Turkey slaughter

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Randy took the afternoon off and we prepared to slaughter both turkeys, the big tom for Thanksgiving and the smaller hen for Christmas. Not being able to lift them out of the top-opening pen, we simply flipped the pen over and got them from underneath. It was rather prvidential that we did this as the hen was easy to reach, and the tom was not, so she was the first to go. I somewhat sat on her, holding her wings, Randy stretched out her neck and held her there with his foot and swung the axe. We greatly respect our animals lives and wish them no suffering, or as little as possible so we were trying to do this quickly. The axe only wounded her, she literally threw me off as she made a last attempt for her life. A few seconds later she was dead, but it was not clean and not pretty. I was quite surprised by the strength in her and quickly decided that would NOT be the way we would try to process the enormous tom. The hen dressed out at 23 pounds.

When the toms turn came, we had decided to do it the kosher way, hang him by the feet from a tree, slit the jugulars which cuts off blood to the brain, rendering them unconcious until they are dead. It took both of us to carry him, one holding each foot. We got him hanging rather easily then went hunting for the jugulars- they're not as easy to find as one might think. Randy did the best he could, everything was going as expected, giant wings flapped and twitched, then stopped. We assumed he was dead. Then his head picked up and looked around, fully alive and yes, fully conscious slowly bleeding to death. We again did a messy job of finishing the task, working as quickly as possible to end his suffering. It was even more difficult on account of his powerful wings which were flapping and hitting us. When that part was over, the real work was just beginning. He was so big he didn't fit in the automatic plucker and had to be mostly hand plucked. Once he was evicerated (gutted), I tried to do the final cleaning in the kitchen sink as is our practice. Again, he wouldn't fit. I had to haul it into the bathtub to clean him. It wouldn't fit in the fridge so we put it in ice water in a cooler on the porch. It scarcely fit into the roasting pan (the lid wouldn't go on though). Yet this 37 pound turkey cooked much sooner than we expected so ended up a bit overdone. (We started the cooking process at 5am!) At any rate, the festivities are over and I'm feeling a bit like Bubba Gump- turkey soup, turkey pot pie, turkey salad, turkey gumbo, turkey kabobs, etc!