Humane / more gentle harvesting of chickens & quail (perhaps through using carbon monoxide)

Our family has a rough time harvesting meat animals. We've tried and tried to stomach it over the years, but we cannot tolerate "fighting" animals to kill them. We now have an excess of chickens, quail, rabbits and various other small meat animals that are aging and dying without ever being used for their original intent and purpose. We don't have an actual problem with their dying at an appropriate time once they have achieved a "fullness in life", but it doesn't feel humane - and it doesn't line up with our personalities and personal ideals - to slaughter them with more traditional methods. We're not vegans, but we just cannot do what most others find acceptable for various and many reasons and I am not going to debate ideals or values here.

We're on a quest to figure out how to more humanely harvest our meat animals. It looks like we've found a way to do it, but I wanted to throw this out there for additional discussion and perhaps refinement or other options.

Has anyone else come up with more humane slaughtering methods that involve allowing animals to fall to sleep prior to processing?

An ideal method, to me, seems to be carbon monoxide poisoning since it is a relatively gradual and relatively painless process. Has this worked for anyone else or has anyone tried to build such an arrangement and chamber system to facilitate such slaughtering?

There are assertions and arguments (both ways) about the use of carbon monoxide in treating meats (modified atmosphere packaged (MAP)) pro/contra being potentially dangerous (example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5848116/). Does anyone have definitive information on whether or not the use of carbon monoxide to end life vs in direct storage is something that could be considered safer or entirely innocuous?

Are there other options for humane slaughtering that are effectively bound to a sleep-to-death transition path?

Carbon monoxide poisoning is not humane or painless
and you dont want to try anything that will taint the meat with stress or adrenaline or poisonous means.

With that said, you just need to enlist the help of someone who grew up doing this and either pay them or barter a portion of the meat...

The swiftest method of halting blood pressure to the brain is always the most humane.

So you want happy, healthy animal to carcass within seconds ideally...

You have been given some good advice.

My question is if you find someone to help with the humane death are you going to be able to butcher the animal?

If not then my suggestion would be to have someone do the whole process for you.

We butchered our own chickens though we left the other animals with the butcher shop.

Though we have no problem butchering deer.

@William Kellogg through sad and terrible experience I guess I have to disagree. I have a family member that tried to end their life this way, failed the first time (very barely; family found them and got the squad there in time to revive) and seemed to have a very "humane" experience no matter how mortified we were and how much effort we exerted to try to convince otherwise. They succeeded the second time they tried. I have to say that I don't think you're right in your assertion based on the terrible discussions and feedback.

Unfortunately we live in an area where that's not really possible in the way of sharing. I suppose I'll be back at research and so forth since I don't think think I can work with the (usually sound and well considered) advice thus far given, but thanks for trying!

Butchering is no problem @Anne Miller. It's not the blood and butchering that's the problem. On the contrary, one of our family members quite enjoys butchering work.

Greg, have you made any progress on this since last summer? From the stuff I'm reading, a nitrogen-argon mix seems preferable to CO.

You mention "fighting" animals to kill them. Perhaps you might elaborate? If you just mean struggling to hold one down while killing it, I think that would bother most people. But I think most people on farms would traditionally kill them without much of a struggle. Like holding a chicken upside down by the legs will eventually pacify it, and it can then be placed in a killing cone that holds it while it dies. For all animals you mention, a high-powered pellet gun would serve to dispatch them with a shot to the brain.

If you are disturbed by the death throes after the animal is killed, that would be different.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Greg, have you made any progress on this since last summer? From the stuff I'm reading, a nitrogen-argon mix seems preferable to CO.

I was thinking nitrogen as well. We have direct, first-hand knowledge of its effect on humans based on industrial accidents. In many process industries (and the trucking industry), tanks are purged of their contents and kept inert using nitrogen, which displaces all oxygen and moisture, preventing corrosion.

When an unprotected worker enters a nitrogen filled vessel, they take one or two breaths and are knocked unconscious. If they aren't rescued quickly by someone with SCBA (air supply), they die. (Sadly, there are commonly two deaths when their work buddy attempts a rescue without equipment.)

I can't find the source, but I vaguely remember reading that workers who were rescued didn't feel any panic before they passed out (which would be the case with CO2). This leads me to think nitrogen might be a humane method for animals.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:...workers who were rescued didn't feel any panic...

There's a passage in Dan Barber's The Third Plate (I think that's the right source) about killing geese in some kind of a gas chamber (in Spain or Italy, I think...) and the farmer being discussed uses the fact that geese who are briefly incapacitated by the gas, but then allowed to recover, show no signs of aversion to doing it again -- to reassure himself that it's the kindest death he can give them. So that lines up with the no panic report (though I guess different animals experience different things with the same gas).

I can sympathize and agree with the not wanting to kill an animal. I really like eating meat, and I think I should be able to kill and butcher an animal if I'm going to eat meat. That is just me. I hope to get to where I can do this. I don't say "get used to it" or "get to where I don't care anymore". I know there are people who get to that point, but I think it is a good thing when taking a life is a serious thing. Even the life of an animal.

Which leads me to my second comment, where I disagree with Greg's choice of words. You ask about humanely killing the animals. Humanely or humane, at its core, is the concept of treating something like a human. People use it incorrectly to mean "treating something nicely". I think we should look for the quickest and least traumatic way to kill animals, which is different than trying to kill them "humanely".

And now a little soap box speech...
I think treating animals like humans is doing them a disservice. A chicken was designed to be a chicken and should be treated like a chicken and raised in an environment where that chicken can be the most chicken-like chicken possible. They would not like being treated like a human. The same goes for pigs, dogs, cats, cows, goats, etc. They should be treated like the kind of animal they are. I believe animals can have personalities and feelings, but that does not make them human. Animals should be raised with responsibility and without abuse... but the animals were given to us for our use. There is a phrase we use to sum up the early commands that God gave us for this world. "Use but don't abuse". This takes away the extreme of "never touching anything that is nature", and also takes away the extreme of "treating animals like parts in a factory".

Matt McSpadden wrote:People use it incorrectly to mean "treating something nicely". I think we should look for the quickest and least traumatic way to kill animals, which is different than trying to kill them "humanely".

Perhaps. That certainly seems to have become the common understanding of the word -- to act respectfully and strive to avoid inflicting pain, fear, trauma, or suffering to the greatest degree possible, and extending that as a sort of Golden Rule to living things generally. (Not that we do it all that well, even to other humans, if the headlines are any indication.)

The closest equivalent I can think of is "empathetically," which seems to capture the concept well.

Perhaps "humane" refers rather to the subject doing the action instead of the object receiving it. I.E a human would show compassion whereas an animal in the same situation would not.

I grew up killing rabbits, chickens, turkeys, and other small critters to eat. When my mother said "one of you kids go get me a chicken for supper" she didn't mean, go the store.  I've never killed an animal like a rabbit up close, they are shot from a distance and best case shot just once, through the head with a 22 rifle, not a shot gun. Nobody wants to spit out buck shot at the table. Chickens are caught and after a bit of calming down head chopped off with one clean stroke of a hatchet. Turkeys are special, they get about a tablespoon of whiskey, which they like quite a bit and then their head removed with a hatchet or corn knife.

The idea of using some kind of gas or anything other than fast bloody violence, preferably by surprise is totally alien to me. On top of stopping the heart completely while the body is still full of blood (yuck), it seems premeditated and murderous and most of all disrespectful. Like, I'm going to kill you and eat you, I just don't want to offend my sensibilities while I do it.

 

CO is not something I would want to mess around with on purpose.  How would you keep yourself safe?  I have had mild CO poisoning, and while it kind of sneaks up on you, I got a killer migraine while recovering and it took a long time to get over.  I don’t know how I would make sure the humans stayed safe.

@ Jordan,
I had not thought about it from that perspective... that the person is being humane, rather than the animal being humane. Interesting.

Of course, since people changing the meanings of words is a pet peeve of mine.. I had to go dig a little deeper. It seems that the word was originally used as I said, but changed usage far earlier than I thought. According to etymonline.com by the early 18 century it was being used in reference to being kind rather than "pertaining to human beings".

A random fact I did not know either... the Royal Humane Society... originally was for rescuing people :), it was not until the 19 century that it referred to animal care.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/humane