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Duskypearls -> RE: Ok, that's the last time I will willingly let our turkey bite me lol. (9/1/2012 5:42:53 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ARIES83
quote:
ORIGINAL: Duskypearls
OMG, that brings back memories, of me de-beaking a thousand white apartment house turkeys, as well as raising and slaughtering them and several thousand chickens. Indeed, turkeys LOVE to peck, peck, peck, and like chickens, are carnivorous little buggers. Personally, I wouldn't let either of them near any fresh wounds I had, but apparently you're much braver than I am!
You did what to how many?
Please don't tell me that de-beaking
means what it sounds like...
Yepper, Aries, it's exactly what it sounds like, and it's actually necessary, to ensure they do not cannibalize each other in close quarters. No one wants to buy a torn up turkey for Thanksgiving. And once turkeys/chickens taste the blood/meat of another, like a pack of hyenas, they'll take him down like a duck on a June Bug and have the bones picked clean w/in the hour. Not a pretty sight.
You'd grab a turkey/chicken around the body, secure its wings, stick it under your non-dominant arm, walk it up to the machine (with electrically heated blades), and with your dominant hand, hold it's head and stick its beak into it, and then step on the foot pedal. This brings the two blades together over the beak, simultaneously cutting and cauterizing the beak. One tends to trim 1/3 of the beak off, which blunts it. Turkeys have very sharp beaks, and can do much damage to each other. Another reason for debeaking/beak trimming, is the longer the upper & lower beaks grow, the more uneven/distorted they might become, which intereferes with efficient eating, which equals loss of weight and overall health, which means less market weight, which means less profit. I remember the smell of burning beak quite distinctly, but you get used to it.
The one I used looked quite similar to this one:
[image]local://upfiles/1266908/820DD59114F9485592F34D7BEBB9DB86.jpg[/image]
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