The usual way to do so at home or on a small farm is to tie them by their feet upside down and cut their throats. They don’t have any significant pain from a quick sharp cut, as they have only a minimal reaction and continue what they were doing a moment before, looking around, whatever. What actually kills them is bleeding out. This is consistent with the Halal method of butchering which is driven by the need to kill humanely.

I've butchered quite a few chickens over the years. I can't definitively say they don't suffer as there is really no way to tell that outside of perhaps a laboratory environment.

I have a good size wooden stump with 2 Nails driven into it about the width of a chicken's neck. I grabbed the chicken by the feet, place its neck between the nails and gently pull on the chicken's feet to stretch the neck. The head can't pull past the nails because it is larger than the space between the two nails. I then take a sharp axe and in one motion lop the head off. I let the chicken go and it runs around until it realizes it's dead and falls over.

The method my dad used when I was a kid I have never been nervy enough to try. He would simply grab the chicken by the head and give it two spins through the air. The first rotation would break the neck, killing it instantly, on the second spin the head would pop off in his hand.

I don't know as the USDA would have any recommendations for the home chicken wrangler. In a commercial setting it is pretty much all automated. People hang the chicken up by the feet on an assembly line and the machinery takes it from there. From the killing to the end packaging there is not very much human involvement. You can look on YouTube for videos of the process, it's really quite fascinating.

Blow it’s head right off/apart with a shotgun. No brain, no pain. Happens in less fractions of a second than pain could even be registered.

You can put them in a kill cone to make sure you do it perfectly, and the blood will drain out for processing.

Slitting their throats as people say, they stay conscious for that whole time they bleed out and then suffocate when no more blood is bringing oxygen to the brain.

If you went fully ridiculous and built a gas tight chamber and filled it with nitrogen, you’d still have them somewhat slowly suffocate as they used the not fully displaced oxygen. That doesn’t hurt, but they would know something is happening. Pretty painless though, since they’re probably not smart enough for it to register they are in danger.

Shotgun blowing the head apart may seem violent to you, but it is the most humane thing you can do for your birds.

I second you on this. I believe animals are animals irrespective of their nature or name. I see people killing pigs, chicken, goat everyday to eat and then they oppose those people who are eating dogs. I see people killing hen or lamb everyday and they oppose people eating cow. Why this hypocrisy ? You are killing a living thing who can feel pain. And those animals are killed mercilessly. Food chain is not an excuse. You have the option of eating vegetables and fruits and other things which doesn’t kill something. And plants do not feel pain (several research says). They are anyway going to shed the fruits and vegetables. IF you love animal, you should love every animal. You can’t say you are an animal lover but love beef. If food chain and our genes (teeth) are only reason to eat something, i do not mind people eating human flesh. Stronger will win according to the food chain.

One of my friend went to a meat shop to buy “mutton” (lamb meat/goat meat). The shop keeper offered him the same but he told him to kill the lamb which was in the cage right then as it taste better. The little lamb was killed instant. What i could imagine is the lamb’s fear when a guy came to him with a big knife. I think this is not how food chain should work. There is a difference between human and animals after all. People compare themselves with animals on these matter. They believe stronger will eat weaker. But animals have no option and no brain while you are blessed with one. At least do not give example of a lion eating a deer for food! Just accept that you can kill anything if it taste good.

NO offence to people eating non vegetarian food. This answer is only to the hypocrisy !

Not if you kill them fast.

Poka poka!

A bullet to the head while on pasture and not excited. The cow is out there eating grass or chewing its cud. It puts it’s head up curiously, wondering what that strange human is doing there along with the human it knows. Oh look, the strange human is pointing a stick. Bang! Cow is gone instantly. No stress. Then the cow is bled out and the rest is done the same as would be done in a slaughterhouse.

In a slaughterhouse, there is always some stress. The operators try and keep the stress as little as possible but there is the smell of blood and the cow is also in a strange place.

Other than those stressors, a slaughterhouse is as humane as in a pasture.

“Processing”? That word shows just how impersonal and inhumane our attitude to animals can be.

I’ll tell you how turkeys were killed in the slaughterhouse I worked in many years ago. They were packed into cages and loaded onto trucks, then the cages were removed and thrown on the ground. The turkeys were grabbed by the feet and pushed head first into an aluminium cone with a hole in the bottom. Their necks were sliced vertically. They were hooked by the feet onto an overhead pulley which moved them, many still struggling, through a bath of hot water which made their feathers easier to remove. (Sometimes they managed to work their way off the pulley and run around, terrified.) They were then dropped into a machine like a spin dryer, which removed most of their feathers.

I dread to think how many turkeys went through that hot water and the spinner while still alive.

There was so much suffering. I only worked there for a week, as I couldn't bear to witness this for any longer. I ultimately went vegan. I could no longer be a part of the appalling cruelty in the animal industries.

The killing part for the most part isn’t grotesquely inhumane (not sure about chickens.) But the conditions how they live in factory farms before slaughter are the real rallying cry for animal rights activists.

Killing is quick and is either instantaneous or stuns to unconsciousness before actually cutting the throat. Either way the animal doesn’t feel pain the way you mean when you say “sadists.”

Life before death on a factory farm is s a different matter and I’m not going to get into it. If humans were forced to live like that, everyone would agree that it is torture.

Life on small family farms is humane. Some farm kids I’ve known as adults describe scenes that make it sound almost as though some of the animals are pets. Don’t expand upon that observation to assume that is universal nor even prevalent. It’s not.

Raising animals, large or small, is expensive. They will be taken to market and killed.

If you object to killing animals just on principle; don’t eat meat and spread the gospel. Otherwise only buy from small producers who respect their animals; this will cost you a premium. Is you can’t afford the premium; don’t eat meat.

Americans eat more protein (meat) than they need to. At the very least cut back how how much you eat.

When I slaughter chickens, I usually go in, in the evening when the roosters are on their roost. The alternate method is to get up before they are off the roost, no chasing around a chicken or chickens.

Year three, and I have yet to process any hens, but I have ended up with too many juvenile roosters. Once again, I have another “hen”, that started crowing.

Donning leather gloves that come up to my elbows, I take the rooster off his perch, and hold him upside down. The increased blood pressure from holding them upside down, makes them pass out. With or without a killing cone, I quickly pull off a few neck feathers to ensure a quick cut, and use a fresh razor blade in a box cutter. I have a curved cutter too. It is whatever is handy.

The alternative, is using a short razor sharp machete. It is heavier on the end of the machete. Position them in the cone, and let it fly. This is usually an instant beheading. Every once in a while, I just break the neck, and have to take another swing.

When I was a kid under 6?, my now 99 year old grandmother was quite skilled with that same still sharp 50 year old plus machete. Scary effective:) Yes maam. I don't remember ever back talking to her!!! Watching her take off three chickens heads in such short order was something unforgettable as was her fried chicken.

Quick. As painless as possible.

I personally didn’t kill a chicken but my grandfather used to describe me to kill a chicken.

First, you pick a chicken to kill.

Then you pick it up and calm it down. (You can do this with petting it’s head and closing it’s eyes with your hand.)

Lay it on a flat surface. If it’s aggressive or moving you should repeat the step two.

Get a heavy and sharp knife. (Make sure it’s sharp so you can kill it with one strike. You don’t want it to suffer.)

Kill it with a single impact to it’s neck. (Make sure to decapitate it.)

Drain it’s blood.

To clean it from feathers dip it’s body to boiling water for twenty or thirty seconds. You can pull them off afterwards.

Clean it’s organs.

Congratulations! Your chicken is ready to eat.

But they are!

First off, there are different breeds of chicken that fall into one of three categories:

• Meat chicken, who grow fast and have tender and tasty meat, but lay few eggs; both sexes are raised for slaughter.
• Dual purpose chicken, who grow reasonably well (if not as fast as meat chicken) and lay more eggs than the meat chicken, but fewer than Layer breeds. Those are often privately owned by folks who raise them to have eggs and chicken meat.
• Layer chicken, who lay a lot, but grow slowly, never reach the adult weight of the other breeds, and have tough, stringy meat.

The specialized meat and layer chicken were bred for several reasons: One, it’s more economical to have specialized breeds, and two, it’s actually more environment friendly - less feed also means less chicken poop.

It is only the male chicks of the layer breeds that are not raised; not only do they need three times the time and feed of a meat chicken to gain the absolute minimum weight for slaughter, they stay thin and gangly, and their meat is tough and stringy. At best, one could use them for soup, but never as a roast or on the grill - their meat simply does not contain enough fat. Even in a soup, you’ll need additional fat and propably some MSG to make the soup taste acceptably.

What is done with them instead: They are killed (in most countries nowadays humanely with CO2-Gas) and frozen whole to be used as animal feed. Falconers, zoos, safari parks, wildlife rescues obtain them at cost to feed their animals as well as rescues. In southern Europe, wild bearded vultures are fed with those chicklets at certain spots, called “vulture restaurants”, in an effort to preserve the species: The bearded vulture has become endangered ever since shepherds were prohibited from leaving the carcasses of sheep and goats out; the vultures used to take care of them, but now can’t find enough food anymore in the wild.

Chopping the head off is very quick with minimal pain (because it's almost instantaneous). This seemed to be most common method in years past. Shooting the animal in the head is also very quick, with minimal pain (again, because it's so quick). Supposedly breaking the neck is quick, but since there have been humans with broken necks that were still alive, I'm somewhat skeptical. Slitting the arteries with a very sharp knife (typically while upside down in a "killing cone") is supposedly fairly pain free (I'd think this would depend on the knife actually being really sharp), but I'm not sure how quick it is, as I'd think it'd take a little while for the bird to bleed out enough to die.

When I worked in a turkey slaughterhouse the frightened birds were pulled out of the square baskets they had been pushed into, they were held by their legs and their heads were pulled through the bottom of a metal cone. Their throats were slit by a young man who obviously took great pleasure in his job. They were then hooked by their legs onto an overhead pulley and guided through a vat of hot water to make their feathers easier to remove. Several turkeys managed to work their way off the pulley and ran around terrified. They were the unlucky ones. When they had gone through the hot water vat they were dropped into something like a spin dryer which removed most of their feathers. I dread to think how many of them were still alive when this happened.

I worked there for only a week: watching the turkeys’ fear and suffering was so horrendous I couldn't bear to work there any longer. I ultimately went vegan - I could no longer support this kind of cruelty.

The “kind” or breed of chicken you get has nothing to do with “free range” or not. It’s how they’re housed. I think you’re confusing “cage free” with “free range” or “pasture raised” as they mean different things. Cage free just means they’re not kept confined in small cages. But they can and do still crowd these birds into a coop/run with little room to move. Free range still means they can be crammed into a small space with limited access to an outdoor run. Pasture raised means the birds are raised on pasture, eating bugs and grasses. Often they are in an area that’s confined with mobile netting and then moved on a regular basis so as to protect the birds from wandering too far and reduce the risk of losing them to predators (EVERY meat eating predator loves chicken buffet!).

Best for the bird, or best for you? And I presume you’re meaning slaughter to process and cook?

For eating, probably chopping the head off is quickest and least stressful for the bird if done calmly with a sharp hatchet or ax, but I’d probably accidentally cut my danger hand off. Many will bind the feet, and have two nails (neck width) protruding from a stump/chopping block. The head/neck would be slipped between these with the bird firmly pulled…the head would be headed and the neck lightly stretched (where the ax would chop).

Many use a cone nailed to a tree. Again, the feet are lightly bound…possibly even the wing area. The bird would be placed inside the cone, with the head/neck exiting through the small opening at the bottom of the cone. One would use a VERY sharp knife to cut the neck veins, allowing the bird to bleed out.

That being said, I’ve never slaughtered any of our birds (which are pets). We have euthanized birds with a bullet to the head, which was very fast and pretty stress free for the bird.

Everything suffers when slaughtered. So yes.

Further, factory farming puts money first and the welfare of the animals second. If a method of slaughter is faster and will save money, but it means more suffering for the animal, they’ll do it anyway. It’s all about the money.

If you are truly willing to have your eyes opened, do some research into how various animals are slaughtered in factory farming. But beware, it will make you sick with pain and you’ll probably lose a lot of respect for the human race. There is some seriously messed-up stuff happening. Not everywhere, but enough places to matter greatly.

There is an argument that killing anything is inhumane, and by that measure, of course, chickens cannot be killed humanely but setting that aside, since it wont answer your question: you can kill almost any animal “humanely”.

When we talk about killing things “humanely” we usually mean “without undue pain or distress”. We also talk about raising or farming animals “humanely”, by which we also, usually, mean “without undue pain or distress”. Most industrial animal husbandry does not allow for animals to be raised or slaughtered humanely: this is as true for chickens as it is for cattle or pigs (or dogs!).

When I visit my family in Pakistan, we often go out to buy chicken. Unlike home, this does not involve getting tidily packaged chicken in a styrofoam and cling film packet. At the end of the road is a chap with a half a dozen chicken in cages (actually quite big cages compared to Western battery chicken cages). You order and pay for the chicken and the chicken wallah pulls out a chicken from the cages, flips it onto its back and cuts its throat before you can say “Kentucky”. The chicken is dead in a fraction of a second. There is no distressing transportation to an abattoir. The chicken doesn’t endure any cruel or unusual punishment. One minute it is happily pecking at seed and the next is on it’s way to the pot. Usually the time spent between cage and pot is about 20 minutes, so not only is the chicken killed without stress, the meat is as fresh as it possibly could be. This is not how chickens in the West live and die.

You can kill a bullock like this. It is possible to raise a bullock on grass (as we did in the village where I grew up) and slaughter it humanely at 16–30 months but this is harder to do because a bullock normally has to be shipped off to the market, then the holding pens, then the abattoir before they are slaughtered, all of which takes them away from what they are used to and they find it stressful. If a farmer were to lead a bullock from field to shed, tie him up with a feedbag and pop a bullet through his skull while he was feeding, the bullock would suffer no stress and no pain. This, however, is illegal in the UK and I suspect in the USA as well.

We do not have to farm meat in the way the questioner’s photos suggest.