When I first started raising my own chickens and ducks, the learning curve was steep. I’ve never grown up with handling poultry as a child. Attempting to touch them for the first time proved a daunting experience. As soon as I got used to that, getting pecked was the next thing to get accustomed to. Or getting bitten by ducks and scratched by their webbed feet when you hold them. With all said and done, the strange out-of-this-world experience that comes with poultry farming certainly culminates with the experience of slaughtering one.
How does it feel like to slaughter and process my first chicken? Indescribable. Painstaking, tedious but fulfilling as I discover newfound respect for small-scale sustainable food production. It was not as messy as I’ve expected. The science, technics and key points to look out for were pretty easy to follow. It just gets easier over time. The regular butcher outlet at the market was closed and it was a hassle to go further to another town, so I thought of just doing it myself with Mat.
My experience with raising poultry is truly an exciting and eye-opening journey. To a certain extent, it makes me reflect just how detached modern human civilisation has been in just the past 100 years.
Nature is amazing. Nature is smart. Nature is resilient.
One instance of this observation jumped up at me as a testament of how the survival instincts are so well coded into living beings. Two ducks died on the same night at the farm while 2 weeks+ into incubating a clutch of eggs each (photos above). Possibly due to snake attack. The eggs were then immediately transferred to a surrogate broody chicken to continue the incubation. About 1.5 weeks+ later, two hatched and the chicken took care of them as its very own (top most photo).
Nature forgives. Nature understands. Nature reciprocates.
