I killed Dr. Cockles

Last night I killed Dr. Cockles, the rooster. Yikes. This was not an accident. It was indeed intentional.
Jacob brought their old rooster over to the farm and showed me the process of killing, plucking and cleaning the chicken. I followed suit with Dr. Cockles.

It was a really intense experience for me. I have been wanting to do it because I feel we, as a culture, are so far removed from how our food is prepared. For most of my life I've eaten primarily processed foods. When I lived in cities, I ate out or ordered in 80% of the time. 15% of the time, I at pre-made meals/foods and maybe 5% of the time did I prepare my meals from scratch. I never had grown my own food or been a part of the killing process of any meats I ate.

That is a bit horrifying to me as food occupies the majority of my thoughts. This is what spurs me on to farm, I want to be the one that brings to life the food I consume. It's important to me and I think it should be important to everyone. So, I felt I definitely should kill a chicken in order to fully grasp what meat consumption means to me.

I had considered myself a conscious omnivore. Boy was I wrong. I was not conscious before this experience. It's one thing to think about the death of an animal and to appreciate the sacrifice of its life for some tasty meat. It's a wholly different thing to cut the animals throat, feel its warm blood flow over your hands, and hold it still until the life literally drains out of it. Every single animal I consume goes through the same or similar experience. There is no nice way to take the life from an animal. And if you don't think its a big deal, I think you've got to have something very wrong with you.

The process took me roughly 30 minutes from start to finish. The following are the steps I took to end Dr. Cockles life so we could enjoy him as a meal.

One - Catch him.
Two - Place him upside down in what we call the "cone of death" - a crude metal cone which holds the chicken while you cut its throat.
Three - Once he bled out fully, remove him from the cone, by his legs, take him to a pot of hot water, twist him around, dipping him in and out of the water, soaking all the feathers.
Four - Remove from the water and with your hands, pull the feathers out. The reason why he's soaked in the water is to make it easy to pluck. The feathers pull out surprisingly easy when the skin is warmed.
Five - Cut off his head and legs. In order to achieve this, I had to cut (with nothing more than a sharp kitchen knife) cut into the joints on the legs, then snap them with my hands, finish this by cutting from the other side anything that was still connected. As for the neck I just had to use a lot of strength to cut the spine.
Six - Cut around the asshole, carefully as to not cut the intestinal tract. I reached my (whole) hand into his anus and pulled out the entrails.
Seven - Clean with water. Sprayed out the inside of the rooster with a hose and cleaned off any excess feathers, grim, etc. on the outside.
Eight - Place in a fridge/freezer or prepare for dinner.
Nine - Remember the feeling of warm blood pulsing down my hands and fall into deep thoughts about how much meat is consumed every hour.

I am very glad I did this, but I didn't enjoy it. I definitely will not be eating as much meat as I have in the past. And when I do eat it, I will be very, very conscious of the life that was taken and the person who took that life so I could have a bit more protein. Thank you Dr. Cockles, you were a good rooster and your death is not in vain. I've learned much that will follow me for years to come.