etc, the animals will be the same.

You can improve this further by keeping an upside down traffic cone around, drop the bird into it once slaughtered and that'll contain the flapping/running around you mention.

In my experience, for novices, this is the easiest method for all parties and reduces the risk of slips, mistakes etc.

[1] Back is sometimes easier, they'll often go into a trance. Sometimes you can lay them on their stomach and trace a line to relax them, there are youtube videos of this.

This is all so brutal. I can’t believe you people are discussing such things so nonchalantly

I think your sentiment encapsulates the hypocrisy of modern people where the systems have developed over thousands of years to further and further insulate us from all the less pretty aspects of life, to a point where we largely forget the fact that we shit and kill things for food and greed. Our meat comes pre-portioned on a polystyrene tray and wrapped under cellophane. Just abstract blocks of yummy protein. We also built garbage collection and sewer systems that lets most of us forget about the waste we produce. Out of sight, out of mind.

Humanely dispatching chicken is probably among the most mundane, natural, necessary, and arguably righteous aspects of what humans do to survive. While this part of the modern system is certainly not a "bad thing", I still think about my friend's opinion that everyone who eats meat should kill and process a living creature at least once in their life. If they can't handle it, then they shouldn't eat meat

Well said. I'll just add that even vegetarianism gets idealized as well. The farmers growing those crops do far worse things than humanely killing a chicken to vast amounts of wildlife that they perceive as pests.

Vegetarianism also reduces crop farming since most crops aren't directly eaten by humans (especially in richer countries):

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

I don't think hypocrisy is really the best word. The GP's objection may be uninformed or out of line with reality, but it is (likely) the result of the very distance between food source and consumption that you are talking about; ignorance not hypocrisy.

I have had the opportunity to hunt twice in my life; both times I harvested a deer. I would happily do so again. But while I disagree with the sentiment of the GP, I do agree that there is something profound about killing an animal (for food or otherwise) such that talking about it nonchalantly can be startling.

I'm probably just nitpicking here.

Perhaps expected, but I have similar feelings towards people that work at slaughterhouses. So I definitely can understand where GP is coming from.

But like you and the other poster said, killing an animal for food is a deeply ambivalent experience. For me at least.

All this kind of city people thinking goes out of the windows once you're very hungry.

Then you see everything as a piece of meat.

it's hard to do, but easy to talk about. i've done my fair share of slaughtering and currently have a freezer full of meat birds. i don't like the process (you feel bad, you have to do things that also are instinctually gross to someone not used to it), but i will continue to eat meat because i think it's part of a balanced and healthy diet.

i do respect vegans though - many people don't live by any principles so it's nice to see them on display. my principle on this topic is that if i'm not willing to do it myself, then i probably shouldn't offload it to someone else and still consume the end result.

Wait till you see how they do it in slaughterhouses, you'll think this guy is a saint

Can I just say you've made my day with:

"You will very quickly decapitate the hen and once you do it a couple times it'll be very low stress for both you and the chicken."

Best giggle I had in years!

Use a traffic cone. It will be easier and calm the chicken down.

Definitely can help, but I've found that for people that don't do it very often, it's very easy to make mistakes with a knife. The t-post method has very little opportunity for mistakes and really makes it a lot easier for people that don't have a ton of experience, i.e. backyard poultry owners.

highly agree. after using a cone anything else seems haphazard and cruel.

That's actually very clever.

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