Final Word on Butchering AND The NUMBERS

This will be our final post on chicken butchering.  You can read the two previous posts HERE and HERE.  Before we wrap it up, we'll talk about organ meats, cutting up the chickens, freezing them and then finally, final numbers.  Here goes...

Once we're finished butchering, we clean up all the livers and bag them up in quart sized ziploc bags.  We'll wrap with bacon and broil in the oven OR pan fry in butter in a cast iron skillet.  We love chicken livers!  Now for the gizzards.  We cut them in half.  I wanted to show you what's inside - GRASS!  That's a very good sign.  The birds were healthy.  Yes, they ate feed (non-medicated), but they also ate grass and bugs and worms like normal birds are supposed to.  Once the gizzards are cleaned, we bag them up as well.  We eat gizzards and rice - a mighty fine meal. 

Now, we clean the hearts.  Fifty of them.  We cut them in half and wash out the clots that are in the ventricles.

It's a muscle and thus, meat.  We mix them in with the gizzard bags.

We'll take a coffee break and wash up.  A well-needed break.  Chicken Processing is quite a task.  Our work isn't done, though.  After coffee, I sharpen the knives one more time.  They'll be used in a heavy duty purpose now.  It's time to cut the whole chickens up.  After the chickens have chilled all morning and into the late afternoon, they've gone through rigor mortis.

We like to do an eight piece cut-up (with a couple of alterations).  Two drumsticks, two wings, two thighs, and two breasts.  Then we cut each breast in half AND we cut the neck off the backbone and ribs.  We save that for making broth.  We've found that when you cook rice, instead of using water, if you cook rice in broth, it steps up the flavor and richness of your rice and gravy.

Each of those birds gets put in a gallon-sized ziploc bag, labeled and frozen.

We number the bag, notate whether the bag contains a whole chicken or a half chicken, and then put the weight of the carcass.  We stack them in the freezer and we have meat to last us for a whole year, especially since Tricia and I are 'empty-nesters.'

Here's the interesting part - our analysis of the boucherie.

We killed 50 birds.  The total carcass weight of all butchered birds was 227.25 pounds.  That yields an average of 4.545 pounds per bird.  Our heaviest carcass was 5.5 pounds and our lightest was 3.25 pounds.  We're pleased with the health and size of the birds.

Here is detailed analysis of expenses to raise 50 birds from one day old chicks to their slaughter at 8 weeks old:

Chicks:

50 ordered        12/8    $139 or $2.78 per bird (Highest we've ever paid for chicks)

51 arrived

(1) fatality

------------

50 total

Feed:

We purchased 875 pounds of feed at a total cost of $292.33

Supplies:

Heat lamps/bulbs    $18.67

Ziploc bags             $  5.00

Bulb                        $  4.50

Propane                   $20.00

                                --------

                                $43.17

Total Costs:

Birds             $139

Feed              $292.33

Supplies        $43.17

                      ---------

Total            $474.50 / 50 birds =    $9.49 per bird COST / 4.55 lbs/bird = $2.09 per pound

For comparative purposes:

Whole foods Organic whole chicken            $3.99 per pound (our bird isn't organic)

Whole foods Heirloom chicken                    $3.99 per pound (our birds aren't heirloom)

Whole foods whole chicken                          $2.99 per pound (probably a good comparison)

Of course we didn't factor in our labor, but feeding them, pushing the chicken tractor to fresh grass each day, watering them, and butchering probably kept me gainfully occupied and out of trouble, so there's that!

We have a freezer full of chicken now and we'll do this all again in 2023 if the Good Lord's willing.