Saturday morning we woke to the crowing of roosters near our bedroom window. It has become a frequent and regular occurrence. With a number of roosters occupying a limited space with many more hens, it's been quite a commotion. That ends today. Friday evening I set up all of the stations that we use for butchering: The Killing Cones, The Scalding Cauldron, The Plucking Machine, The Evisceration Station, and the Chill Zone.
Let's get this party started. I turned on the fire to the crawfish pot and watched it, monitoring for the exact moment when it hit 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Then I aim to keep it there. Too hot and you'll cook 'em. Too cool and the feathers won't come off. I went and picked out the two roosters we wanted to keep. They made the cut. The others will make their places of abode in our deep freeze. We put the first four roosters in the cones.
Head down, with buckets underneath to catch the blood. Usually we bury the blood in the garden, but this time, my neighbor wanted it to make catfish bait with. We slit the chickens' necks and allow their heart to pump out all the blood. When bled out, they die. The cones hole them tight.
Time for scalding. We add some dishwashing liquid to the pot. This allows the water to get beneath the feathers during the scald. I dunk them deep into the water for about a minute. To test, I pull a big wing feather and tailfeather out. When they both come out with ease, they are ready for plucking.
To pluck, we simply toss the bird in the barrel, turn on the plucker and spray the spinning bird with water. The feathers start to fly. Pretty soon, there are no more feathers left on the chicken.
The homemade plucker that me and two friends put together works beautifully. It literally takes of 99% of the feathers. During quality control, we may pull a feather or two off, but overall, this machine saves us a LOT of time and effort. You can see the results here:
Once the birds are gutted, they are washed up and then put in a tub of cold water to continue cooling down. After we're done, we dump out the warm water and refill with cool water. We bring the tub inside and pack with ice. The birds will stay on ice for 24 hours while the birds go through rigor mortis. Then we cut them up and bag them. Since (most) of these are small roosters, we don't know how tender they'll be to eat after cooking on the BBQ pit. Most of these will be used this winter in Homemade chicken soup and Gumbo. Both cooked low and slow, allowing the meat to become tender.
EPILOGUE: In the "you live and you learn category," I'll share something with you. To determine who lived and who died, we selected the two roosters we wanted to keep. The rest of them would be butchered. It was hard to count exactly how many roosters with them all moving around. I thought I counted 8 in total.
As we kept filling the cones, I realized we had more than that. At the end, we had butchered 16 birds. I wanted to make sure I had them all. On the last pass, I gathered 3 remaining birds. The had a big comb, long tailfeathers, and the beginning of a spur on the side of their leg. 3 more roosters, I thought. Got to get those, too. Since they are young, they're a little hard to tell.
Once we butchered those, Tricia was gutting. She said, "What is all this yellow stuff?" I walked over to inspect. It was egg. Oh no! I had mistakenly killed 3 hens!!
You can see all the eggs at different stages lined up within her.
This is a big mistake on my part. This hen (and the two others I mistakenly killed) would have laid 300 eggs per year. That mistake cost me almost 1,000 eggs a year. I should have waited and watched and allowed the ones I wasn't 100% sure of to grow until I was sure of their sex. This was a teachable moment for me, for sure.
On the bright side, we added 16 chickens to the freezer and we'll enjoy the fresh, hormone-free, antibiotic free birds in delicious home-cooked meals this winter.
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