Martin King

Thanks Walter. Yes I guess that a stressed animal may pump out cortisol and increase adrenal androgens but I can not see how such a signal and short time constant between stunning and stress reach the testes. We are talking about a few seconds between stunning and castration and the just a few more seconds before the BP is reduced at bleed out.
My guess is that there is no evidence to support that male hormones produced in the testes change either way if the animal is left intact or if it is castrated immediateley post stunning. Happy to read any papers or evidence to the contray though.

We leave a pint of milk out of the fridge a few days and or drop the insides of a rabbit that I killed a few days earlier down the pan. Seems to work OK if we have had a few days away from home but otherwise just keep flushing your waste.

Remove the leaf from the stalks and feed to the rabbits or chickens. Blanche the stalks for a minute or so then peel off any string from the stalk. Chop up the stalks into bite size bits and cook in a good cheese sauce with black pepper in oven. makes them more palitable

Simple solution in these here parts is to close most of the hous off and make smaller rooms within larger rooms on the ground floor. This is normal in central rural France that can also get very cold. All our old neighbours sit around a wood firred cooker or stove and have a bathroom and their bedroom off of the kitchen. Economical in the winter and you can always open up room in the summer.

Thanks Walter.
Our pigs are killed by a chap who provides his services free to the community and he is eager to preserve the old French ways when each home killied a pig in rotation and sharing fresh meat ( pre- the days of freezers). We had an intact boar aged about 10 months and after he stunned the animal he immediateley castrated the animal before bleeding it out.It was a Culn Noir and we had no taint that we could detect. Last year we had one pig that we could not restrain that quickly after it had been stung. We had red spot and in parts an oily appearnace but the meat was very wet but turned out great hams, bacon and roasts.

I see you have added that you are after 2types" of chickens for meat but why not try Muscovey ducks?
we have one drake and 2 breeding females. They are great layers of eggs and will sit on upto 18 eggs. we start taking the ducks after about 3 months ( larger males first) and one duck yields several meals as we can share one breast and confit the duck legs ( the dog gets the rest of the bird).

Walter - can you expand on other forms of teint?
We home kill as we feel it is less stressful for the pig who is not moved offsite or subjected to a new environment or people.
Do you think that a stressed pig at kill will pump out stress hormones ( especially a boar) that will result in meat teint.
There is a lot written about boar teint and that some people detect it whilst others do not. I feel that boar teint may be related to a fiesty boear being stressed at time of kill.
any thoughts?
Martin