Butchering is not my favorite part of poultry raising. This is not because I really care about death (I raise them to eat them). It is more a matter of it is messy and tedious.
We had never raised or butchered water birds before. It is kind of cold so we beheaded the geese and let them bleed out upside down on the fence. Then we brought them inside for plucking and cleaning (not the best idea but it is 20 degrees outside). We did them one at a time. Each took about an hour start to finish and it is so tedious we wound up only doing the two voracious geese today. We will probably do turkeys next week and then we shall see about the ducks (I moved them to the chicken coop...kids lost one in the move and are still outside looking for it. It is one of my Khaki Campbells, which are the egg layers! If I only winter over two it would be those two. My stinkers better find her!)My hubby put what he calls the "bird hook" in the middle of a door frame and we hung the bird upside down by its feet over a tote for plucking. I first dunked it in a stock pot of hot water to help loosen the feathers.
After plucking we used a torch to singe off the last of that downy under fluff and a few stray feathers (set off our smoke alarms...which is exciting because I bashed a couple off the ceiling in a rage while making toast and I was not sure we had any working ones left.)
