Chicken Butchering

November 3, 2009 by Debbie.

Sorry it took so long to get these pictures up on the blog, but better late than never!

It’s hard to believe these little chicks can go from this -

to this in just 7 long weeks -

But it’s true. Here’s a pictorial process of butchering day.

Killing cones are great to ease the chicken’s pain as well as protect the meat from bruising.  John thanks each individual bird for what they are giving to us - we don’t take it for granted.

The scalding bucket is beside the cone stand and is heated by our turkey fryer propane cooker. Before this we used a camp stove.

After scalding, the chickens go into the electric plucker two at a time. John hoses off the feathers in the last few seconds of plucking. The feathers wash out a shoot at the bottom of the plucker.

You can see here how clean the birds come out of the plucker. They are then placed in ice water til they cool down a bit.

I take the chickens from the cooling vat (fancy words for that bucket, huh?) to the cleaning table and gut them. From there I take them into the kitchen for final wash and another cooling down period.

I weigh each one to mark the freezer bag. I usually freeze most of the chickens whole but I do separate some leg & thigh quarters for fried chicken and some wings for bbq-ing later. The carcass is cooked and the meat & broth are frozen or canned for future ‘fast food’ meals. It’s wonderful to have the start of soup when you really need it. The chickens are double bagged to avoid freezer burn.

7 weeks doesn’t sound like long, but when you’re moving a chicken tractor every day, sometimes twice a day, and feeding and watering 35 chickens twice a day, rain or shine, it is longer than it sounds!! Course, that’s after the chicks have spent 2 or 3 weeks in the brooder, with all the care and twice a day cleanings that takes as well. Still, the reward of having our own home grown chicken is worth it.

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