Hahah Buffs can be great meat birds! It's tough bc you'd have to get the chicks knowing that they will be used for meat. And then try to emotionally distance yourself from those ones
Hi I like your videos and find them helpful. . could you or did you ever make a video about dealing with Predators??? ...I have a lot around where I live and my neighbors lost a lot of birds that way ....so I'd be interested in what you'd have to say and any of the other farmers who keep chickens and their comments.... thanks
have you considered doing a video about the best way to dispatch a chicken? I'm interested in keeping meat birds, but I want to make sure I know the most humane way to go about it, and how different people do it.
The best way to dispatch a chicken is to cut its head off with an axe. Make sure your axe is SHARP and aim about where the neck meets the body. This usually results in a clean kill. The chicken's body will flop a bit, but that's just its nervous system going out. From there you pluck, gut, and rinse off your recently dispatched chicken. Then put in vacuum sealed bags and put them in the freezer. The only other humane way to dispatch a chicken is to shoot them in the head with a 22 rimfire rifle, but you still have to chop the head off as part of the cleaning process, and depending what country you're in, or state/local laws may prohibit you from either owning a firearm or discharging one.
A five pound Rhode Island Red hen is not a good dual purpose chicken, period. It's not worth the trouble of raising incubating cleaning etc for a scrawny carcus. If you just want enough eggs for the family and meat for the table go with a large strain of Barred Rocks, a meat strain of New Hampshire's, Jersey Giants, Brama's or Orpington's. With any of these, one hen is enough for a meal. The other breeds mentioned in this video have been bred for generations in hatcheries for efficient egg production. They're smaller than the breed standard, lay more eggs but are not worth butchering, boiling, plucking and all the other things you have to do for a few scraps of meat.
