Killing, Plucking, Eviscerating, & Cutting Up Your Chicken - Graphic!

[frugal]

Killing, Plucking, Eviscerating and Cutting Up Your Chicken

First, catch yourself a chicken!

Next, put your chicken in your killing cone head first.
Pull the head out through the end of the cone.
And then cut the artery just below the jaw line.

And let your bird bleed out until...

it has expired.

Have your scalding tank between 140° F. and 150° F.

Dunk your bird, swishing it around to agitate the water.
Between the agitating and the dish detergent I put in the water,
the water penetrates to the feather follicle allowing for easier feather removal.

A quick dunk in cold water to prevent the skin from tearing when plucked.

For $50 a weekend, I rented this plucker.

However I've done hundreds of birds by hand (and thousands with a plucker!).

A handful of tail feathers.

Using the pinning knife to pluck the last few feathers.
A table knife works just as well.

Next, I cut the head off with a pair of shears.

Now, grasp the neck and pull the skin down tightly.
Slit the skin on top of the neck from the backbone to the end of the neck.

Separate the neck from the windpipe and crop with your fingers.

Pull the crop and windpipe completely away from bird.

And then cut and discard.

Now, cut the neck off at backbone.

Next, cut the feet off at the leg joint.
You are just pressing your knife through cartilage, not cutting bone.
If you're cutting bone, your knife is not positioned correctly.

Now, carefully slit the body cavity and remove the vent.
Start from the side and cut horizontally encircling the vent and reconnecting with your cut line.
or
Start from the breast and cut vertically encircling the vent and reconnecting with your cut line.

Remove all the innards.

Take the liver and pull off the bile duct.
Do not break it or your bird will be stained green.

Be sure to remove all the lungs.
This tool, the lung scraper, really helps and is worth the effort to make one or purchase one.

Now take your gizzard and butterfly it open.

The gizzard is a muscle the birds use to grind up their food.
The chickens eat small stones that stay in the gizzard to act as grinding stones.
Notice the different stages of grinding the corn is in.

These are the stones I found in this gizzard.

Now peel your gizzard.
Just get underneath it and it will peel off quite nicely.

Clean, peeled and ready to use.

Now, take the socks off your chickens feet.
If they're not just slipping right off, re-scald them and then you can easily remove their socks.

Sliding right off.

All clean and ready to use.

Here's all the extra pieces and a step by step pictorial to use them and make the best Chicken Stock you'll ever taste!

Backbones, Necks
Feet, Heads, Gizzards
Hearts.

Scraping the birds body cavity for any leftovers...

Remove the glands by slitting the tail open and cutting them away.

See the yellow glands, they make the bird taste bad.

Or you can just cut the tail off like I do.

This bird is ready for a final trimming and cleaning before I cut it up.


Cutting Up Your Chicken

My bird is cleaned and ready.

First, remove your wings.
Bend wing out and push knife into shoulder cartilage.
If you're cutting into bone your knife is in the wrong position.

Keep applying pressure with your hand as the knife slides through the shoulder joint.

Now, press your leg down toward the table and gently slice the skin.

Keep applying downward pressure, pushing your knife through the hip joint.
Then cut along the hip and remove leg. Repeat with other leg.
Again, if you're cutting into bone your knife is in the wrong position.

Next, cut through shoulder area and remove backbone from breast.

Not much bone here.

To separate thigh from leg press knife through knee joint.
Once again, if you're cutting into bone your knife is in the wrong position.

Half Breast • Back
Leg & Thigh • Whole Breast • Leg & Thigh separated
Wings

To split the breast insert knife and press through bone and cartilage.

Fresh organic chicken breasts.

And the best chicken livers you've ever had!

 

[frugal]

Quote:
Thanks, I attempt to do How-To pictorials that are simple and easy to follow. I've found most things we do around the homestead are simple and easy as long as you use common sense. I'm a normal guy and I figure if I can homestead, anyone can.

 

[Audio51]

Thank you so much for posting this thread. I got thru my first one today...by myself. It was not as traumatic as I thought it would be. The cone helped with that I think. I bought a traffice cone at TSC and cut enough off the top to make about 4" opening. I turned it upside down and attached it to the railing of the deck. It worked great! Took me about an hour to process and I had a little trouble getting the innards out. I guess I expected them to be loose, but you really have to work the connective tissue loose to get everything out. I also had a bit of trouble with getting the cavity clean after removing the innards, but discovered that the luttle metal thing for removing the tops from strawberries workd great! Here is my finished product. Nt too bad for the first time...

 

[dragonbird]

I just want to add my thanks for this thread. OMG I've been studying it for almost a year now. haha! I have five roos and three must go....I've looked at the photos long enough and often enough that I have great confidence going into this now....Truly, thank you so much. I swear you need to print up that post, laminate it and sell it on Amazon. It would be the best thing I'd ever purchase!

 

[Poison Ivy]

Thanks for the infomation and the pictures are great. I have 6 that I will need to process in about 6 more weeks. This will help out a lot and make the process easier for me.

 

[aoxa]

This is how I open up the back end:


Open Up The Back End

Now we come to the really exciting part of butchering a chicken, or at least the start of it. Before you can reach into the chicken’s body cavity and pull out its insides, you need to cut an opening at the back end.


My approach to this is to cut a small opening with the knife, then reach into the opening and tear it wider. The less cutting you do, the less chance there is that you’ll cut into an intestine or some other internal organ that you shouldn’t cut into.


So here we are at the posterior of the bird, with the knife in position to make a slice:



Directly below my knife in the picture is the cloaca of the bird. The cloaca is also sometimes called the "vent." Frankly speaking, it is the bird's butt hole. That is as frank as I will get.


Notice that I am pinching and lifting the skin above the knife. And notice also that my knife blade is angled up a bit. That’s what you want to do: lift the skin and slice up into the lifted part. By doing it that way, you avoid cutting into any internal organs. Here’s another view of the cutting position:



Now, in this next picture you can see that I have made a horizontal slice. I have cut through the skin and underlying yellow fat just enough to make a small opening into the body cavity.


Please Note: When you cut into the bird’s body cavity, no liquid should come out. If liquid (i.e. yellow-colored water) does come pouring out of the opening, the bird is sick. Throw it away. I have had this happen on two birds in ten years.



Here is another angle on the cut, showing just how much of an opening cut I make.



That’s all you need. Then you work your finger tips into the opening and enlarge it enough to get a grip on the top and bottom of the cut, as shown here:



See how I have two fingers on one hand and two fingers on the other hand in the body cavity and I am pulling the opening to make it larger? That’s what you do.


Here is where I need to warn you of something important. If the chicken has had access to food prior to butchering, there will be fecal matter (a.k.a, FEMAT) in its intestine. That being the case, when you tear the opening larger, you are going to put pressure on the intestine, and FEMAT will be forced out the vent.


FEMAT escape is disgusting but it is to be expected: FEMAT happens. When it does, stop what you are doing, position the bird’s back end under the faucet and thoroughly flush all FEMAT away, being very careful not to let it enter the body cavity. If you get FEMAT on your work surface, flush it away with lots of fresh water and a rinse of diluted bleach solution. Problem solved.


Here’s a picture of the body cavity opened up sufficiently:



Here’s another picture of the opened up chicken. My right hand is poised to plunge in. That’s the next step……





The extra skin left at the end - I cut in the centre and tuck the legs into it. Looks nice and pretty when packaged like that.

Like so:

 

[Annalog]

Four years ago I killed and processed 12 of the 15 roosters from a box of 25 straight run chicks following what I had learned from various online sources (primarily Joel Salatin's videos). Much was similar to the information in this thread. I processed two the first weekend and the rest in small (3 to 5) batches on other weekends. I processed the least friendly roosters first as I wanted to keep the friendliest..

We made two tall sawhorses and placed two 2x4s across them just far enough apart to support an upside down traffic cone with the top cut off. Under the cone was a large box lined with a black plastic bag. We did not feed the chickens the evening before as I read that it was best to have their guts empty. Since none of the chickens in the coop were fed and they all stayed together, the roosters to be processed in the morning were not stressed by being separated. I did all the processing in the late autumn when the weather was cool and dry.

I got everything ready well before sunrise on the opposite side of the house from the coop. I went into the coop and took a sleeping rooster from the roost and carried it around the house, talking to it and keeping it calm. After putting the rooster in the cone, holding the head and slitting the vein, and waiting for the bird to bleed out, I hung the bird from hooks on one of the sawhorses by a cord with a slip knot around each foot. I then went back to the coop for the next rooster. I was careful to keep the birds calm and keep them from seeing anything to frighten them. This was fairly easy as I finished this first part before sunrise and all the blood went into the black plastic bag, probably because I held their heads until they were dead. I wore an apron that stayed clean and a glove on the hand that held the bird's head. I put the glove on after putting the bird in the cone and took it off before getting the next bird.

By sunrise, the water in the propane canning pot reached the correct temperature for scalding. I plucked each bird and placed in a tub with ice water. I sat in a chair so that the scalded bird hanging from the sawhorse was at my shoulder height. I ate breakfast while the birds were chilling in the ice water.

Then I moved to the kitchen where I cleaned, parted, vacuum packed, and put them in the freezer. I thoroughly cleaned the kitchen before and after this step.

While I do not enjoy killing and processing my chickens, at least I know that they had a good chicken life and were treated well to the end.

 

[Newyorkrita]

This is super helpful. Exceptional with the illustrations for each step.

I got to this thread from a link posted in a meat bird thread. I didn't know it existed till now.

 

[PurpleChicken]

WOW!!! Nice Job!!! Excellent Post!!!

That was so much better than I could do. Thank you
for the education.

 

[MissPrissy]

Excellent job!

Welcome to BYC!

I have edited your thread to note graphic photos in the title.