Ok, if you are vegan or vegetarian please don’t read this post.
As you all know, we have a little menagerie here on the farm. We have our herd of cattle. We have a goat. We have chooks and we have ducks of various breeds.
These animals all range freely around the farm, fed on what nature provides, supplemented by our vege scraps and grains.
We live based loosely around a permaculture ideology, and strive towards self sufficiency. We constantly have to take stock and rationalise. Are we putting more (energetically, financially) into our endeavours than we are getting back? Are we making the most of our resources? How can we do things more efficiently and not be out of pocket?
In addition to these practical questions come questions of ideology and ethics around the way I/we would like to live, the notions we would like to embrace more than theoretically. Self sufficiency is a huge umbrella, and means more than getting a few salad greens out of the garden. It can embrace everything from producing your own energy to killing your own meat and stuffing your own pillows with duck down from your poultry flock. All of this done ethically, and outside of a system of factory farming, mass consumerism and capitalism. I’ve mentioned in earlier posts my own upbringing on a farm, which provided for most of our needs. Mum is an awesome gardener and Dad is a passionate farmer.
For about 15 years before i came to live up here I was a vegetarian/sometime vegan. Not sure what changed, but being able to buy local produce, freerange, organic, not factory farmed probably had alot to do with it. The local butcher knows his meat, literally. It’s Monday’s chook, comes from Bill and Ben’s down the road…
Anyway, all this is a preamble to saying that, since I eat meat I believe I should probably kill my own. And we have poultry. And that poultry can provide food and feathers. In addition, during the happy life of the duck, it provides us with organic liquid manure from its bathwater (and ours).
We are in a position at the moment where cash flow is a concept we have only a nodding acquaintance with. Grain costs us quite alot. The ducks aren’t laying. A smaller flock would be more manageable and productive. The duck is currently more useful as a meal than a drain on our precious resources.
I have participated in kills before, mostly assisting, or helping to pluck. I have personally killed a chicken once, and I wasn’t really very skilled at it, shall we say, and it put me off trying again.
Yesterday Deb sad she would help me out, since it was crunch time, the ducks had to be either given away (to someone else who would slaughter them, most likely), or bite the bullet and make self sufficiency more than a concept.
It was very brave of Deb, I thought, and i welcomed her sure aim, which would ensure a clean kill and a painless and swift death for the duck.
I know when I was looking online and in all the books hereabouts for information on the *best* way to kill, pluck and so on, i found it hard to get a clear picture of how to go about the process… so many different approaches. So here is a step by step guide to how we did it, augmented by bits of information offered by those who know and by lessons i learned along the way.
How to Kill, Pluck and Dress a Duck (Deb and V version)
You will need:
Sharp cleaver or axe
Chopping block
Bucket/s
Rope
Hose
2 large cauldrons (one with very hot water and detergent and one with cold water)
Newspaper, lots of it
Sharp knives for dressing the duck
Don’t let your animals near feed for about 6 hours or more before the kill. Water, of course, they should always have plenty of water on hand.
First, put all dogs away…
Catch your duck. I can’t tell you how to do that. I just try to do it with the least amount of thrashing about, just quietly stalk them I guess.
Hold the duck firmly, calm it down by talking quietly or stroking the duck.
[We decided the most humane method of killing the duck was one swift cut with a sharp cleaver. We had 2 people for the next part, which made it easier…]
Place the duck on the chopping block, with neck stretched out, underside of the bill along the block, eyes on top. If you hold the duck’s body up in the air by the feet (so it’s like a J shape) this will assist in lengthening out the neck along the block, and may help keep the duck still. I held the feet and Deb made the cut. She placed her hands lightly over the duck’s head and eyes and one sure fall of the cleaver made a clean cut.
Immediately hold the duck neck down, feet up in the air over a bucket to bleed the duck. There will be quite a bit of movement from the duck at this point, so be prepared for this as it can be disturbing.
[This next part I’m not entirely sold on, there seem to be a number of different ways to go. I’ll tell you how we did it and then i’ll tell you how others go about it.]
Tie the duck upside down and hang it by its feet to bleed it. We were racing against the clock, so didn’t hang the ducks for long. Michael says 4 hours. We hung them over buckets to lessen the chances of the dogs going crazy for blood if they just bled onto the ground.
[Some people don’t mention hanging the duck at all, they say to begin plucking the duck immediately, while the duck is still warm. Begin by dry plucking the large wing feathers, since they are the hardest to pluck.]
I dug a deep hole in the veg garden and buried heads and blood while the ducks were hanging and while we were boiling the water for the pluck.
Plucking is the messiest part, and the most difficult if you don’t get it right.
Set up for plucking outside is best, otherwise you’ll have a house full of feathers and a wet feather smell which is not pleasant.
Place sheets of newspaper all around, just on the ground is fine, quite thick. This stops the feathers blowing away. You place the wet feathers on the newspaper and they stick. Wet feathers also stick to fingers. Use gloves if you want, but might get a cleaner pluck without gloves.
Place 2 large cauldrons of water by the plucking area. One full of very hot water (what temperature is best? some people say 140 degrees is optimal, dunked for 30 seconds. Others say boiling, and you dunk them for just a second.) and one full of cold water.
We used very hot water and dunked for about 30 seconds. Then straight into the cold water to stop the bird from cooking.
Start plucking! Pull the large wing feathers first, and tail feathers, tho some people say not to bother about the tail featehrs, just cut the end of the tail off when you are dressing the bird. Pull in the direction of growth. You’ll find that some of the down will just rub off.
Information just to hand says that ducks are the hardest poultry to pluck (I’d have to agree) because their feathers are oily, waterproof. Brian (C’s boss) gave us this tip. Hang the bird upside down. Using a strong hose, spray the bird while pulling the feathers firmly down against the direction of growth. This helps the water penetrate the feathers. Then dunk.
After the pluck comes the dress (butchering the bird)
A cleaver and a very sharp pointy knife are useful here. Don’t use blunt knives. You’ll end up with a travesty.
Take off the feet. cut around the knee joint with the point of a knife. Wriggle and bend. It should come away easily.
Take off the neck, which you can use to make stock from or feed to your dogs with their dinner (very good for them). If the duck has recently eaten you will find its most recent meal in a pouch near the neck. Take this out first with one hand in one move. I think a swift cleaver blow would work best for this.
I then chopped off the lower joint of the wing, which is not meaty and just burns in cooking. Again, a cleaver works for this.
The next part is to eviscerate the duck, which is not as hard as it sounds. turn the bird overso it’s breastbone is facing up. Take your very sharp pointy knife and make a slit fron just below the breastbone to the top of the vent (asshole) just slicing through the skin and the fatty layer and the membrane beneath. Be careful not to pierce anything inside, any organs and especially not the intestines… Cut AROUND the vent and it’s tube. Don’t pierce it. Take your hand and work it up inside the duck, grabbing all the organs and viscera in one hand and pull it all out in one go throug the slit you have made.. This worked for me first go. Just take your time. Feel around inside and take out any remaining organs. The lungs are apparently attacked to the backbone. You may have to detach them in a second go.
Run water through the duck to clean out any bits that are left.
That’s it! Your duck is dressed. Cook in any manner you please. I am a novice at duck cooking, which I believe really takes some expertise. I think duck is a hard meat to cook well.
We killed and dressed 2 ducks yesterday. Cooked one. It was a biggish job. We are novices, however, and I’m sure it could have been done more efficiently. But I’m pleased to have taken it on.
Thanks Deb!
OK, I really wanted to make that post, cos it’s the truth of how we live. I have mostly vegetarian friends, so it’s a bit exposing to write about killing animals, but I believe in the dignity of animals lives and in producing food on a small scale and in self sufficiency. I don’t think it’s ok to buy your meat vacuum sealed from a supermarket, so that it has nothing to do with you, so that it’s disconnected from any cycle of production that is ethical.
I’m off. Things to do. See you here again soon. The sun is out. It’s pleasant in the backyard.
Vx