Duck Dissection

by Nitya Poudel

On 31 January 2017 we made a plan to dissect a duck. It was one of the ducks which we had taken care of. It is a drake (a male duck). We had 3 drakes. Last Saturday we dissected one duck and today we are going to cut one more. We bought a small duck but after taking take of them they grew big. And now its dead.

But before dissecting the duck I was asked to do some research and find some information on ducks. I did research and gathered some information on the ducks till lunch time. After lunch we went to dissect the duck. First we made everything ready.

Last time Abin  had cut the duck so this time he asked me to cut the duck. I was so excited about the thought but also scary as I have never done this thing. So, I went forward. We kept the duck’s head in the wood and I hit it with the butcher. I thought I hit it so hard that I could detach the duck’s head from its body in the first hit but I was wrong. For the second time, Pallav sir helped me to cut the head of the drake.

Then we put the body of the drake in hot boiled water. The duck’s head was given to Shaswat and Susmita to clean it by plucking the feathers of the head. I plucked all the feathers I could. It was very difficult because ducks and drakes have water resistance. I was really happy after finishing plucking the feathers. The water was very hot so it was very difficult. After plucking all the feathers we went to heat the duck so that the remaining feathers are removed too.

After heating we cut the duck into half. First we cut the legs. We cut the legs by breaking the joints of the bone. It was nice that we were learning many things but it looked a little disgusting. After cutting the legs we cut the wings. The wings were also cut by breaking the joints. Then we cut the stomach open. We saw the kidneys. The kidneys were large and it was a little pinkish. When we were trying to get the kidneys out they broke into pieces. Then we saw the intestine. The intestines were very long. Then we saw the stomach which looked fat. After watching the stomach we moved towards liver. Under the kidney there was a small green thing which is called gall bladder. 

 We should not let the gall bladder break and make it spill in the meat because it makes the meat taste bitter. Then we saw the heart. When I see the heart while dissecting some animals I always remember the dissection of the fish. When we dissected the fish we saw it was still beating. After seeing the heart we saw other parts such as crop of the chicken. Then we cleaned the chicken and put it in the place where we had put the last duck. Finally, we were done with the dissection. We cleaned all the equipments so we could use it for the next dissection. I love dissection and hope this keeps happening again.