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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: ... its OK to eat veal now, i guess...
Message-ID: <1219@shark.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 19:58:26 EST
Article-I.D.: shark.1219
Posted: Thu Jan 17 19:58:26 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Jan-85 01:44:43 EST
References: <340@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Reply-To: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Distribution: net
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 50
Keywords: slaughter chicken
Summary: 

In article <340@ssc-vax.UUCP> wanttaja@ssc-vax.UUCP (Ronald J Wanttaja) writes:
> ...
> 
> I'll close this with a story from when I was a kid, staying on my
> Grandparent's farm.  One day, my grandmother told me to catch two
> chickens.  I caught them, and while caught, they squawked to high
> heaven, and fought.  But when my grandmother took one to the area of
> the chopping block, it's squawk changed...  to more of a low croon.  I
> was probably oversensitive and had too much imagination back then, but
> it seemed to me at the time that they knew what was coming- their
> actions changed so much.  Then I had fun chasing the headless chickens
> through the bushes :-)
> 
> Beware the Man With the Hammer,
> 
>                                                   Ron Wanttaja
> 						  (ssc-vax!wanttaja)

Charming story, and especially appropriate on the day when I read it
as we had JUST been reminiscing about revolting childhood experiences.
Mine was a bit more extreme... My folks had gotten about 500 chickens
which my step-sibs and I had to keep fed, watered, and egg-collected.
These were standard farm chickens: stupidity incarnate.  We barely
managed to hold off a "chicken storm" one time.  (A chicken storm is
a bizzarre phenomenon caused by the gallian instinct to peck at red
things, which is how they manage to eat and how they know how to get
out of their eggs.  In a flock of white birds, if one is low in the
pecking order, and gets a dark spot on its body, the others will
peck at that spot QUITE hard.  If blood spatters, then other chickens
will peck at the spots on their neighbors.  This spreads until the
whole flock is involved.  Over 2/3 of a flock can be destroyed in such
a storm, with the survivors crippled or severely injured.)

Well, harvest time came.  The price of hens was up, the flock was about
a year and a half old, and we had to slaughter about half the flock.
We did it the fast way.  We (my dad showed us how and we all "got"
to do it, so we'd know where our food came from) would place a chicken's
head to the ground, grab the feet, then yank just like starting a lawn
mower.  The head came off, the chicken body ran around in suitably
excited fashion, and so forth.

The first few never seemed to "know" it was coming, though.  I don't
think the latter ones fussed as much.

I suspect that Ron's experience was that the chickens could smell the
blood at the chopping block, and they instinctively quieted down.
This was the behaviour we would see whenever a weasel got into our
henhouse.

Hutch