Blood, Guts, and Feathers - Chicken Butchering - 2024

Eight weeks from cradle to grave.  That's it.  That's how long it takes to raise a Cornish Cross Meat Bird for slaughter.  Saturday was butchering day.  Our sons came in to help with the annual process.  We were trying to figure out how many years we've done this and can't put our finger on it.  Our best guess is 15 years.  Each year we purchase day old chicks and raise them for slaughter and eat on these birds all year long.  In the past we've raised as many as 100 at a time.  This year, it's only Tricia and me at home so we raised 32.

Each day we made sure that they had access to feed and fresh water.  We also gave them an all you can eat grass and bug buffet by pushing the chicken tractor to fresh grass two times a day.  The night before the butchering, I pushed the tractor near the butchering stations I set up.  I stopped feeding them at noon the day before butchering so that their digestive system would be emptied.  This makes gutting them a cleaner process.  I got the whetstone out and steel and sharpened all the knives.  A sharp knife certainly makes the butchering process easier.

The Final Countdown

The first station is the "killing cones."  We use traffic cones that were abandoned on the side of the road and then screwed to two 2 x 4's.  The live birds are turned upside down in the cones with the head poking out.  The rubber cones hold them tight.  Buckets are placed beneath each cone to collect the blood.

Killing Cones

Benjamin runs the Killing Cone station.  After he's positioned the birds in place, he uses a sharp knife to slice the bird's artery on the side of its head.

One slice

The bird's heart will pump all the blood out of the bird and it will die.  We aim for the least stressful death possible.  This only takes a couple of minutes and the bird is pronounced dead.

A bloody job

Russ runs the scalding station.  We use our crawfish boiling pot that's been filled with water.  A propane burner heats the water.  A thermometer in the pot is monitored so that it stays between 145 and 150 Fahrenheit.  The temperature has to be just right.  If it is too cool, the feathers won't come off.  If it is too hot, it will cook the bird.  We add some dishwashing liquid to the water.  It is a surfactant and enables the feathers to come off a little easier.  We usually dunk the bird in and out of the water for about two minutes.  We make sure we dunk all the way down so that you get the joint of the let wet.  The test for making sure the bird is ready for plucking is to try to pull a tail feather out and try to pull a big wing feather out.  When each pulls off easily, you're ready for plucking.

Russ' Plucking Station

Teamwork makes the dream work.  Sometimes, when Benjamin is waiting for his four birds to die, he assists Russ in scalding.

Next up is the plucking.  Years ago we built this plucker.  It has rubber fingers mounted on the sides and on a disk on the bottom.  A washing machine motor powers this contraption.  You turn it on and the bottom spins.  Toss the bird in and spray it with water and while it spins, the rubber fingers take all the feathers off.  It's quite a time saver.

The plucker

The de-feathered bird is given to me.  I pull the head of the chicken off and cut the feet off.  Then I remove the gland on the top of the bird's tail, cut the neck and pull the crop and the windpipe out and make a cut across the bird's belly near the vent.

No head, no feet

Tricia runs the evisceration station.  She's quite the surgeon.  She reaches in the bird's cavity and pulls out the intestines, liver, gizzard, heart, crop and windpipe.  It all pulls out connected.  She cuts a U-shaped cut around the vent and the bird is gutted.  The liver, gizzard and heart are cut out and placed in iced containers for further processing later.  The gall bladder is carefully cut off the liver, being careful not to cut into the organ.  All the guts are put in a bucket.  She reaches in the bird and removes the lungs from along the back bone and, if a male, removes the testicles.  The gutted carcass is washed out good with a hose.

The surgeon in her OR

The birds then are cooled down.  They are thrown in tubs of cool water.  Keeping them submerged protects them from flies.  It also brings their body temperature down.  Toward the end of the process, we dump out the water and refill with cool, fresh water.

The chilling station

This whole process goes faster than you think.  We always say we're going to time it and always forget.  Finally, we look in the tractor and there's just one left.  The last of the Mohicans.  

Tomorrow, I'll show you Part II of this process.  It is a smooth operation that we've tried to perfect each year.  There's something to be said about processing your own birds in the backyard.  It's good to know what you are eating and what went into your birds.  No medications.  No hormones.  No antibiotics.  Join us tomorrow as we continue...

Butchering Chickens at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm

Saturday morning had been circled on our calendars for a little over 8 weeks.  Chicken Butchering Day - a day anticipated with dread by both us and the birds, no doubt.  Butchering roughly 70 chickens is a lot of work.  A lot of hot, nasty, smelly, unpleasant work - but it has to be done.  This is the second post on butchering meat birds.  You can use the search function on the blog to find the earlier post, if you're interested.  I'm posting on this subject again because, well, we do it differently every time.  We try to improve the process each time we butcher.  I'm not saying our process is the best way to do it.  It is probably not the best way to do it, but it works for us.  This post is a little heavy on photos and probably verbiage, so grab a cup of coffee and get settled in for the duration, if you're interested.

The night before butchering, we try to get the different butchering stations set up, but the previous evening I was picking Benjamin up at Boy Scout Camp, so I had to set up the stations once we finished milking the fist thing Saturday morning.  We have several stations.  First we have the holding pen in which all of the birds are moved to a location close to the butchering process.  Moving them is accomplished by capturing them by net and removing them from the chicken tractor and putting them in a wagon for the short trip to death row.

Wagon of Tears

The wagon is pulled by our lawn tractor, with 18 horses of unbridled pulling power, more than up to the task of transporting the Cornish Cross chickens to their final destination.  We found that the little red wagon will hold 20 birds, so four trips was all it took to transport the inmates.  We do have to put a covering on the wagon as we had several escapees on the first haul.  Why did the chicken cross the road?  Well, to try to avoid being butchered, of course. 

The rooster cruiser

We set up the holding pen on our cement driveway.  Previous times, we've held them on grass.  We don't feed them for the last 18 hour period to ensure their intestinal tracts are cleaned out and have found that if kept on grass, they'll eat the grass and make gutting them messier.  Speaking of messy, once we're done, all the mess is sprayed off of the driveway with a water hose.  No big deal.


The State "Pen" (Ha Ha)

This, my friends, is death row.  If they were waiting for a call from the governor, pardoning them, I regret to inform you that the call from Governor Jindal never came.  The holding pen is built in a triangle.  These guys are in the chute, a contraption built by a good friend in which we funnel the chickens into and then reach in, pick them up, and carry them to the killing cones.  

Death Row

These are the killing cones.  Actually, they are re-purposed traffic pylons in which I cut the tops out of and screwed them between two 2 X 4's upside down.  They make a perfect cone and the rubbery texture holds them tightly for the gory deed that is about to take place.  You can purchase stainless steel cones made especially for this purchase, but I find that the price is much better on these:)


Killing Cone

The chicken is placed head-down in the cone and then I use a very sharp knife to cut the artery which is right beneath the chicken's 'ear'.  You can see the blood flowing vigorously as the chickens heart pumps all his blood out.  Bleeding the bird out like this makes the meat cleaner without the blood clots that you see around the joints of some birds.  We capture all the blood to be composted into the garden.  Nothing on these birds will go to waste, except maybe the cluck.

The blood-letting exercise

Once the bird is dead, you'll move him to the scalding station.  It is imperative that the water temperature is held between 145 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit.  Too cool and the birds' feathers will not come off.  Too hot and you'll cook him and the bird will be torn apart in the plucker.  You'll need a thermometer to monitor the water temperature and a person manning or "womaning" the scalding station that will maintain proper temperature levels.  If it is too hot, simply spray some water into the scalding pot.  If it is too cool, turn up the flame on your burner.

Monitoring your temperature

We use a crawfish boiling pot as our scalder with a butane burner that heats up the water.  A splash or two of Dawn dishwashing liquid seems to help the feather removal process.
 

A hot pot

The bird is dunked in and out of the scalding pot to ensure that the feathers are getting all wet.  Dunk down past the drumstick joint to make sure that the entire bird gets scalded.  I normally dunk 30 times, but you can tell when the chicken is ready when a wing feather and tail feather are able to be pulled out with ease.  Once that occurs, then you are ready for the next station. 

Scalding the birds

The next station is the defeathering station.  This is performed by our homemade Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker.  While it may not look impressive, stylish, or aerodynamic, this contraption is a thing of beauty - an engineering marvel.  I'd put it right up there with Eli Whitney's cotton gin or Samuel Colt's interchangeable parts, but I'm a bit biased, I suppose.  We got the plans off of the Internet and it is put together with things that you might find in any landfill.


Behold The Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker

Here is a look into the belly of the beast.  The disk at the bottom spins when turned on and the rubber fingers on the spinning disk and the stationary rubber fingers on the barrel briskly removes the feathers. 

Feathers don't stand a chance in here

This next picture is an action shot, showing the bird in the spin cycle.  His feathers are being liberated from his nude carcass.  While he spins, you spray him down with a water hose and the feathers fly off of him, against the walls of the barrel and to the ground below.  These feathers will all be composted into the garden.

The Spin Cycle

This process takes all of about 30 seconds.  When you turn off the machine, you have a completely de-feathered bird.  While I walk him to the next station, I do a quick quality control job and see if there are any pin feathers remaining.  Usually there are none, but I have been known to miss a few.  The chief inspector in charge of oversight (Tricia) will promptly notify me of my omission.

The next thing that happens is we remove the bird's heads.  We simply pull the heads off.  We don't want to dull our knives cutting the head and a cut head would leave a sharp point that would cut the Zip Loc freezer bag.
 

Off with their heads...

It's really easy.  Just use leverage and pull and the head snaps off with no problem.  It takes a little practice, but stay calm.  Don't lose your head.


Pop!

Once the head is gone you will remove the feet so that you provide the person staffing the eviscerating station a clean, defeathered, beheaded, defooted bird all ready to be gutted.
 

Jean LaFeet

And here we go.  Two nice, beautiful birds.  Aren't they pretty?  Except, I spot a feather that my quality control guy (me) missed.  Can you see it?
 


Ready for the Evisceration Station (Think of the movie 'Brave Heart')

We won't go into all the details of gutting a chicken as we've shown that before.  Simply search "How to gut a chicken" in the search parameters of the blog and it will pull up how we do it.  Below you can see Tricia in the process of gutting three birds. 

It is a pretty quick process that involves cutting a slit in the neck and loosening the crop and windpipe, cutting a slit right above the vent (nice name for the butt hole), opening the slit up and reaching waayyy up into the cavity of the bird, grabbing the heart and pulling it all out.  You'll have a long trail of intestine, gizzard, liver, heart, crop and windpipe.  Then simply cut the vent out that is attached to the intestine and reach in an scrape the lungs out of the ribcage.  Then cut the oil gland off of the tail.

Save the heart, liver and gizzards to put on ice to clean and bag for later and throw the rest of the guts into the compost bucket.  You'll want to bury this in the garden or you'll have more flies than Lord of the Flies.


Gutting chickens

Once they are gutted, we wash them off real good and toss them into cooling tanks.  The birds are hot and you want to cool them down quickly.  Keeping them submerged also protects them from the flies which are sure to come once you start butchering.  

Cooling tanks

Once we finish butchering all of the birds, we dump the water off and pack them in ice to age for the rest of the day.  You can purchase tanks to do this, but we use cattle mollasses tubs that we normally catch rainwater in.  I just clean them up real good with bleach.

Chillin' in the hot tub

In the late afternoon once it starts to cool down, we remove them from the ice and weigh each bird and label each gallon freezer bag with the weight.  Then we cut the bird into a standard 8 piece cut up and later move into the freezer.


The finished product of a hard day's work

We ended up with 68 birds.  We started out with 104.  That equates to a 35% mortality rate.  We've never experienced that type loss before.  For the first two weeks, every day we'd find 2 or 3 or 4 dead.  It was frustrating.  I think we just got a weak batch of birds.  C'est La Vie.  Of the 68 birds we butchered, they yielded total carcass weight of 266.75 pounds, averaging 3.92 pounds per bird.  This was also smaller than our previous birds' carcass weights.  I attribute this to the heat.  When it is hot, the big birds are lazy and don't eat as much as the Spring birds.  They just sit in the shade all day.

Discouraging? A bit.  But we can't complain.  We have a freezer full of healthy, home raised birds that we can enjoy all year long.  I can't cry fowl.