Butchering Chickens

Today I planned to butcher all 25 of our broiler chickens.  I borrowed a wonderful machine from a friend...a chicken plucker.  So awesome.

I had set up to be butchering by 10am, but the scalder took forever to warm up.  So, we eventually got started around eleven.  I had a friend who wanted to learn how to butcher and came over to help me.  I am an experiential learner and teacher, so she had her hands on the chickens as quickly as I felt comfortable with her ability.

The first chicken was a bit of a trial.  I guess the first chicken is often a bit harder than the others, mainly because the act is foreign.  I see this as a good thing because I would never want the killing of an animal to seem routine.  But, for the sake of the bird, I wish that it were easier to jump back in the saddle.

I had decided to try the "nail in the chopping block" method today.  I nailed two nails into our chopping block, about 1.5" apart.  I then placed the chicken's head between the nails and pulled back a bit.  I told T that she needed to hold the wings down.  She wrapped her hands around the bird and prepared herself.  I had sharpened the hatchet, but even so, it was very hard to get the head off in a single blow.  And after the first swing, T let the wings slip.  So not only was I trying desparately to kill this chicken swiftly, I had wings spattering blood everywhere.  It was not pleasant for anyone involved, especially the chicken.

We finally got the head off and drained the blood into a bucket.  I then headed to the scalder.  It wasn't as hot as I remembered, but we had waited a long time so I figured it must be ready.  I dunked the bird in the water, moving up and down soas to get the water into all of the pores.  I thought I heard the chicken make a noise, but brushed it off.  Remember, the chicken was without a head.

The incredible chicken plucker.

I then put the chicken into the miraculous chicken plucker and turned it on.  The chicken began bouncing around in the tub, slowly losing feathers as it went.  But it wasn't coming as clean as I wanted to see.  I think the water was just too cold still.  After about a minute, I turned off the machine and removed the bird.  It was disappointing.  It still had most of its wing feathers and tail feathers.  It also had lots of patches of feathers along it's back and legs.

Without a choice, I began to pluck the remaining feathers from the bird.  All of a sudden, we heard this forlorn sound...sort of like the sound that an old baby doll would make as you turned it on its side.  I looked at T.  She looked at me.  "Did you hear that?" I asked.  Yes, she had.  And she admitted that she thought she heard something earlier as well.  I moved the bird between my hands.  A low cry eminated from the headless carcass.  Well, once we realized it wasn't a zombie chicken, it became a toy.  In fact, we had K videotape the "Dead Whistling Chicken" and he posted it on youtube.  Probably not the most PC thing to do, but humor changes when you are butchering chickens.

After the first chicken, we went back to wringing their necks...much more successfully, I might add.  We processed nine birds before breaking to vacuum-seal them.  However, as I was sealing them, I took the opportunity to weigh them.  Most of the birds were coming in around two and a half pounds...not big enough.  I can live with a smaller bird because we don't force feed our broilers, but two pounds barely warrants the butchering process.  I decided to wait on the rest of the birds for another few weeks and try to fatten them up.  We'll see.  I'm not very impressed with this batch of birds.  I'm not sure if it's the breed (although they are supposed to be cornish cross) or the hatchery.  I probably won't order these again.