First time butchering, any tips ?

[Mike Fronczak]

This is our first year with chickens, we bought 8 pullets (2 types of reds) & 4 mixed run (black & white), for eggs. Most if not all the mixed appear to be roosters (kinda hard to tell one from the others because the move around, I figure I can look once they are in the cone & double check, & are realitvly aggressive (chase my kids), so their time is up. I have watched videos and decided the kill cone seems best and have a road cone to modify & make one, found a used turkey fryer off craigslist to used to dip chickens in to loosen feathers. Have a good 6' folding table, cutting board & cooler which I will fill with ice water. I watched the rest on YouTube seems pretty straight forward. Any pointers ?

 

[pen]

We butchered 25 meat chickens for our very first time this past March. It sounds like you have everthing similar to what we did. My husband made a cone out of a 25 gallon bucket. He attached it to a tree, it worked great. A few of the chickens flopped out of it, but otherwise it worked fine.He killed them, I plucked them, he butchered them and then I cleaned them up really good after letting them soak in cooler overnight and packaged them. We have loved the taste of them. Usually grill them. We are already thinking about doing it again next year.


Penny

 

[booker81]

This is the article I wrote - pretty simple. I don't have a cone because I never got around to getting the stuff (no cones or whatnot):

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-to-process-a-chicken-at-home

 

[AlbionWood]

Separate the ones you are going to butcher and hold them in a pen or crate for at least 12 hours, preferably longer, with water but no food. You want their guts to be as empty as possible. I think it works best to take away their food in the morning of the day before slaughter, then that night take their water away as well so they don't drink in the morning - this keeps their crops empty and makes it much easier to pull out.

Slaughter as early in the morning as you possibly can manage, before first light if possible, the chickens will be torpid if it is still dark and they won't get so excited. Alternatively you can do it in the evening after they bed down, but this makes for a long day and increases the chances of messing things up.

Have a plan for all the bits: blood (catch in a bucket), guts (ditto), feathers (bag or bucket), meat (ice water or iced brine in a cooler). I like to have several large pieces of freezer paper cut in advance to put the meat on so it doesn't pick up gunk from the table.

Decide in advance if you want whole birds for roasting, or cut-up for frying etc. If you are going to cut them up anyway, I think it is much easier to do that before evisceration. Pluck, cut off the feet, then cut the thigh/leg assembly away from the body, then use poultry shears to cut the breast away from the back. Now the liver, heart, and gizzard are easily pulled out and cut away from the rest of the viscera; once you have done that, it's easy to dump the guts into a bucket, then pull the lungs/trachea/crop out and drop into the bucket.

Feet are worth the effort for the extra richness they bring to stock. I've found that they skin easier if scalded at a little higher temperature than you use for plucking, maybe 5 to 10 degrees hotter. Peel the yellow skin off and pull off the toenails.

Oh, and speaking of scalding - have a hose with a spray nozzle ready so you can wash off the bird after killing and before scalding. Otherwise your scalding water quickly becomes disgusting.

I like to chill the meat in an iced brine instead of plain ice water; the brine draws moisture out of the meat so it doesn't get waterlogged. About 1/2 cup salt per gallon of water is plenty. Leave meat in brine for 2 to 8 hours, then rinse off and let air-dry in the fridge, or in a cooler with some blue ice or bagged ice, for 24 to 48 hours before packaging.

 

[Mike Fronczak]

Thank you for the advise I was planing on this am, but following your advise I separated out tge 4 and gave them just water, delay till tomorrow morning. If one is a hen, I think I know which one it is but the kids swear it has crowed (or whatever you want to call it) & chased them, I flies it over and only saw holes but I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for, going to do the others first & check them first. My goal is to make this go as smooth as possible so I'm not against doing it with meat birds.

 

[Hummingbird Hollow]

Another few pointers, if you haven't done this already. It takes a while to bring the water up to scalding temperature and it pays to have a thermometer to check the water temp. Too hot and you start to cook the bird and its skin starts to peel off when you are processing...too cool and you won't be able to pluck as easily. Make sure your knives are really REALLY sharp both for the actual killing and the butchering. I have one large pot ready for the necks, gizzards, hearts & kidneys to make stock, another bowl full of cool water to hold the livers until I know what I'm going to do with them (I've made some great pate and also grilled chicken livers...frozen the rest for another time), a small sauce pan for big globs of fat (my Anatolian Shepherd puppy has extra fat added to his feed) and a big ziplock bag (usually an empty dog food bag) for all the offal...innards.

Personally, I find having a bit of food in the crop makes it easier to find and loosen. Not too much or it is a problem, but giving my chickens a small meal the morning I'm going to process them works for me.

 

[chicken pickin]

Some very good advice here. I have 26 CX and 2 BBWs that need to be processed in just a few short weeks. I love hearing peoples tips and advice.