In case you didn’t see it yet, there’s a new entry over at The Brilliant Homestead. It’s a photo-essay on butchering a rooster. Vegans and the sensitive may want to avoid the post; however, if you’re at all interested in slaughtering your own birds, it’s a must-read.

-David the Good

How To Butcher a Psychotic Rooster

Have you ever encountered a psychotic rooster?

You know the type. The beady eyes. The untrustworthy gait.

First it attacks your dog. Then your cat. Then your toddler.

And then one day you walk outside and turn the corner and then BAM – it nails you in the calf! Dripping blood down your injured leg, you try to escape – but the rooster is one step ahead of you. With a great leap into the air, it flaps towards your face, tearing at your hair and removing your eyeballs with his razor-sharp beak…

…and as the blood loss increases and you fall heavily to the ground, you regret having never had the guts to strike while you could.

In your last moments, though eyeless, you suddenly see the future in frightening clarity: this rooster will feast on your corpse, eventually killing anyone and everything in its megalomaniacal path to absolute power.

Don’t let that happen. When a rooster goes bad, it’s time to eat him. Today you’re going to learn how to convert him from a barnyard bully into a superb supper.

Are you ready to learn how to butcher a chicken? Today’s post is rather gory but better the rooster than you, right?

So, you ask yourself, “how can I butcher a rooster?” It’s not that hard. It starts with slaughtering.

There are multiple schools of thought on the best way to kill poultry.

A common old method was to swing the bird and snap its neck. Picture a gnarled old grandmother brutally executing birds in the poultry yard and you get the picture.

Poultry farmers like Joel Salatin usually go for the killer klownkilling cone method. With this approach you invert the bird head-down into a downward-facing cone (like this one), then slit its throat.

We’ve tried that method and don’t like it. We prefer the swift finality of a decapitation.

Machete style.