Castle Farm
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Killing Lines. Discription of culling in factory system.The killing shed was to the side of the packing station..everybody called it that locally and the owners name was Mr Richard Bird..everyone called him and the station Dickybirds.
The birds came into the yard on a Scana lorry..not a massive thing, but big enough to carry a fair load of boxes and poultry crates on a live run day and small enough to get around the roads and country lanes of Mongomershire and Radnorshire...now called Powys.
It had a center bar running along the top in an apex and a light green canvas cover you pulled back.
The wooden crates were staked on top of each other about 6 high and they were taken off and re stacked in the killing room.
I worked with 2 others in this section.
A guy my own age (13ish) who was a bit...how shall I put this...mental
He was called Tommy wellhard Evans...well hard for short and an old chap called Fred who was on the plucker..Fred never said much but muttered for f**K sake alot.
There was a stand with 8 cones that turned to present the next cone, it was sited over a trough as a bleeding pit.
Next to the cone on my right was a deep tank..well it was about 2ft deep and about 4ft long x 2ft wide under this tank was gas jet heating to heat the water up.
The lid on the crate was opened and you would fumble around till you got one and then 2 legs of the same bird,if you only got 1 it was more difficult to get the bird through the hole with 2 you had control.
It would flap but would soon drop it's head and you brought a club down on the back of the head or just slightly behind it.
I got very adept at this because if you didn't hit it right and had to hit it again you would get covered in blood..no fancy overalls just a big red rubber apron...
The stunned bird and most of them by then were well out of it, would be put into the comb obviously still flapping and it's head would hang out through the bottom.
The actual tool was a bit like a pliers..It had a cutting blade on the one side and a flat plate on the other.The cutting blade was put into the birds mouth and the plate rested on the back of the head and then you closed it till it felt you'd connected both sides.
The bird bled and you would repeat the procedure untill the 1st bird you culled got around the front and you took it out and replaced it with another dropped the first killed bird into the tank of hot water.
When you had about 10 in the tank you shout FRED and he would come mumbling onto one of the 2 plucker.
The pluckers were drums with rubber fingers on that went around really fast and you would present a bird all wet and smelly onto the drum.(I'm still after all these years surprized by it's gentleness it so well made for the job it was intended to do).
If the bird you got out of the tank didn't pluck it hadn't been in the hot water long enough so it went back in and you grabbed another one.
The water was hot and you wouldn't want to hold your hand in it for long..You had to get a the heat right, as when it got to hot the birds turned red and that was when Fred mumbled that saying again and would turn the gas heater off...He never ever turned it on again and then he would mumble because the birds were to cold.
We had to dispatch every bird that came in that day before we left off, so if we failed to empty the crates Fred went home at 5.30 and it was up to Wellhard and me to finish them and clean up all the feathers and empty the tank and blood pit.
In retrospect it was very quick and we never messed about.
Now is different and not a nice way to treat an creature really.
The birds arrive from catching gangs in crates 10 high sometimes and the birds at the bottom of the pile have been there all through the time taken to catch and crate hundreds and hundreds and transport them to the processers.
The birds are uncrated and hung by the legs on a moving belt system.
This system is the start of a line which first goes through a water trough which runs below the traveling line, it is sited by law a distanced deemed correct for the bird to relax and drop its head (in my time the club connected) into the water in which runs an electric current which stuns them...but if they havent relaxed they miss it..
From there the line goes through a set of fixed razors which caps and bleed the birds...stunned or not.
All this has been shown on tv and in this day and age is barbaric.
Disposal in my days
All the blood was put into big barrels.
All the feathers were used for fertilizer..carried on an open trailer through town towed behind a Fordson d Major tipped in a big pile and spred out by hand...god it stunk but worked wonders on the grass.
All the guts went to the pigs on various farms.
No idea what happens to the waste now..but one mans waste is another mans profit..
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