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Post by hmoosek on Jul 1, 2022 7:11:42 GMT -6
Back around 79/80 I was raising a pig for the deep freeze. First one I ever grew out. Brought it home from a friends house in a toe sack. Headed up to the feed store to buy some starter. They had a huge bin of chickens they were trying to pawn off on some dummy (me.) The owner offered to give me 25 chickens if I bought a 50 pound sack of feed. A couple of years earlier we had moved from the farm and I had no place to put them. Did it stop me? Noooooo. Brought them home built a pen and raised a bunch of Roos. Then came butchering day. Now I must tell you, I have the most tender-hearted sister in the whole wide world. I dispatched the first one and she went into a crying rage. She was shaking in horror. I calmed her down took her into the house and all the while, she was pleading with me not to kill another chicken. I went back outside and begin to process those chickens. She come out of the house with a baseball bat determined to hit a home run with my head. Mom took her for a ride later that day so I could process the chickens. You know, she wouldn’t take a bite of those chickens until we told her they had all been eaten. She then went back to eating chicken. I guess that’s the last time I ever processed that many chickens. From then on, I’ve raised chickens a few at a time, but never processing more than 1 or 2 at a time.
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Post by woodeye on Jul 1, 2022 10:53:17 GMT -6
That's good thinking, Ron. I never would have thought about doing that...
hmoosek, I'm sure your sister's dislike of the proceedings had her heavily distraught, but for me that was a knee-slapper!
It reminded me of when my little brother and I were kids. (In my avatar, my little brother is the ugly one on the right----I'm the ugly one on the left) We somehow came up with 2 chicks around Easter time, they were the ones they used to dye different colors, but of course they always turned out to be roosters. We didn't care, we had 2 chicks to raise. We named them Herbie & Ralph. The chicks grew up and became our pets. You know, the follow you everywhere type.
Our mom didn't consider them pets at all, she considered them supper. My brother and I were never shy at the dinner table, we don't consider ourselves as being fat, but instead prefer to be considered 'somewhat overdeveloped'. Our mom never once had to tell us to clean our plates, she was more concerned with guarding her own plate, because if she didn't we would clean hers too.
Anyway, she fried up Herbie & Ralph for supper. I don't think she gave much thought to the notion that my brother and I might abstain. Not because we didn't like fried chicken, our mom could put a scald on fried chicken like nobody else. We just couldn't stand the thought of the demise of Herbie & Ralph. Once they were gone, we got right back after fried chicken, simply because it was somebody else's chicken, not our pets...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 1, 2022 11:40:31 GMT -6
Back in the early '70s, my Mom and my Grandma Fannie used to bring home roosters from the feed store, about 20 or 30 at a time. They'd do the same thing as hmoosek; feed them up on green grass, bugs, and grubs all summer long and butcher them in the Fall.
On butchering days, my Uncle Jeff was the hatchet man. I was the flopping chicken retriever, Mom, Grandma Fannie, Aunt Ida, Aunt Lou, Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Mandie were the scalding and plucking crew. I ran the gutbucket; picking out the gizzards, hearts, and livers, and Uncle Jeff collected the piles of wet feathers. We'd have the freezer full for winter by noon on that day. Grandma fried chicken for the whole family every Sunday after Church, so it took a lot of chickens.
My Mom was the youngest of thirteen kids, so there was always plenty of help on butchering and potato harvesting days. Grandma would also have us butcher a hog every Autumn. If anyone got a deer during hunting season, we'd all pitch in and have a Bar-B-Que.
After Mom passed away back in early 1978, Dad remarried. My step-mom and her brother would raise 100 broilers each year and we'd all get together one day in the Fall of the year when it was cooler and process them as a family.
After Mom and Grandma had passed away, I just fell right in with my step-mom's family and kept on going. My step-mom has eight brothers and sisters, so there's a lot of help there on butchering days too.
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Post by woodeye on Jul 1, 2022 12:14:41 GMT -6
My grandma's name was Nannie, she had a twin sister name Fannie. Both of them lived to be 94 years old.
Your butchering days sounded much more pleasing than mine. Back in my chicken butchering days, my mom and dad were my helpers. My brother would not run, or even trot if you paid him to. But ask him to help butcher chickens and he'd fly out of the starting blocks like an Olympian, and get as far away as was possible. I'm glad someone else calls it the gut bucket, I had that job too. Liver remover and gizzard cleaner. Man I love those gizzards though, they are well worth the effort of retrieval.
We used an old round metal trashcan with a lid to throw the headless chickens into so they wouldn't fly all over the yard. I have one of those killing cones which create an automatic no-fly zone, I stuck a big ole' rooster down in it, had my butcher knife in hand, but he was looking me straight in the eye and I couldn't do it. In hindsight, I could have fashioned a small blindfold. But instead I took him out of it and put his neck on the chopping stump, then put down the knife and picked up an axe.
My dad did a lot of the feather removal with the chicken picker I refurbished, but my mom and I got the pin feathers and singed the birds. No, that's not sing to the birds, singed is burning the small feathers with a propane torch.
All in all though, we had a good time. That's what counts...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 1, 2022 12:38:18 GMT -6
I think my Uncle Jeff delighted in throwing the headless birds out over the garden fence, just to watch me chase them down and bring them back.
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Post by hmoosek on Jul 1, 2022 13:15:40 GMT -6
I have another Little Sister story. I’m several years older by the way. There were three of us schoolmates that hung together. We camped, hunted, fished, explored the countryside girl chasing and what knot. One Easter Sunday we decided to grill some rabbits over at my house. Fired up the bar-b and threw several on to cook. Here comes kid sister nosing around asking what I’m cooking. I replied Rabbit. She broke down crying and carrying on about me killing the Easter Bunny. No matter how much I tried to explain that they were just regular ol’ cottontails, she wasn’t buying it. She ran screaming into the house yelling I had killed ol’ Peter Cottontail. Mom comes outside chastising me saying “of all days did you have to cook rabbit?”
I still poke fun of her every now and then on Easter I’ll call her and asks if she wants to come over and eat Rabbit.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 14, 2022 7:16:48 GMT -6
Lately, I've been coming up a little short on eggs. This morning, I found out why.This was a rude awakening at 6:30 am! Really got the ol' cardio going that's for sure!What a gluten, this guy even ate the golf ball that I leave in there as a nest egg.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2022 7:25:27 GMT -6
Beautiful snake. Such a shame, but he's gotta go. You gonna let the golf ball do him in or did ya finish him?
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Post by woodeye on Jul 14, 2022 8:29:03 GMT -6
Nice catch!! Boy I know, I used to have major problems like that. If they didn't get the eggs, they got they the baby chicks. Either thing is not acceptable...
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Post by macmex on Jul 14, 2022 8:46:03 GMT -6
If you don't kill it, the snake will regurgitate the golf ball. They instinctively eliminate anything they swallow which can't be digested. I usually relocate black snakes. Some years ago we had a viral plague pass through which wiped out all black snakes for a couple miles around us. I had HUGE crop losses, to rodents, during that time. By the time I saw blacksnakes returning I was ready to greet them: "Oh hi! How are you? Would you like an egg or two?" Realistically though, I don't even relocate them unless I find them in with my chickens. Then, I pop them in a feed sack and drive them a few miles off. Seems to work pretty well.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 14, 2022 12:29:00 GMT -6
Oh, I put him out of his misery; rest assured of that. I don't mind black snakes as a rule, but I don't tolerate them in my henhouse. It was after 9:00 am this morning before the hens would come down off the roost. It was 6:30 am when I first opened the door to let them out. I had a doctor's appointment at 9:40 this morning, so I had to leave before they finally came down, but they were still in there for at least 2-1/2 hours after I killed the snake and carried it off.
That snake must have spooked them pretty good!
I don't kill snakes unwarranted. If they are minding their own business, I leave them alone, but if they're harming my livestock, my fatherly instincts kick in real fast. I've had full-grown laying hens killed by a black snake before. I'd find the hens on the floor of the henhouse, dead, with a wet head, and a wet neck. It was quite a mystery at first. I couldn't figure out how a coon or a possum was doing that, or why they never ate the chickens after they had killed them. I checked the hens every night at different hours during the night, trying to figure out what was going on. It took me several nights and several more hens to finally solve the mystery.
Then one night, I heard a ruckus in the henhouse and ran out there with a flashlight and .22 pistol to see what was making all the noise. When I opened the door, I witnessed the craziest thing I think I've ever seen a reptile do. I saw a huge black snake, with its tail wrapped through the handhold of the middle nest box of three nest boxes; it had a chicken's head in its mouth. The snake was using the nest box closest to the hens roost, to support its weight, and was using its tail wrapped through the middle box as an anchor point, so it could reach the hen's head while it was sleeping.
The snake was in the process of swallowing a chicken's head whole when I opened the door and surprised it. I shot the snake in the neck, while it was still trying to hork up the poor, half-suffocated hen and pulled the hen's neck and head free while the snake was still flopping!
After that, any black snake I see in my henhouse is a goner! No questions asked!
By the way, if you think you have a snake sucking eggs but just can't seem to catch it in the act, you can bait an old minnow trap with an egg, or a golf ball, or an old round gourd, and wait. The snake will see the egg in there and eventually find its way inside. Once it has swallowed the egg, it can no longer fit through the narrow opening to escape. Then, you can just pick up the minnow trap and relocate the snake somewhere else.
I got the idea from finding a black snake inside one of my bluebird houses. It had crawled inside, where it had eaten all 4 of the fledgling bluebirds; then, it was too fat to fit its whole body back through the opening. I found it stuck there with its head and about a foot of its body poking out the entrance hole. To catch him, I just opened the roof of the birdhouse, took him by the neck and pulled him out of the hole in reverse. Witnessing that, got my brain to thinking of a way I might trap a snake, so I tried the minnow trap, baited with an egg and it actually worked quite well.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2022 18:50:07 GMT -6
My mother couldn't catch a snake eating her eggs. Not sure what all she tried, but I know she was mad. One day I looked up at her while she was standing at the kitchen sink with the pointy end of an egg up against her lips and the yolk of that egg was bubbling out of the other end. I never ever bothered my mother, because I didn't trust her but curiosity got the best of me in that moment. She had poked pin holes on either side of an egg and was blowing out its contents. I watched as she painstakingly glued up one pin hole and then slowly filled that egg shell with Tabasco sauce, gluing the other end when she was satisfied. She placed it in the nest box. It never returned.
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Post by woodeye on Jul 14, 2022 18:56:22 GMT -6
Never heard of that before, that sounds like it would definitely be a good snake deterrent! Cool...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 14, 2022 20:42:11 GMT -6
Great story, Bon, what ingenuity your Mother must have had!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 15, 2022 13:02:37 GMT -6
After the crows were done with that black snake that stole my eggs, I saw that it had actually eaten two golf balls and only one chicken egg. I've had snakes eat more than one of my ceramic nest eggs at one sitting before, but I've not seen one eat two golf balls until today.
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