[hermon]

thanks folks i was worried i would be thought of as cruel! anyway i have ordered a hand held dispatcher so no more spades!

[muntjac]

gotta disagree anty those are really a 2 man job .. you need to hold the bird ,then stretch the neck between the cutters n then shut it ........... with the hand helds you just put the bird in a towel and then take the neck and close down  

[Aunt Sally]

I stand corrected Munty.  What type would you recommend for Hermon :?:   There's quite a few on that site.

[muntjac]

http://www.pandtpoultry.co.uk/product/categoryid/33/productid/252

[Aunt Sally]

This one  Hand held dispatcher

[hermon]

http://www.pandtpoultry.co.uk/product/categoryid/33/productid/252
its the hand held one i bought.

[Aunt Sally]

SNAP that's the one  

[muntjac]

lmaoooooooooooooo. yehhhhhhh thats tha one lol  

[Selkie]

thanks folks i was worried i would be thought of as cruel! anyway i have ordered a hand held dispatcher so no more spades!

i wouldn't say you were cruel, you just wanted to do the best for her.

i know i wouldn't have been able to do it myself; we 'caught' a couple of mackeral on the ferry this summer (there were hundreds and hundreds eating tiny sprat in the sea and two got scooped up when we were landing) and my boss wanted to keep them -- so he left them jumping up and down on our bench, slowly suffocating.

i wanted to end their suffering (when my dad goes fishing he bashes fish on the head with a lead lined piece of wood) but i wasn't confident enough to do it -- i was worried that i wouldn't hit them hard enough and then they'd still die but with a massive headache aswell :roll:

so fair play to you for being able to do it

[Aunt Sally]

Hopefully you won't need to use the dispatcher too soon Hermon  

[Selkie]

but it must be nice to know that it's there if she ever needs it.

[GrannieAnnie]

I've got a dispatcher, he's called Brian!!!    

I can rent him out very cheaply too!!!!  

[Fenland Girl]

Hermon, I can really sympathise with you and you are very brave to deal with it on your own and to tell us all about it. We had a horrendous time killing our first chicken a few months back - not in the right way at all either. She was a new addition to our flock and had literally been ripped apart by the others, down to the bones on her back, my OH is a medical man and thought there was no way she would recover. But when we discovered this it was just getting dark and we knew we would have to end her suffering straight away so we blundered about finding some instructions about how to break the neck, sat the kids in front of the TV and rushed out to do the deed in the shed in half light. Well, OH thought he had broken her neck properly, let go of her and she ran away. We didn't know what to do so he went and grabbed an axe and chopped her head off. I was crying so hard I didn't even realise she'd gone and was just holding onto her. We were both up all night racked with guilt about it.

We are not sure whether to get a dispatcher for the next time - we would really like someone to show us how to break the neck properly. If there is anyone reasonably local to us (Cambs) who would give us a lesson it would be gratefully received.

[hermon]

ohyou poor things  he might have kolled her out right they do still move around alot when they have just been killed it could have been that, my hand held dispatched has come today hope its a long time till i need to use it

[babe]

my despatcher is called Dad, i take any poorly hens, only one so far, down to mum and dads and leave again.

i dont ask whats happened and dad would never say either.

im a great big woos when it comes to poorly animals.