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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2fccQqm:
Turkeys done. OK mostly done. We still have to package them, tomorrow. But we got them all murderated and all.
I will before I say anything else share the one really endearing image of the day. We started at 8, and at 9 the farmer’s market opens. my mother was watching Farm Baby, and was going to go down to the market with her. But right before they left, Mom came out with her. Farmbaby had dressed herself somewhat, I assume: she was wearing a bright orange coat, and bright orange plastic goggles, and was carrying a plastic toy hacksaw, and came into the evisceration room and shouted, “I’M READY TO CUT UP TURKEYS!”
Nobody took a picture. I was elbow-deep in a bird at the time. I am deeply saddened that nobody took a picture.
cut so I can ruminate, mostly about how it feels to pet birds, but I’m talking about animal death so pass on by if you’re not feeling up to that!
I collected an armload of feathers to use in arrangements and wreaths and things. I went out during our short break between batches of turkeys, and collected feathers from the two injured turkeys that were set aside in the “turkey hospital”– the chick brooder, sheltered and safe so the others didn’t peck them and kept warm so the weather didn’t kill them while they recovered– I cut the big flight feathers from their wings while they were still alive.
They were pretty docile, and let me do it once I gently cornered them and held them firmly so they couldn’t leave. They were so soft, their feathers heavy and glossy and thick and beautiful. They blinked at me with confused, beady little eyes, and one was silent even while panicking while the other emitted near-constant confused little peeps at me.
I held them gently and cut the feathers rather than pulling them, and told them it would be over soon. When I went back in to resume work, almost the very next turkey I handled was one of them, identifiable by the injured tissue on one side of his breast where he’d survived a coyote attack.
The girl working next to me at the table sort of caressed the carcass, and said, “You were a trooper, buddy,” because he’d sustained the injury a long, long time ago, over a month, and he’d survived it and healed and actually grew into a perfectly reasonably-sized tom.
It was time to process them, and it’s kinder to do so when it’s timely; they’re broad-breasted bronzes and whites, and turkeys of that type eventually outgrow their legs’ ability to carry them. (The President pardons one every year. Those pardoned birds almost never survive very long.) But I felt weird, of course. They’re so much bigger and wilier and more beautiful than the dumb blobby meat chickens we process, they’re big dinosaur-like birds, stupid but canny and curious. They have beady black eyes and weirdly considering stares, and love to discuss everything that happens.
In the afternoon, b-i-l stepped out of the slaughter area for a moment, and went around the other end of the barn to fetch something. There’s a group of immature laying hens– pullets– pastured right at the other end of the barn, and he came back and was laughing because he’d looked over at their pen and been unable to find any of them, and had briefly panicked. Eventually he realized they were all crouching in the fallen leaves at one edge of their enclosure, staying very still, because there was a hawk overhead. They were so still, he said, so well-camoflaged (they’re reddish birds, and blended in with the leaves), that he nearly stepped on one of them. Clever animals. They’re also dumb as rocks, but canny, like the turkeys. This is why the egg chickens and the turkeys can be in roofless enclosures, but the meat chickens have to be kept in pens that have roofs, because they’re too stupid to notice or flee from airborne predators.
Anyway. the rest of the feathers I got, I collected from the buckets of discarded feathers. They’re wet and a little gross, because the birds were scalded after death– but the feathers are too hard to remove from unscalded birds.
I made two wreaths in the evening, after everything was done, using some of the turkey feathers I collected. They look really cool in among the greenery. It’s a little weird; they look better with the dried flowers, I think, so I’ll probably do those instead. But they’re beautiful. The broad-breasted bronzes have black-and-white banded flight primaries.
My sister agreed that the turkeys’ feathers are exceptionally nice. “When i need to herd them, I do so by petting them,” she admitted. “I just love to touch them.” It’s not like fur; if you’ve never petted a large bird, I recommend it. Fur is warm. Feathers are cool to the touch, and a densely-feathered large-bodied bird is a particularly strange sensation it’s hard to describe. We had pet chickens when I was a kid, and I’d pick them up and carry them around– they were hand-raised, completely tame, and you could always pet them if you wanted. I’d forgotten how familiar it was, the way their bodies are hot, and even their weird lizard feet are warm to the touch, but their feathers are cool and glossy-feeling. I used to put my hands under the chickens’ wings, to feel how warm their bodies were; outside their wings, the feathers were such good insulation that you couldn’t tell they were warm-blooded at all. But they are; they run at about 104F, as opposed to humans’ 98.6. (Or, if you’re me, 97.)
Turkeys done. OK mostly done. We still have to package them, tomorrow. But we got them all murderated and all.
I will before I say anything else share the one really endearing image of the day. We started at 8, and at 9 the farmer’s market opens. my mother was watching Farm Baby, and was going to go down to the market with her. But right before they left, Mom came out with her. Farmbaby had dressed herself somewhat, I assume: she was wearing a bright orange coat, and bright orange plastic goggles, and was carrying a plastic toy hacksaw, and came into the evisceration room and shouted, “I’M READY TO CUT UP TURKEYS!”
Nobody took a picture. I was elbow-deep in a bird at the time. I am deeply saddened that nobody took a picture.
cut so I can ruminate, mostly about how it feels to pet birds, but I’m talking about animal death so pass on by if you’re not feeling up to that!
I collected an armload of feathers to use in arrangements and wreaths and things. I went out during our short break between batches of turkeys, and collected feathers from the two injured turkeys that were set aside in the “turkey hospital”– the chick brooder, sheltered and safe so the others didn’t peck them and kept warm so the weather didn’t kill them while they recovered– I cut the big flight feathers from their wings while they were still alive.
They were pretty docile, and let me do it once I gently cornered them and held them firmly so they couldn’t leave. They were so soft, their feathers heavy and glossy and thick and beautiful. They blinked at me with confused, beady little eyes, and one was silent even while panicking while the other emitted near-constant confused little peeps at me.
I held them gently and cut the feathers rather than pulling them, and told them it would be over soon. When I went back in to resume work, almost the very next turkey I handled was one of them, identifiable by the injured tissue on one side of his breast where he’d survived a coyote attack.
The girl working next to me at the table sort of caressed the carcass, and said, “You were a trooper, buddy,” because he’d sustained the injury a long, long time ago, over a month, and he’d survived it and healed and actually grew into a perfectly reasonably-sized tom.
It was time to process them, and it’s kinder to do so when it’s timely; they’re broad-breasted bronzes and whites, and turkeys of that type eventually outgrow their legs’ ability to carry them. (The President pardons one every year. Those pardoned birds almost never survive very long.) But I felt weird, of course. They’re so much bigger and wilier and more beautiful than the dumb blobby meat chickens we process, they’re big dinosaur-like birds, stupid but canny and curious. They have beady black eyes and weirdly considering stares, and love to discuss everything that happens.
In the afternoon, b-i-l stepped out of the slaughter area for a moment, and went around the other end of the barn to fetch something. There’s a group of immature laying hens– pullets– pastured right at the other end of the barn, and he came back and was laughing because he’d looked over at their pen and been unable to find any of them, and had briefly panicked. Eventually he realized they were all crouching in the fallen leaves at one edge of their enclosure, staying very still, because there was a hawk overhead. They were so still, he said, so well-camoflaged (they’re reddish birds, and blended in with the leaves), that he nearly stepped on one of them. Clever animals. They’re also dumb as rocks, but canny, like the turkeys. This is why the egg chickens and the turkeys can be in roofless enclosures, but the meat chickens have to be kept in pens that have roofs, because they’re too stupid to notice or flee from airborne predators.
Anyway. the rest of the feathers I got, I collected from the buckets of discarded feathers. They’re wet and a little gross, because the birds were scalded after death– but the feathers are too hard to remove from unscalded birds.
I made two wreaths in the evening, after everything was done, using some of the turkey feathers I collected. They look really cool in among the greenery. It’s a little weird; they look better with the dried flowers, I think, so I’ll probably do those instead. But they’re beautiful. The broad-breasted bronzes have black-and-white banded flight primaries.
My sister agreed that the turkeys’ feathers are exceptionally nice. “When i need to herd them, I do so by petting them,” she admitted. “I just love to touch them.” It’s not like fur; if you’ve never petted a large bird, I recommend it. Fur is warm. Feathers are cool to the touch, and a densely-feathered large-bodied bird is a particularly strange sensation it’s hard to describe. We had pet chickens when I was a kid, and I’d pick them up and carry them around– they were hand-raised, completely tame, and you could always pet them if you wanted. I’d forgotten how familiar it was, the way their bodies are hot, and even their weird lizard feet are warm to the touch, but their feathers are cool and glossy-feeling. I used to put my hands under the chickens’ wings, to feel how warm their bodies were; outside their wings, the feathers were such good insulation that you couldn’t tell they were warm-blooded at all. But they are; they run at about 104F, as opposed to humans’ 98.6. (Or, if you’re me, 97.)
