As the final bird in the chicken tractor is processed, there is still work to be done. All the birds are chilling in tubs of water in the shade. Meanwhile, we gather around the eviscerating table. We dump out the bowl of livers on the table and spray them down. They are mostly clean, but we make sure that they are clean and then pack them in quart bags for freezing. We like to pan fry them in butter. We also like to wrap them in bacon and broil them in the oven. We did that today, in fact. Liver isn't for everyone, but we enjoy it.
Next, we pour all the hearts on the table, cut them in half and wash the coagulated blood out of them and bag them up to freeze. It's just a muscle, so it's good eating. I didn't get a photo of the hearts, though. Livers and hearts are pretty easy to clean and freeze.
The gizzards require a bit more time. The gizzards are surrounded by fat. We take our time and pull it all off of each gizzard. We are kind of particular about getting them super clean.
Then we cut them in half and remove the yellow, plastic-like liner from the inside of the gizzard. It is always interesting to see what's in the gizzard. Chickens eat rocks and oyster shells to aid in the break down and digestion of their food. You can see that these chickens weren't only eating feed and bugs. They were eating their share of grass and clover. Healthy birds.
All the gizzards are bagged and frozen. But don't forget, we have tubs full of feathers, guts, blood, feet, heads, etc. We've always put that right back in the garden. I dig trenches in the garden, pour it all in, cover it back up, and it will rot and add good stuff to the soil. There are sweet potatoes growing in abundance all around the 'gut pit'. Healthy soil is the key to a good garden.
We go inside and take a break, while we are waiting for the next event of the day, I take the opportunity to sharpen the knives. They've all been used all morning and have dulled. I drip some oil on a whetstone and sharpen them and then use the steel to further fine tune. In the end, the work results in a razor sharp knife, and we'll need that in just a little bit.
A final thing I want to discuss is the Buck knife at the bottom of the photo. That knife was my Uncle Don's hunting knife. It was given to me when he passed away, and we used it to butcher chickens today. Don was a good man and while using his knife today, we talked about him and many fond memories of spending time with him. I think he would have enjoyed all the flying feathers today. We certainly miss him.
We brought the tubs holding 32 freshly butchered birds in the house along with the tables. It was getting hot outside and the flies were bad. We felt confident that we would be able to clean up any mess that we made on the tile floors. The birds were on ice and went through the rigor mortis process during the afternoon.
In the late afternoon, we began the final task - cutting up the birds. We do an 8 piece cut-up: 2 breasts, 2 wings, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks. It's actually a 9 piece cut up, because we keep the neck/backbone section for making broth. I wish I would have taken some photos of that process, but my hands get so messy cutting up the birds that I didn't want to get all that on my phone. We freeze them in gallon freezer bags. We froze a couple birds whole (not cut up). The rest we cut up and bagged either 1 chicken or a half chicken to the bag.
We weighed the final product and kept good records. Perhaps tomorrow or the day after, we'll show you the results: total weight, average weight per bird, feed consumption, cost per bird, etc.
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