Can it take too long to butcher?

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SarahFair

SarahFair

Songster
11 Years
Sep 23, 2008
3,696
36
209
Monroe, Ga
Where the meat goes bad?


I did only my second chicken today and it actually took me a pretty long time...
I was out in the sun..

So would the meat still be ok?


It also have a lot of yellow "blubber". Is that just fat?
 
it takes a long time to spoil meat in the heat, what took a long time the actual killing or the plucking? if the killing the longer it take can make the meat tough, if the plucking, faster is better but will do no harm if you take some time
the yellow is fat, if you used processed feed it will be yellower and more of it
 
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It was the gutting that took so long
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The first one I ever did was not hard at all...
The 2 I did today WOW! I dont know whats wrong with me
 
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there is an art to gutting, practice is what you need, what i started to do was challenge myself to get everything out in one pull. are you following any advise on how to gut, or are you just doing it? there is a method to it so you can do it faster.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAJh9ehtTmA

this is a good video of gutting, the only thing i do different is run my finger in the hole of the breast side to loosen the lungs and anything else that might be stuck up there, also I loosen all the innards with my fingers before I pull, but I have very small hands and long fingers (size 5 ring) . I do the guzzard different too.

Hope this helps
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looks like a good one! I looked all over youtube and found one that was ok but the guy did it SO fast I could hardly tell..
I tried watching this one but my SO said 'Sarah! Im eating!!'
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SISSY!
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I seem to remember that the USDA says you have to get the chicken down to 40 degrees in 4 hours to be safe. (I may be remembering that wrong). Even at my very slowest and most confused I could slaughter a single chicken in less than 4 hours.
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Even if you take too long, just make sure you cook the chicken well. The meat doesn't go bad, you just increase the likelihood of microbial growth.

It DOES get easier, with practice. It gets much easier. I got a lot of help from watching Joel Salatin's evisceration video's on youtube -- I think they call it the 20 second evisceration. I'm not down to 20 seconds, but I'm much better than I was. Probably the best thing I learned from experience is that the guts are tougher than I thought they were -- for the first dozen chickens or so I was convinced I was going to tear everything and contaminate the chicken, so I wasn't grabbing and pulling hard enough. Pull! It's OK!

Also I've found its a lot easier to do it in the shade. I dunno, for some reason standing out in the sun makes it easy for both me in the chicken to overheat and then things start smelling bad and it's just no fun and all and I slow down and make mistakes. I gutted five chickens in a row once and then realized that I had forgotten to remove the lungs in half of them and had to pull them all out of the tank again to check. Gah.
 
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I prefer the 2 vids from Salatin talking about processing.


and of course the great vid talking about how to break down the bird into parts if your doing that
 
Quote:
I prefer the 2 vids from Salatin talking about processing.


and of course the great vid talking about how to break down the bird into parts if your doing that

i was looking for that one and couldn't find it, if you watch both videos then its only practice you need
 

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