thirteen ways

I slaughtered a chicken for the first time on the morning of Halloween.

On our monthly trips to Richmond I’m incredibly lucky to be able to stay with a fantastic couple on a farm in Beaverdam. Symphony musicians by night and farmers by day, M & L (and their four cats) provide me with a warm and comforting refuge whenever I come to stay. They have a bountiful, organic vegetable garden as well as 25 hens that lay eggs in all the colors of the rainbow. Seriously. I had never tasted a farm-fresh egg before Beaverdam. I suppose you could go so far as to say I’d never really known that an egg even HAD taste- unless of course you put in enough cheddar cheese and green chiles. The first thing you notice about fresh eggs is that the yolk is more orange than yellow and the white part is incredibly viscous. You can feel the density of it as you crack the shell and ease it out into a pan sizzling with butter. And the taste, well, the taste is clean and pure and when you bite into the gooey yolk it tastes velvety rich. If you’ve read Bill Buford’s Heat, THIS is the kind of egg that Betta would use to make her pasta. But I digress…

Until this year, M & L only had the 25 egg-laying hens, but on my first trip back in September there were an additional 49 broiler chickens. They began calling the broilers “Frankenchickens” because they seemed, well, like Frankenchickens. The Frankenchickens were interested in nothing but eating, and their drive to fulfill this urge seemed incessant and oddly mechanical. Broilers are typically slaughtered when they are 6-8 weeks old, and M & L decided that their broilers should go for 8. Slaughtering day was scheduled for the morning of Halloween (the broilers now weighed between 6-7 lbs.) and interestingly, on this particular visit I had no obligations that morning.

I began to think. No one, (certainly not M or L) expected me to slaughter a chicken let alone even participate in the slaughtering process. But could I actually do it? As some of you may know, I absolutely love to eat and I’ll try any food at least once. Nothing is off limits. One of the many things I’ve learned from M & L is to think more about where the food I eat actually comes from. So it seemed to me that if I was going to eat anything and everything, I at least ought to be able to kill it myself. It became clear. An opportunity was presenting itself for me to kill a live chicken and I felt that I shouldn’t pass that up. But the question remained- could I actually do it?

The morning of the slaughter was an absolutely gorgeous, fall day (of course) and M & L spent the early part of the morning getting everything ready (147-degree water, large basins filled with ice water, the magic finger feather-plucker, buckets, folding tables covered in plastic, killing cones, freshly-sharpened knives) while I hovered inside, watching. I felt excited and afraid at the same time. In fact, I felt much the same as I do before a big concert. I decided it was the adrenaline. At just past 9am, friends S and Cricket arrived to help out and we all assembled outside. Lucky for us, Cricket was very experienced with the whole process.

For those of you who do not want the rest of the gory details, you should stop reading now.

There are many ways to kill a chicken. You can grab it and chop off its head with an axe, you can grab it and twist its head, hence breaking its neck, or you can use a killing cone and slit its throat. I wish it had a nicer name than “killing cone”, but it is what it is. Let’s face it, what we were doing may have been the most humane way to slaughter, but it was not NICE, in any sense of the word. Someone suggested putting some music on for the chickens and I immediately thought of Mozart (piano concerto K. 467) but L didn’t want to forever associate this task with Mozart and who could blame her? A killing cone is a metal cone that you secure to something solid so that you can put the chicken in it upside-down. For some reason chickens become incredibly calm when they’re upside-down. Their feet stick out the top and their head and neck come through the small opening at the bottom of the cone.

Cricket took on the role of slaughterer and we all gathered around to watch. It was hard. The strange thing is that after you slit their throat, for about 30 seconds afterwards (but it sure feels like a LOT longer) the chicken struggles violently, trying to get out of the cone. Most of this is just pure reflex, but you have to hold its feet and press down on the body to ensure that it’s now-partially-severed-head stays where it is, draining blood into the bucket below. This, by the way, is also the kosher way to kill a chicken. I know there’s an appropriate blessing to say, but being neither very Jewish nor Kosher, I didn’t know it so I made one up.* The first chicken spattered quite a lot of blood (especially on Cricket’s white t-shirt) before finally going slack. I then used a knife to completely sever the head (Holy S**t) and then the chicken went into the 147-degree water to agitate (as if it wasn’t agitated enough already) for one minute. The water was just hot enough to loosen the feathers, but not quite hot enough to start cooking it.

Now it was time for the magic-finger-plucker. Imagine a foosball machine, only slightly narrower. Instead of rows of small, rigid soccer players, imagine black, hard rubber, fingers. Now imagine pressing the “on” button and watching all the fingers spin around and around so fast that you can’t see them. Hold your now-headless chicken by its feet and begin flinging it onto the finger machine. Feathers fly everywhere! When you’ve done all you can with your chicken on the machine, it’s time for manual plucking. By this time your chicken is beginning to look like something you’d find in the grocery store. After you’ve plucked all the remaining feathers from the bird you cut off its feet, cut out its oil gland, spray him down, and submerge the little guy in ice-cold water.

For a while I participated in every part of the process except for the actual killing, but after awhile I knew I shouldn’t wait any longer. If I was going to do this, it had to be now. With trepidation, I walked towards Cricket and the killing cones. Again, that feeling of excitement mixed with fear of the unknown. What if I wasn’t strong enough? What if the knife got stuck? What if I made the chicken suffer more than it was already going to suffer? That was my biggest fear of all. Oy vey. What was I DOING? There was no turning back now. I had Cricket show me his method a few more times. Hold the chicken’s head. Feel for the spinal cord and put the tip of your knife just in front of this spot. Take the knife with the blade pointing up and plunge it in while simultaneously rotating your arm and the blade outward, away from the chicken. I tried the maneuver in the air a few times. I felt ridiculous and NOT confident. Again that feeling, what the HELL was I doing?

Cricket went off to fetch my hen and I stood there in my rubber boots wielding my knife. At that moment I knew that if I didn’t want my bird to suffer any more than it had to then I simply MUST be confident. I decided I was strong enough, that I could do it and that I would use FAR more force than I thought necessary. Cricket came back with my chicken and placed it in the cone. I tried not to look in its blinking yellow eye. I found the spot, took a deep breath and plunged forcefully. I can’t say I was quite as fluid as Cricket, but I didn’t cause my hen much added pain either. I put the knife down and grabbed the hen’s feet to keep her from coming up out of the cone. Boy did she try. Honestly, that was the worst part of the whole thing. Feeling the warmth of her body and the rapid beating of her small, chicken heart, watching the blood drain out and feeling some of it spatter up lightly onto my face. I had to look away. After what felt like an eternity, the movement stopped and I cut off the rest of her head and removed her body from the cone. Cricket asked me if I was ok and I said “yes”. He assured me that the hen had felt no extra pain and that I had done the job done quickly.

I suppose after killing one it may be easier to kill the next, but I had used so much adrenaline the first time, I decided that one was enough this time. The whole crew then began the task of gutting the 19 birds now submerged in ice water and I went inside to shower and get ready to go coach my music students at the University.

As I drove toward school and reflected on the morning, I felt that while I wouldn’t become a vegetarian, I did have a completely new perspective on what it means to eat a chicken. The next time I prepare roast chicken with potatoes roasted in the fat (one of my favorite comfort foods), I’ll think of my hen and the blood on my face, and I’ll be grateful to chickens everywhere.

*Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech haolam, asher kidishanu bimitzvotav vitzivanu lahadlik neir shel chicken.