It is often used to make gutters and trim on metal buildings. Scrap sheet metal should be pretty easy to find. All you need is a scrap piece of sheet metal and a few rivets. You can create a killing cone yourself with very little to no expense. You can make an inexpensive poultry killing cone out of a small scrap of sheet metal. There will be an occasional bird that struggles, but a properly-sized cone will hold them in place, preventing an even more unpleasant scene. Once a chicken is placed in a cone it tends to calm down and most don’t struggle at all. It also allows you to collect the blood of an entire flock for use later in the garden as blood meal. The killing cone holds the chicken tight so you don’t have to and helps keep you clean of splatters. The bottom end is open enough to allow only the chicken’s head and neck to protrude. The top end opening is just large enough to insert a chicken head first so that it will hold the chicken snuggly. The best way to do this and control the chicken is with the use of a killing cone, sometimes called a holding funnel.Ī killing cone is a cone-shaped container open at both ends. Probably the best way to handle a chicken at butchering time is to cut the jugular vein in the neck and let the beating chicken heart pump out all the blood from its meat and body. The heart has to be pumping to adequately drain all the blood from a bird. Snapping the neck by hand tends to stop the heart from beating before you can cut the throat to let the blood drain. For the best tasting bird, you don’t want coagulated blood trapped in the meat. Severing the spinal cord with an ax usually results in the death of the bird before it has had adequate time to drain blood from the meat. Today a much less gruesome scene is probably more appropriate. They’d grab a chicken running about outside the coop, flop it on an old stump, and chop its head off with an ax, then release the bird to run about the yard “looking” frantically for its lost head until it expired.

In my youth I remember butchering day on my grandparents’ farm in upstate New York. There are many ways to dispatch a chicken. But if you want to sit down to a great fried chicken dinner, enjoy a nicely stuffed roaster, or make some healthy chicken soup, you need to carry out the dirty deed.Ī few rivets are all that’s needed to finish construction of your poultry killing cone. The hardest part of all in raising chickens has to be killing them. Now the moment of truth has arrived the rather unpleasant task of butchering day. You’ve cared for their every need and pampered them when needed. They’ve provided many hours of entertainment watching their amusing antics. You’ve worked hard and spent many hours raising your pretty flock of meat chickens from eggs or chicks to nice fat fryers, roasters, or stewing birds.

Chicken ncone