culling

Hi storme37.  Simply culling is done when you have too many birds (if you have no other option but to do this i.e. you find that you have all cockerells that you can't get rid of) or they are sick and you need to prevent transmission to other birds.

I wouldn't try to explain on here how to do it because words are open to interpretation but I would strongly suggest that you go on a course to show you how to do it properly. 

There are lots of posts on here about courses that are available.  I can recommend the one run by Alison at Hook Farm (www.chickenkeeper.co.uk) but that is only because I have been on Alison's course.  I don't have experience of anyone elses courses.

I do mine late at night when all the other birds are asleep so they don't see what is happening. 

I've only had to do it once in recent times, so I chose midnight, and I can honestly say that I was much more distressed than the bird, which knew nothing. Total time taken = just a few seconds.

I looked at lots of methods, and the potential for things to go wrong, before choosing one. Having only had the one recent experience, I won't say what it is, but things like not hurting myself were part of the choice process.

As a young poultry person on a commercial farm back in the 1960s, I was given a wooden butcher's table, a machete and no instructions!  Somehow, I still have my fingers, but that was clearly not something that should have happened, even in the days before modern Health & Safety Regs. Being young and foolish, I thought there was nothing about that!

somebody suggested shooting the bird with a high powered air riffle with telescoping or lazor sight to avoid misses. any one any ideas on this.

Lunacy!  usually your prey has to standing relatively still to get a clean shot... have you ever seen a chicken stand still?

I dispatch all my own birds, whether through sickness, injury, for the table, and dare I say it... waste from my breeding programs.

For chicks up to about 2 weeks I use shears, after that I use a stick (as in broomstick, but it's not as long), because I just don't have the strength, nor the arm length, to dispatch a 14lb cockerel by wringing it's neck in the traditional manner.

Unfortunately humane dispatching is an up close and personal job, whether you wring the neck, use a stick, use a humane dispatcher or use a killing cone or axe.

Don't worry too much about getting it wrong, because at some point you will get it wrong.  As long as you have a back up plan, and react quickly, then no real harm is done.  Unfortunately, at with a lot of things, you get better with practice, no matter which method you choose.

A couple of years ago I wrote in this thread about my first experience of culling a chook and it didn't go very well.

Lots of others replied with their experiences of having to make their first ill so I'd recommend reading it to get an insight in what others have gone through and then get yourself booked on a course sharpish!