DIY Kill Cone alternative
We retired some chickens
today, and for years we've been using this black bucket as an easy, DIY
substitute to the traditional Kill
Cone that has worked for thousands of backyard chicken people. My
Mom made the hole so she could grow an upside down tomato plant back
when that was all the rage in modern gardening techniques. She went
back to putting her tomatoes in the ground and offered us the bucket one
day.
That bucket collected dust in
the barn for a year or two until we started processing our own poultry.
We mounted a shelf bracket so it could hang at an easy height and it
worked well at keeping the bird still while its head poked out through
the hole.
Trial and error showed us the
hole was too big. The more aggressive chickens could sometimes get one
of their claws through the hole, complicating the procedure.
Today I finally modified an
old bucket with a smaller hole which seems to be a huge improvement. A
2 inch hole saw makes the opening just big enough for a chicken's head
without the extra room version 1.0 offered.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
I've been using a bucket like that too, but I find the chickens (and ducks) pull their heads back up into the bucket after I've slit their throats. They then flop around, get covered in blood, and sometimes even pull right up out of the bucket.
I'm planning to make some cones and try those. It feels to me like they'd hold the birds more snugly and prevent them from flapping or pulling out. I've never used cones, though!
Or maybe I should just hold onto their heads until they bleed out and stop thrashing?