Butchering the 2014 Meat Birds

Boucherie de Poulet (Chicken Butchering):
Disclaimer: Before we get going, I want to forewarn those that get queasy at the sight of blood that today might not be a good day to read the blog. I also want to warn you that today's post lacks brevity as I'm using this forum to capture a few notes to look at for improvement next year's chicken crop.

First off we'd like to thank the family and friends that took part in this years' boucherie.  We had a lot of help and this would've been most difficult without the conscripted labor.  I kind of felt like Tom Sawyer with painting Aunt Polly's fence in assembling the team of family and friends involved.  Remember when he tricked the neighborhood boys into thinking that fence painting is fun?  But chicken killing (at least the way we do it) is actually fun, although it is a lot of work!

My sole regret is that I didn't take more pictures of all the action.  However, butchering chickens is a "Dirty Job" and my hands get so dirty, I didn't want to get the blood and guts on my camera.  I did get a few shots and below we'll show you the process, each of the "stations" involved, and then in posts in days to follow, we'll show you how we do an 8 piece cut-up for freezing and then we'll share the actual financials to show cost per bird, average weight per bird, avg pounds of feed each bird ate, etc.  Here we go:

Here are pictures of the International Brotherhood of Chicken Slayers Union, minus two friends, Dale and Warren, who played key roles in the process, but I was negligent in capturing them in the picture.  We all look a little tired as this picture was taken once the job was done.  Once finished, we gorged ourselves on a big pot of red beans & rice & sausage that Tricia prepared for the work crew.  Both pictures are the same with the exception of the second one that has me in the place of my lovely wife.

Do they look like they're in FOWL moods?

A fun Family Reunion

As This post showed, Dale and I got all the chickens in place the night before and Russ, Benjamin and I set up all the stations so that we could get a good start in the morning.  We got out the whet stone and honing oil and sharpened the Chicago Cutlery knives until they were razor sharp and used a steel to keep them sharp during the entire process.  At around 8 am once the other chores were done, we lit the fire on the scalder and fine tuned the set-up and got ready to butcher 92 Cornish Cross Meat Birds.

Station 1: The Killing Cones:
Russ, Conner, and Benjamin were in charge of this important stage.  They would get each bird from the holding pen and bring to the cones.  Now you can order stainless steel cones for around $30 each, but on my daily commutes to Lake Charles, I find these on the side of the road that are priced much better!  The rubber holds the birds snug as to minimize any bruising.

The boys insert the chickens head-first into the cone, pull the head through, and with a sharp knife, cut the chicken's artery (jugular vein) that runs right below his jawbone.  We can kill four at a time.  We could do more, but that would cause a bottle-neck at the next station.  Here is Benjamin administering the cut.

The cut

Now most people when they think of butchering will think of a hatchet and a stump and a chicken 'running around with his head cut off.'  We don't do this.  Bleeding the bird out properly is necessary to get all the blood out of the meat.  If you don't do this, you'll have blood coagulated throughout the meat, especially at the joint areas and it affects the shelf life and taste of the meat.

This is a humane process in that the blood rushes out of the bird quickly, causing him to lose consciousness quickly and die.  It doesn't take long for the bird to completely bleed out.

Blood flowing from the jugular

Leviticus 19:26

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying.

We have a bucket positioned under each cone to catch all the blood.  We don't waste a single thing, except maybe the cluck.  It will all go back into the garden to improve the soil in order to grow healthy vegetables this Spring/Summer.

That ain't red paint

Once the chicken has been bled out and has died, it is laid out on a bench to be picked up by the operator of the next station.

Station 2: Scalding:

This important station was manned by Dale and involves a crawfish boiling pot full of water heated by a propane burner.  I add a squirt or two of dishwashing liquid to the water.  It is an important job as the temperature must be monitored closely to keep it between 145 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can see the thermometer on the side of the pot.

The regulator on the fire must be adjusted intermittently to keep the water within the desired range of scalding.  Too cool and the feathers will not come off of your bird. Too hot and you'll cook your bird, resulting in meat that gets torn up at the next station.  The proper technique is to dunk the bird down past the joint of the 'drumstick.'  There are little feathers that grow there that you want to be sure to have that area scalded so they'll be removed.  

Scalding the chicken

Once dunked down, give the bird a little shake and then pull him up all the way out of the water and dunk him again... and again... and again...  You want to continue this process for a minute or so.  Then grab one tail feather or one large wing feather. When you can pull it out easily with little resistance, your bird is adequately scalded and ready for the next station.  You can see some of the "test feathers" at the lower right hand side of the photo below.

Pulling the bird out and about to test.

Now it is time for...

Station 3: Plucking:

This is a homemade chicken plucker made by using the plans from Herrick Kimball's "Whiz Bang" Chicken Plucker and my, isn't it a dandy?  This thing works beautifully. It was operated by my dad who sprayed water on the spinning birds, and my nephew Graham, who was the switch man.  He turned the device on and off.

All you do is drop a scalded bird in a spinning machine and spray it with water.  In 20 seconds or so, you turn off the Whiz Bang Chicken plucker and pull out a perfectly de-feathered bird!  What a time saver!  Just look at those feathers coming off with ease as it spins around and comes into contact with the rubber fingers.

The Spin Cycle

Station 4: De-heading/De-footing & Quality Control:

After the feathers are removed by the Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker, the chickens are moved to the De-heading and De-footing station along with Quality Control.  I'm heading up (ha ha) the de-heading department.  I lay the chickens on the bench, grab a chicken head between my index and middle fingers while holding the breast with my other hand and give a quick yank and off comes his head.  You could alternatively use a knife, but this leaves a sharp edge of the bone that will rip your zip loc freezer bag. Then using a sharp knife, I cut off the feet by hyper-extending the foot just a little and cutting right in the joint.  I flip around to the other side and off comes the feet, nice and clean.  We save the heads and the feet in a bucket.

Then my side-kick Carson takes care of Quality Control.  He goes over the entire bird meticulously, pulling off any little feathers that we may have missed.  He's got an eagle-eye.  Once they've passed his inspection and has his stamp of approval, the birds are certified and able to go to the next station.

Nice looking birds that have passed Carson's inspection and are ready for gutting

Before the birds move on, I'll take a knife and make a slit right where the neck meets the breast and I'll reach in and separate the windpipe and loosen the crop.  Then I'll make another slit right above the vent (rear end) and pull the bird open exposing the guts.  This readies the bird for evisceration.  Since we removed the birds from feed and grass 18 hours ago, the intestinal tract and crop is pretty much empty. This makes the next procedure a little cleaner.  Tricia has the hands of a skilled surgeon and is in charge of the next station:

Station 5: The Evisceration Station:

Tricia will take the bird, running her hand inside the cavity along the inner breast-bone, grab the heart and a handful of guts, and pull.  Everything will come out, leaving just the intestines attached to the rear end.  The heart comes off and goes in one pot.  The gizzard comes off and goes in another.  The liver is a little tricky. As the picture shows below, she's carefully cutting out the gall bladder off of the liver.  You want to be careful not to bust this as it is full of green bile.  Once this is cut off, the liver goes in another pot.  My Mom helped Tricia by cleaning the organs and putting them away and rinsing the birds and cutting table.  We'll later clean the gizzards and separately package all the giblets for freezing.

Then the knife is used to carefully cut around the rear end, removing the intestines along with it.  All the guts go into a barrel. Reaching deep inside the bird, Tricia uses her fingers to pull the pink lungs out from either side of the backbone.  A water hose is used to spray the carcass inside and out clean.  The bird is flipped over and the preening gland is removed from the little butt.  The birds are then tossed into a vat of cool water where they'll cool for a few hours until butchering is complete.

Gutting the bird

Once the butchering is complete, I'll dig a hole between the rows in the garden and dump the feet and heads into the hole and bury them.

Chicken heads and feet will grow nice veggies next year

Another hole is dug between the rows of the garden and the bucket of guts from 92 birds from the eviscerating station are dumped into the hole and buried.

The guts of 92 birds

One more trench between the rows is dug and all the feathers we gathered from underneath the chicken plucker are buried.   Blood, guts, and feathers will enrich the soil.  The chickens pooped on the grass out on the pasture and will make the grass grow.  The remains of the chickens will make the garden grow.  

Feathers of 92 birds

Once the birds have cooled, we pour off the water and ice down the birds and let them go through the rigor mortis process overnight, aging until tomorrow afternoon when we'll cut them up.  We cover them up so that predators don't come eat all of our birds.

Birds chilling and aging overnight

For some debriefing notes, the birds were the best looking birds since we started raising them.  I attribute that to good temperature control on the scalder and attention on the plucker.  We had a lot of help and things went really smoothly due to our skilled butchering crew that worked together as a great team.  A couple of changes I can think of is to move the location of the whiz bang chicken plucker to be closer to the ditch, so that water doesn't pool, causing the Eviscerating Station to turn into a big mud hole.  We also need to get better hose nozzles that don't leak.  Finally we could position all the stations a little better to improve the flow.  We continue to get better each and every time.

Join us tomorrow as we show you how we cut the chickens up into a standard 8 piece cut up.  We'll sharpen our knives once again to be prepared for cutting.