That was harder than either of us expected. I did thank him for his sacrifice before we killed him. Boy duck is now all sorted; the killing part was harder to do than we had thought it would be. DH did the killing, but the duck didn't want to die; apparently he was likely dead pretty quickly but he didn't look dead, those automatic reaction things are rather disconcerting. Was a bit traumatic for our eldest boy who was in tears; we've let them go on the Wii this afternoon while I finished so they didn't watch anything else going on. Hoping that he won't have any ongoing worries about the duck. He knows we're going to find a home for the girl, probably a friend (my boss) who has a farm and runs ducks on it already. I definitely don't want her to suffer and she'll have a good home there. No way we can kill again when we know we're not as good as we need to be; although I know practice makes perfect it's not something I see a need to perfect atm. If she can't take her then I'll put her on Trademe for someone else to add to their flock.
No photo's I'm afraid, didn't want to take any when the children could possibly end up seeing them.
Plucked him as I wanted to keep the feathers, but there's still lots floating around the yard; that took ages. Some stuff I'd read said 10 minutes to pluck, took me an hour with DH's help. Couldn't get all the lungs out so ended up removing the legs, thighs, breast and wings to cook and disposed of the carcass. I was quite surprised at how little meat is left on a duck when you're done; lots of fat though and a huge amount of feather. I was rather pleased at how I managed to get the rest of the innards out without breaking the bile duct or anything though.
End result; I am not a killer, though at least now I can say that I could kill to eat, but I'd rather not.
Going to do some work now I think and maybe some spinning later. Hope there's a good movie on tonight.
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1 comments:
Well done! It is hard. I could never be present at the killing part although our boys seemed to relish it (probably a little older than yours). I even left the property when the mobile abbatoir guy came to dispatch the steer - once I wasn't quick enough and heard the shot. Not nice and had me in tears. I used to pet all our animals and it was hard letting them go even when you knew they were always destined for the table.
Yep, not much meat in ducks, really only the breast that's worth it. Probably why a lot of duck hunters don't bother with plucking - just cut through the skin and remove the breast. Saves a lot of time! Nice meat, though. I hope you, and the family, are able to enjoy it. Maybe after the trauma of it all has died down a little.
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