How I'm Killing our Steers (Safely + Humanely)

The first thing you want to dispatch a steer humanely and safely is the proper gun. This is a.410 shotgun. You're not using a buckshot, you're using what you call a slug. These were hard to get during 2020. It's actually my choice for killing a cow. In a pinch though, and if you could only have one gun,.22 Magnum. I got a.22 Magnum during 2020 because I couldn't actually get this. I don't know if I have any particular affection to this brand, I just Got whatever I could get when I could finally get some.410 slugs. It's an extremely powerful gun. It's a big bullet. Your margin for error is less. You have a sweet spot in the cow, and if you miss that, it's, it's the worst feeling in the world. They just stand there, maybe some blood comes out of their mouth. They're in stress. And the reason we kill on farm is so that they aren't in stress, so they aren't stressed, and that stress doesn't taint our meat. Second thing, probably more to just get in the zone Safety glasses. I don't know if that's gonna protect you from a— certainly not some ricochets. Ear muffins get you in the zone. Oh look, okay, show you the third thing while they're down here. Alfalfa. We got to get that head steady. This is a good point right here. This is one reason— see how you just came in and dominated that? Actually, they're fighting for it, so we'll do two pans. Let's get everybody a little snack. X marks the spot, okay? From the ears to the eyes on both sides, you want to hit right in there. Then you want to watch your trajectory. You could hit in there all day long, but if you're pointed like that, you're not going to go down— you're going to go down to the nasal and not the brain. So we need 4 trays. All right, y'all getting them down? You know it's really hard to mess up with a slug, right? That's what the guys was telling us. Oh yeah, yeah, it is hard to mess it up. I was kind of thinking we'd take all 4, all of them, so nobody's ever alone. That brings me to another point, is humanely and safely we kill them in front of their friends. Friends is a bad word to use. That's a human word. That's a human emotion projected on these cows. Kill them like they want to be killed. Okay, they want to be together. They're more frightened of being separated than of dying. If you separated one, you'd stress him out before the kill. You'd stress out the others. They don't register it like a human, somebody getting shot right next door to them. Okay, cows got out. They don't have a significant emotion around that. They just keep on grazing. Notice how that one cow came down and dominated, took over the alfalfa. You want to kill the most subordinate ones first, or Well, guess what? You killed the most dominant one. Sugar. I mean, if there's just two, it's probably all right. If there's more than two, the herd is gonna then have to figure out who's boss. You take out the top dog, they're gonna try to figure out, well, who's the top dog now?

La la la, la la, let me be free.

Get up here before Winnie takes your snack. He's in a bit of a weird mood today. It's marshmallows. Yeah, marshmallows. How many of those did you eat last night? A lot. You watch from right here, okay? I just don't want to set you down in there. There, you guys guard, guard the chickens from getting out. Happy day! Welcome to another day in the life of some homesteaders growing what we eat, eating what we grow. This is a day in the life. That is progress on our dream homestead build. A big part of our life is sharing what we've learned in 20 years of homesteading It just excites us so much. It completes our joy to share it with you. I just taught a YouTube video on— what was it? Oh, it was on the no poop chicken coop. I gotta do a re-bit right now. I went to film this the other day and had a big booger right here. Thankfully I did catch that later, uh, in the video and only missed the intro. So I put back on the same shirt. I don't remember if I was wearing the apron. Our doorway entrance there actually slopes in. It's a tricky fix. They're making it slope out. In the meantime, I forgot to shut the gate, I guess. Come on, bosses. All right, Sea Monsters got a big move today. One whole length over. I'm gonna show Annie and Lily how to do this. The smiley one is here. We're gonna have to have you do chores tomorrow. All right. I am wondering, I'm looking at this, we're gonna mow this with the mower. We're butchering right there. What if we killed them here where we killed Stud? If they rolled here, it's like twice as steep. Yeah, I'm a little concerned about that too. That'd be another reason to get them down. We're about to mow this with the machine. It would be handy to have our steers down here. They're on some really— they're really far away. They're on steep terrain. Why not get them over here to mow this? Right now. Not this, because we need to hurry up and move the sea monsters, but this. And you think we can catch those mama hens? You think we broke their brood?

We'll find out.

We had 3 hens go broody all at once.

4.

4. And we thought a good way to break a brood— we've tried putting them in water, it's not really working. Good way to break a brood is put them in an area without a nesting box. So we thought, well, why don't we put them in with the sea monsters, and then maybe they'll think there's not only no nesting boxes, they might think they hatched some chicks. Ah, good. Can't hesitate. Yeah, people are scared of chickens. It's understandable. They come from the T-Rex. They will eat you if you lay down in here long enough. There you go, Annie. It's been a year since you moved them, huh? Yep. Okay, so we're gonna move them over. They're attracted to the snack machine, the water cooler, and the housing. Look how big they are. 4 weeks old tomorrow. Look at this guy, he's twice as big as some of them. Got the food and the water over. Could open this up to give them more of an opening to get there. Look, they're automatically coming over. We're about to pick up this net. Let's just go ahead and walk them over. Josiah, will you get us some posts and set up a single strand of electric around this pasture here, we'll bring 3 steers down. Chickens don't like tall grass, that's why we mowed it before we put them in here. Uh, these electric poultry nets don't like tall grass either, grounds it out. We're killing them tomorrow. We're gonna try to do 3 in a day. It's gonna be tough. That's a hard area to get them out of, hard area to shoot them at, right? Yes. And if we get them down here, not only are they going to be able over at the butchering shed where we can dress them, they're going to mow this for the chicken. So I'm thinking let's— they'll stay in a single single strand. Make the gate down there so that we can get them. We just come in and get them out. This is where we killed Stud Muffin. Thank God we did. He was very large. He warmed us up for the season. He was very difficult. It had been a while since we butchered with cows. Guys, listen, homesteading, it's like this with, with cows. What are you going to kill, 1, 2 a year? Same thing with pigs. It takes years before you just like remember everything. With sea monsters, chickens, when you do 100— now lay it on its back, then the leg, and you can see the joint there, right? You're good for life. You remember how to do it for life, like riding a bicycle. I'm still getting there with the cows, still have to review how to do it. That make your heart sing or what? Look at them going after that clover. Yeah! What is this? The kids have built a boat rack. I haven't taught them anything. This is what they do themselves. Give it Give a kid free time, let them pursue their interests, they teach themselves. Can y'all bring the steers down? Sure. Encompass that whole area below the swamp. We want that whole area to be mowed for the sea monsters. Do me a favor, hit record on this when you go start herding them over. You heard them with the dirt bike? Oh yeah, put it on the dirt bike guy. You got your ear protection on? You can't hear me.

You got your ear protection?

Oh look, they're having problems over there and block them for when we get them over there from going up. Just back. I like it when the boys boss me around. They've taken over. Well, this usually works. In the meantime, we're tearing up our pastures. And notice we're doing this the day before, not the morning of, because we don't want to stress them out the day of the harvest. Yeah, there you go. Good job. Hey, what happened, boys? They went straight into the woods. They were trying to get away. Hey, we got— we're ready. Okay, that worked out. Oh good, I was waiting for you. We're ready for the kills tomorrow.

I'm concerned about the turkeys because the paint is so— it smells so bad down there in the— because they're working in the basement now. I'm wondering, I think we should get the turkeys out because I don't want them to die. Are they okay? I was literally laying in bed going, I hope they're not dying.

These guys are ready to graduate. The chicken tractor. We have to set up a heat lamp in there, maybe for a week for those little ones. But what if we put the turkeys in there? Fresh air, grass.

I think that's good.

Let's catch these chickens. If we could herd everybody into the chicken tractor, that'd be the easiest thing. I'm gonna put them in. Okay, chase that one chicken. Go get those guys. Look, leave that there, leave that there. No, put that back up. Why'd you knock that down? There we go. All right, we got them in. Oh, shoot. A couple of bunch got out. Chase them this way. Oh, shoot. This is insane. Henry, why are you in there? You're scaring them out. Get out. Okay. Gideon, I need your help. Henry, shut that. Shut that up. Hey, Henry, Henry, Henry, keep it shut when we're not there. Henry, Henry, keep it shut now. Finally did it. Thanks to the help of Smiley Worm.

My dad came down yesterday and I got him some things, gave him some flowers. Gave them some sweet potato slips. So we had extra sweet potato slips. Now look, they're growing roots. Basically, I am going to give those away because we planted all we needed in our garden, all we had room for. I'm gonna go look at seed time too to see what I need to start because I'm pretty sure I need to start some. Lots happening on the remodel today. Painters are downstairs. We had snafu upstairs when they went to go lay tile in my entryway. It was sloping down towards the door, so we've got a couple guys here gonna fix that. Here's my peppers. Look at how nice I've got all my peppers. I've got this row. Man, look at this, y'all. Like, look at how good my cucumbers are looking. We've got little cucumber babies. So excited. My zucchini were getting attacked by something, and look, I come— I, um, I sprayed them with some compost tea. I'm going to take those leaves off. Sprayed them with some compost tea, and look at all that new growth. Pretty much all my weeds in here are tomatoes, which is crazy. We made little flower beds out here. This is zinnias and sunflowers, little sunflowers. We had a tour So Abundance Plus members came on Sunday and we gave them a tour and then they volunteered. So that is how all this got done.

People be asking me all the time how to introduce flocks. It's absolutely no problem. They're going to submit right away. Uh, I do if I'm doing it during the day. Well, I guess that night. Start them out in the coop so that they're oriented. 41 chicks. This is also a good transition area for growing chicks. It's close to the house, uh, you know, predators are going to be less likely to come in here. We can get a 2-man going. It's pretty shallow, rated to 36. By the way, we just completed the plans for those. Those who have gotten Homestead Builds are going to get the digital plans very soon. Plus, putting them in here with adults— oh wow, go get our new egg baskets, dude! Pretty Shawl plans updated, better than it ever will be. If you guys want to get in on that, it's homesteadbuilds.com. You can pre-order. You want to pre-order by July 1st in order to get the physical copy by Christmas, but you can get the digital copy as soon as it's out. Y'all, build you a pretty shawl for the front yard. They pecked it. Oh look, yep, see, the problem would come in is if that chicken pecks back. Now between all these adults, 40-something-odd chicks, that's too much for that little coop. We're gonna have to come tonight and get some of these adults out of here. You know, leave some as an example, teach little chicks to get up in the coop at night. Oh, it's peaceful and quiet in here. You guys are so peaceful compared to chickens. They must not be related to the dinosaur. Turkey poults are supposed to be fragile, but I've never had that be the case, not at least when ordering from McMurray Hatchery. I don't know what they do. Some of these are a week old, that guy, and others are 2 weeks old, took an extra day to get here. And so we lost like a third of them, we lost like, or 4th, 5 out of 20. And McMurray Hatchery just sent us More. Good job, Annie, setting up the net. That's just predator protection. Those are already dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, put those out for Winnie. We will just throw them in the grass or—

okay, as a cyclist goes.

Yeah, that's like the Napoleon Dynamite scene. You know what I'm talking about? Which part? Where they're on the bus. I'm a vegetarian. And they— oh, I'm a vegetarian. You hear that? She said I'm a vegetarian. The school bus stops and the old man shoots the cow in the head at that moment. Henry, do not turn that on. That'd be a mean trick.

Did it get you?

Yes. Okay, it's off now. You shocked me good, buddy. We're gonna leave everybody inside the tractor. Little tiny things. Oh my gosh, how cute! Keep them warm. We're gonna plug in the— sorry, hover brooder, especially because it's gonna rain. Let's put it on the dark side. Henry, you helping Annie in here now?

Yeah.

Look, we got the tile down in the sunroom. It does look So good. Now we're gonna protect it. I don't know how to help you, Eddie. Yeah, buddy, we'll do it on the edge. Look, there you go. Good. We just had a crazy rain. Well, the turkeys don't seem to care. They seem to be doing just fine. Goose loves it.

Let me be free.