Well, I did it! With the help and support of two loving, farm-raised friends, I learned the how-to of killing ducks. On the spur of the moment, I asked Logan and Caroline if they'd help me slaughter some of the too-many drakes we had left. I showed them the video on 'breasting' duck, which takes out the scalding, plucking and eviserating processes and given how little other meat is on these young, not-meat birds, seemed the right thing to do.
After the first bird, Logan the one-time science teacher, gave both of us an anatomy lesson by looking over the sliced neck closely, finding the severed artery, the one left intact, the trachea (which you don't want to cut or the bird suffers and which was also intact) and the spinal cord. She carefully felt the next drake's neck as he hung passively in the cone, found the arrangement with her fingers, and cut. Next we decided to use the 'sticking' method I'd seen in another video, holding the trachea so that the knife point entered with the non-cutting edge sliding along the trachea, cutting both arteries easily. Now I felt ready to do it... together Logan and I had taken the time to find the smoothest, best approach and I knew I could do it. The first time Logan held her hand over mine, the next time I did it solo.
For each drake, Logan and I worked together to get him in place-- she opened and closed the pen door so I could focus on keeping a close but gentle hold on the bird I had netted. We walked slowly over to the processing area, breathing calmness and me feeling his racing heart slow. At first I held the legs while Logan cut and Caroline kept the chickens away. We all gave our attention to easing the drake from life, watching his process, sending gratitude, holding his head because the dripping blood bothered him when it touched his eyes or nostrils... staying attentive the whole time... which seemed like a long time... and the birds were not panicked nor seemed in pain at all. It was as fine a slaughter experience as could be.
Once all 6 were killed and hung to bleed out, we began breasting. It took only one bird each to understand how to break the skin and the membranes in order to expose the breast meat and cut out each piece. From there it was easy and much much cleaner than full processing. In two hours, we had killed and breasted 6 drakes, buried the remains and cleaned up.
The twelve breast halves we ended up with were beautiful and more abundant than I expected to see. Caroline researched cooking duck breast online and we ended up salting them overnight. The next day, Caroline prepared them in the crock pot with a lot of onion, garlic and carrot and they came out like succulent roast slices-- yum!
No one took pictures since we were all busy with the process and Sue was at work, but here's a picture of Caroline (the wench) and Logan (the leather man) at the Renaissance Fest the next day. Deep gratitude to both for their fine friendship and sweet visit!
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