Draining blood from a chicken that's already dead

[GGx]

Hi,

I'm writing a scene for a novel but, never having reared or culled chickens, I'm hoping you can help me get it right. It may seem frivolous to be asking hypothetical questions in a forum but we novelists get a very hard time for not doing our research.

A dog (a hunting breed) gets into the garden of the chicken owners and in a frenzy of excitement, kills the whole flock, shaking each to death before chasing down and killing the next. Not wanting to waste the dead birds, the husband decides to prep them and discard any whose skin has been damaged by the dog's teeth and are potentially infected by its saliva.

For a later scene, when the chicken owners take revenge on the dog owners, I need to use the chickens' blood. That raises four questions:

1. Since the chickens have only just died (a minute or two before the owners come home) if he were to cut the heads and hang them upside down, would the blood still drain out through their necks?

2. How long would he have to get this job done before the blood coagulates inside the chickens' bodies and bleeding wouldn't work?

3. How much blood (roughly) would drain out of each dead chicken?

4. How long would the drained blood stay runny in a container before it coagulates outside of the body? I read that you can add trisodium citrate to the blood to stop it coagulating then use it to make blood sausage.

Thanks so much!
GGx

 

[Molpet]

Some blood would drain out, but not much without the heart pumping. Maybe a tablespoon or two.
It starts to coagulate in minutes under my kill cone.

 

[FunClucks]

By the time the owners get home and see what the dog has done, no blood is going anywhere. It's all dried and congealed. You barely get a tablespoon or two out of a live chicken that is passing on in a kill cone. It coagulates almost immediately in the bucket you collect the scraps in. I wouldn't recommend revenge of any type, as it's not the dog's fault the owner is irresponsible and allowed it out. Most chicken keepers use hot wire (electric fence) to deter dogs during the day, and a very secure coop they shut up at night. If that doesn't work, you have to either build the chickens a more sturdy enclosure for daytime roaming, or the dog must be removed from the area. If you have your chickens free-ranging in an insecurely fenced location, that's on you if a dog gets to them. Dogs and other roaming/flying predators are part of the risks of free-ranging chickens. Most owners expect some amount of attrition per year due to predation. Also, if the chickens are decent at free-ranging (some breeds are better at it and some chickens are better at it than others), a single dog will never be able to kill the entire flock at once. He may get one or two, but the others will scatter and fly up into trees or hide behind things or under things where the dog can't get to them. The rooster or head hen (if they don't have a rooster) will sound the alarm and everyone will fly away. The only time you have a dog kill an entire flock is if the chickens are kept confined, like in an aviary or hoop-coop, or other fenced/ceilinged enclosure. If you keep your chickens confined, it's on you as an owner to make sure the confinement is strong enough to deter all predators, otherwise the chickens are sitting ducks inside the confinement if a predator gets inside cause they can't easily escape.

A dog may come back multiple times and try again if he's successful in getting a chicken once, or even if he thinks he can get a chicken. Where it is legal, the dog may eventually get shot once the farmer looses patience with continual deaths and owners not confining their dogs (as in many localities they are required by law to keep them on their own property). No revenge on the dog owners, just disappearance of the dog. In certain locations in the USA, and in some other countries (I don't know details) it's legal to shoot dogs that are killing your livestock. But you have to check the laws for the area you live in.

If a chicken has been injured by a dog at all, unless the chicken survives and heals from its injuries, you would not eat that chicken. Only eat healthy chickens. Dead chickens are useful for compost and for baiting traps to catch animals that are coming to kill your chickens (usually predators other than dogs). You can also feed dead chickens to other chickens, although I'd have to be sure the dog was healthy before I fed a chicken it killed to the other chickens. And you'd have to feed while the chicken was fresh, like within an hour or two of death. Haven't done it myself, so there may be other considerations. You may find different opinions on here about what to do with the dead chickens. I've been known to have a funeral for and bury a dead favorite chicken. They can have quite the personality and be engaging pets.

There are real-life stories on here of people who try to get revenge on each other over chickens and/or dogs, and it never goes well for anyone. I recommend moving.

If you must write a scene involving blood, I'd recommend a blood substitute. Because the chickens' blood will not be usable. If it's not immediately drained while the chicken is alive and passing away, it solidifies inside the chicken almost instantly after death. And any blood you do get out (few tablespoons) will be solidified in less than 5 minutes.

 

[Molpet]

Hi,

I'm writing a scene for a novel but, never having reared or culled chickens, I'm hoping you can help me get it right. It may seem frivolous to be asking hypothetical questions in a forum but we novelists get a very hard time for not doing our research.

A dog (a hunting breed) gets into the garden of the chicken owners and in a frenzy of excitement, kills the whole flock, shaking each to death before chasing down and killing the next. Not wanting to waste the dead birds, the husband decides to prep them and discard any whose skin has been damaged by the dog's teeth and are potentially infected by its saliva.

For a later scene, when the chicken owners take revenge on the dog owners, I need to use the chickens' blood. That raises four questions:

1. Since the chickens have only just died (a minute or two before the owners come home) if he were to cut the heads and hang them upside down, would the blood still drain out through their necks?

2. How long would he have to get this job done before the blood coagulates inside the chickens' bodies and bleeding wouldn't work?

3. How much blood (roughly) would drain out of each dead chicken?

4. How long would the drained blood stay runny in a container before it coagulates outside of the body? I read that you can add trisodium citrate to the blood to stop it coagulating then use it to make blood sausage.

Thanks so much!
GGx

Thought of you today. I think if the owner took the dead bird right over to the dogs owners item and opened the bird on it you could get blood out.

I had a rooster killed by some of my jakes today. No blood leaking out of him or at kill site or the prime suspects. He was halfway in rigor and extremities were cool but body warm. I figure about a half hour to an hour dead. 35f outside.
I started to skin and salvage meat. Inside 65f. The majority of injuries were on the back. When I started to cut the thigh off the body blood gushed and I shoved a towel in. Probably about a couple tablespoons. I went and took the breasts off and went back to the leg. The blood had already congealed that quick..

 

[GGx]

Thanks so much for your help and detailed answers, FunClucks and Molpet (those photos are really helpful). The blood is far too coagulated for what needs to happen, so you’ve changed the direction of these two scenes and I’m really grateful for your help with them.

The owner is going to discard the dead chickens and for the revenge scene, I’m going with blood from elsewhere, since there’s too little and will be too coagulated by the time the scene occurs.

As for not recommending revenge – I mean, of course, a rational person wouldn’t – but this woman is a psychopath. She’s out to get her neighbours and does far worse than take revenge for the dog’s actions. That’s pretty early on and her behaviour escalates. She isn’t a person who would see sense, that it’s not the dog’s fault. It’s actually her own fault - she took down the fence between the two gardens and that’s how the neighbours’ dog got in. But people with that mindset don’t see fault in their own actions, that’s what makes them fun characters to write! If all our characters behaved rationally we wouldn’t have a story.

Thanks again, super super helpful!

 

[K0k0shka]

I recently dispatched 4 roosters using a new (for me) method and it made me think of this post, too. I can back up what the others have said, too - the blood coagulates way too quickly. A lot more quickly than I thought it would, in fact! I was quite shocked. My usual method is using a slaughter cone and cutting the head off while the bird is in it, then I walk away while it drains and come back a few minutes later to find minimal blood in the bucket (like a spoonful maybe). Because the blood drips down the sides of the plastic bag that's in the bucket, and dries there, it's hard to judge the speed of coagulation, so initially I wasn't sure how to answer your question. I knew it happened pretty quickly, but how quickly? Well, the new method I tried with these 4 latest roosters is cervical dislocation ("the broomstick method") where you snap the spine at the neck first, without breaking the skin, then you hang the bird upside down and cut the throat to drain the blood. There isn't much time that passes between the kill and the draining, so you'd think it doesn't matter... but oh man was I wrong! In the time it took me to maneuver the thrashing dead bird (muscle spasms post-kill, normal) into the cone, reach in underneath to find the head, and cut the throat, the blood had coagulated enough to make draining difficult - it had formed a gelatinous plug at the neck. With the first rooster, I waited until the body stopped flailing, so it would be easier for me to put him in the cone to drain - so, maybe a minute or two? No more than three. At that point the blood was too thick to drain. It was a glob at the neck, it wouldn't drain properly and gutting the chicken was really messy - blood everywhere inside the chicken, coming out of the heart, spilling into the organs. It was still liquid inside the chicken, but everything at the neck was a glob that was blocking the draining. So yeah, you literally have just a couple of short minutes to get liquid blood out of a cut on the chicken. But if you were to cut the whole bird open soon after, you could still get liquid blood from inside the body, it just wouldn't be enough to collect or pour anywhere - it would be smeared on the organs and all over your hands.

 

[David61]

Dude, in the move "The Deep" the Voo Doo doctor kills a live chicken ang uses it blood on Jacqueline Bisset.

 

[K0k0shka]

Dude, in the move "The Deep" the Voo Doo doctor kills a live chicken ang uses it blood on Jacqueline Bisset.

Movies follow their own physics and anatomy laws Fiction novels can, too, but OP said they wanted to be realistic about it.

 

[David61]

Movies follow their own physics and anatomy laws Fiction novels can, too, but OP said they wanted to be realistic about it.

what? voodoo ain't real? lol
You want to keep it real, have the chicken decapitated. it will run arould spraying blood everywhere.

 

[Molpet]

what? voodoo ain't real? lol
You want to keep it real, have the chicken decapitated. it will run arould spraying blood everywhere.

I had one pinwheel across the yard about 30 ft spraying everywhere lol