I let them go longer than usual this year, the biggest weighed almost 18 pounds and the boned breasts were averaging about four and half pounds each once I'd trimmed them out.

It's a dirty job, you can't slaughter anything without getting bloody and when it's one after another for hours on end, you're pretty well covered by the end of it. I crate the birds up right off the pasture in the morning, then place them, ten to a cage, and when I'm ready draw them out of their pen one at a time, carefully and calmly by their legs. I hang them from a length of baling twine suspended from a branch on the big maple in front of the house.

They will sometimes flap, but after a minute or two they stop moving and I put my hand on their breast and calm them with a few words of thanks. I do this with every bird, probably for myself as much as their sacrifice.