ducks at the abattoir

avoiding the call to numb ourselves with logic

It was in the autumn of last year when we found ourselves in a long, slithering loop of a line, waiting with crates full of quacking ducks in the flatbed of our truck. In front of us were all sorts of other pickups and trailers, each loaded with fat turkeys destined for their demise. Despite our appointment time, we realised that there was no appointment time keeper. We were to just sit there and wait. The ducks were to just wait, too. 

It was the 2023 harvest and we were in the unenviable position of too many tasks and quickly diminishing time. Our ducks had hatched out an unusually high number of ducklings earlier that spring - 46 to be precise. We didn’t limit their duckling desires, but we should have. When the autumnal harvest arrived, my husband, Troy, and I found ourselves with an enormous amount of butchering to do. We had three beef to butcher, multiple geese, dozens and dozens of rabbits, four sheep, a bunch of chickens and roosters, and all of those ducks. That’s saying nothing of the garden and orchard produce that had to be processed and stored. And somehow, these things all had to be done before Troy left for his hunting trip in a few short weeks.

Butchering ducks is truly a labour of love. I can butcher four or five chickens in the time it takes me to do one duck. It’s a little easier if you raise the white pekin ducks, but we opt for the heritage breeds with dark feathers. Not fun when it comes to removing all evidence of them. Normally, we just allocate extra time for the duck and goose plucking. Last year, we ran out of allocation. We had a friend that recommended a small abattoir about an hour away. We were told we could make an appointment, hand the ducks directly to the first person on the line that would immediately and humanely kill them. They had better equipment than us. They could pluck them cleanly with ease. We could justify the decision.

Still, it was a tough decision to make. I have such a deep sense of obligation to our animals. If I’m to eat them, I must give them a good death. A death in an abattoir is not a good death. I knew that. I knew I was compromising. But I listened to reason instead of my heart. Sometimes that’s necessary. Sometimes, there are hard things to do on either end of the heart/brain continuum. I knew it wouldn’t be as good as doing it ourselves, but perhaps we could mitigate the stress to the birds in order to make our tasks more in line with human, rather than machine, capabilities.

And so there we were, in that truck, listening to the drakes making their strange, frog-like croaks while the ducks responded in kind. A truck with its window cleaner business name painted across the sides of it was in front of us. The back of the truck had a cage made of wood pallets. Four big tom turkey heads stuck out of the top. They were looking around perplexed, gobbling to the other turkeys in front of them. It was hot out and the birds were panting from the heat and the stress of their unknown surroundings.

Further up the line, an elderly man left his parked truck to check on his turkeys. He had constructed a little trailer, complete with roof and shingles, that tucked into his flatbed. Above the back door that swung open was a sign, “Gobbler Gang”. There were