Advice needed on what to do about rooster with infection

[Keggen]

I have a rooster who has been quarantined for a couple weeks while I tried to give him time and medical care to improve an infection in his foot. He is not getting better though and the infection is now moving higher up from his foot into his leg. I can no longer continue to give him the necessary care so I think the right thing to do would be to butcher him to stop any potential pain he may be experiencing. I am saddened by this but am now resigned to it.

My question is what you would advise on how we handle this. I am bringing meat roosters to a local butcher shop this weekend and am tempted to have them butcher him to relieve me of having to do it. However I don't think it would be smart to use him as meat because of the infection. Would it be acceptable to process the bird and cook it as food for my dogs? Or is that a bad idea, too?

Do you think the butcher is going to object to butchering him based on seeing the foot? It is swollen but nothing grotesque, no pus or anything like that. There is no visible external injury so I am not even sure how or why he got the infection in the first place. I would call them to ask but there is a major language barrier so I am hesitant to do so.

 

[bargain]

I have a rooster who has been quarantined for a couple weeks while I tried to give him time and medical care to improve an infection in his foot. He is not getting better though and the infection is now moving higher up from his foot into his leg. I can no longer continue to give him the necessary care so I think the right thing to do would be to butcher him to stop any potential pain he may be experiencing. I am saddened by this but am now resigned to it.

My question is what you would advise on how we handle this. I am bringing meat roosters to a local butcher shop this weekend and am tempted to have them butcher him to relieve me of having to do it. However I don't think it would be smart to use him as meat because of the infection. Would it be acceptable to process the bird and cook it as food for my dogs? Or is that a bad idea, too?

Do you think the butcher is going to object to butchering him based on seeing the foot? It is swollen but nothing grotesque, no pus or anything like that. There is no visible external injury so I am not even sure how or why he got the infection in the first place. I would call them to ask but there is a major language barrier so I am hesitant to do so.

Keggen, please take this as advice from a former city dweller and now homesteader for many years.... I will try as best I know how. First, yes butchering animals is very hard to do. If you believe the rooster to be unsafe for human consumption, in my humble opinion, I would suggest not bring him to be butchered . Because if the Rooster should have any infection that is spreadable, then you risk giving it to other human beings even just in the processing of it. As I we know, raw meat through a cut for example or if blood becomes airborne in droplets. In a humid environment, even in masking it is possible that small quantities of this could become airborne and inhaled as an infection even after all processing is completed, in clean up states. You may recall that once everyone was taught to rinse commercial processed poultry. That is NO longer the advice of USDA, since it has been found that e coli for example will spread under running water. If you are uncertain of safety, if your butcher is licensed, he should know what is safe and not safe and you could point the foot out to the butcher. If you are uncertain if he understands your concerns, maybe a translator 0r a word guide can help you if you know what his language is. A rule of thumb for our homestead is that we would butcher and give nothing to the dogs that we would not also eat. The very act of butchering can make it risky for human beings doing the processing as well as the air surrounding the location. If this is bumblefoot for example, you are releasing staph into the air, and possibly your skin, which might infect your lungs, your eyes or even a cut on your skin and make you very ill. If you don't know exactly what strain of the bacteria and you should get ill, your doctor will have a hard time treating you appropriately. I'm sure you may know some strains of staph are MRSA which is basically antiobiotic resistant and you then would be dealling with a "super bug" which no one ever needs to deal with. Please be careful if you decide to butcher the Roo yourself. I hope this was helpful as that was my intention.

 

[Keggen]

Yes, your response was very helpful, thank you! I am reading that the smart thing and probably easiest thing to do would be to carefully kill the bird and then dispose of it. Sounds like it should be a simple thing but thank you for confirming it for me anyway! I have had chickens for over 3 years now but sometimes I still feel unsure about handling things that come up once in a while. I will plan on this but if anyone else has any other opinions please let me know. I dont think we'll be able to do it until later this weekend.