So, had some pretty interesting although catastrophic adventures yesterday.
It was a nice day, I thought "OK this one reader person has asked for photos of the butcher process, I'm feeling OK, & I need to stop putting this off... let's get this done." Got all the stuff around for it, started boiling the water, and headed for the barn to catch the intended "victims". I think they must have sensed that their time had come because although I was able to catch 2 of the 4, the other 2 evaded me to the very end, even after using my pistol to try to take them out. Finally, I thought "Fine, I'll just do these two, maybe I can catch the other two later after I've gotten these done...", however in the meantime I handed my dad my pistol (because I got frustrated and fed up chasing birds..) and even my dad got fed up.
While Dad was chasing down the other two, I got my gloves and went for the kill cage (an old dog crate used to isolate them until they are ready for death) to catch a roo. There were two in there, both were larger than I normally like to butcher, both with long long spurs, but I thought this would be to my advantage for an easier time cleaning them. It was not. These two big roosters ganged up on me and rushed me at the door as I went for them, both flapping their wings, attacking my head and face. I got spurred in the arms, chest and back as I ducked from their barrage attack.
After that, I was 100% done with messing around on a humane kill business. And of course by not doing a humane kill it wouldn't be clean either, so I knew I wouldn't be able to get photos. But regardless, I needed these birds gone, so I turned my husband, dad & brother loose on them. Told them to take them out however they wanted as long as they were dead. The three men thought this was an awesome idea, since they all hate my chickens, but specifically my roosters with a passion.
After locating them all, they were successful, but there was one rooster in particular that was very good at evading us, even though we shot at him he would keep running. Once we finally did take him out and I took all his feathers off I realized that we had all hit him when we were shooting him, he just had like... 9 lives. lol The other three roosters went down a lot easier.
However, interesting facts (to me anyway) was that when I tried to shoot the escape artist rooster several months ago, I thought I missed him, I did not. I did indeed hit him, and not only that but I hit him exactly where I was supposed to to take him out. I had just missed his internal organs by mere millimeters. When I finally opened him up, he had 5 bullet holes, (4, 9mm & 1, .22) plus the healed hole from my original 9mm several months back. Tough old bird was way too good at staying alive!!
After all of that, I ended up only getting one bird that was usable out of the 4, mainly because I was just so tired I couldn't finish. My hands were shaking and I was close to collapsing, ended up nicking the gall bladder on the last one I attempted which means I had to throw it away. Asked my brother to take care of all of the guts, feathers, carcasses etc. which he did, while I showered, then colapsed. Mom even texted me that she needed me to help her, with my kids, and I didn't even hear my phone. THAT showed me this morning just how utterly exhausted I was.
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