Any tips on how to streamline processing?

[meowsandy]

Hello, I've been lurking on this forum for a few month, but haven't posted much since I haven't had anyting to add.

We moved to land last august, and decided to take a shot at raising broilers this spring. We've kept a few layers for years, so I'm not a complete newbie to chickens. The first week in March we picked up 11 Cornish cross from Tractor supply, along with a few Buff Orpingtons to add to our layer flock. We had them all in the brooder for about 4 weeks and then mooved them to an 8x8 tractor which we move to fresh pasture daily. We lost about one a week after that due to what I suspect was heart failure(they woudl turn purpleish, act out of breath, and die a fews days later). The rest of our flock remained healthy and this weekend my husband processed 4. They weight between 3. 5 and 4.5 lbs at 9 weeks. We have 4 remaining healthy birds that we plan to process this weekend.

So my question is, how can we streamline the process. It took my husband about 7 hours to process the last batch of 4 and I see others doing 20-30 in a day. He had a killing station up with a killing cone, where he killed them and let them bleed out. Then he scalded and plucked, then gutted. Any tips or useful tools we should know about? I know it will be a little quicker the second time around, but we need to cut this time significantly or don't think he will agree to do this again.

 

[Coralietg]

We just did 6 in 6 hours (including clean up), which isn't very fast at all but it was my husbands first time. He killed, scalded, plucked, then put into a cooler. Repeated with all 6, into a cooler with ice water. When they were all dispatched and plucked, he started gutting them all. It worked well for us, he took an hour break in between dispatching and plucking, to gutting. I helped pluck, brought the chickens to the cone, did the random things that came up, checked water temperature, helped rinse the chickens, things like that.

Having help makes a big difference. It took me over 90 minutes to do one chicken by myself. With me and my husband, it cut the time down a lot.

Hand plucking takes a lot of time, some people have access to (or own) a plucker. That saves a lot of time.

 

[tadaen sylverma]

I don't have any recent experience with it but it gets faster even without a proper plucker and such. With a cleaver and a decent paring knife bout 14 years ago I could do one by myself in about 20 minutes, and that is nowhere near record time. First time took me almost an hour for 1 bird. Longest part was the plucking as we didn't know any better, the internet wasn't exactly huge, and the concept of scalding never came up.... dry plucking, what a mess.

To be fair back then I was hopped up on stuff I shoudn't have been so I was moving a bit faster than norrmal to.

 

[carolb5]

Joel Salatin has a video

This is what we will do when we do the deed.

Carol

 

[donrae]

Folks that are doing 30 birds a day usually aren't working alone. How much help does your husband have? I'd also think those folks are using a plucker or skinning the bird, not hand plucking.

It's also true that butchering is just something that takes a lot of hands-on practice. You can watch all the you tube videos you want, but until you have the knife and are doing the deed, you won't get better. I'll bet his time on the next 4 will be quite a bit better....but then if you don't do meat birds again for several months, he may be back to square one.

The high-volume videos or blogs I've seen have several people manning different stations...usually one to kill, one to pluck, and one to gut, so three at a minimum. Extra folks usually gut, as that takes the longest if you have a plucker.

 

[meowsandy]

Thanks for the tips and encouragement. My husband only had me to help bring fresh scalding water and run with other errands. My main job was to keep the baby and other small children out from under foot. Perhaps when we want to do more we can bribe a friend or two with chicken.

 

[Elke Beck]

I do my set up the night before, when I pull out the chickens I plan to butcher the next day, so that saves time on the day.

Also, I pay attention to work flow -- if you can minimize the number of steps you take, it is more efficient and goes quicker. It is like when you are designing a kitchen and you look at the triangle between the sink, refrigerator and range. The shorter and cleaner the legs of the triangle, the better the kitchen functions. When I am working alone, I arrange my set up so there is no more than 2 steps between each station (killing, scalding/plucking and cleaning). That way when I am at the cleaning station and want the knife that I left at the killing station, I can quickly grab it and move on without breaking my rhythm. Of course, if I am working with someone else, I move the stations farther apart so that we are not bumping each other.

I would make sure the scalding water stays hot enough. I get slowed down when the birds are not getting scalded right. When the temp is between 150 and 160 I can just brush most of the feathers off, but when it goes into the 140's, it feels like I have to yank each clump of feathers out.

If you have recipes that use skinless chicken, skinning is fast. Why go to the work of plucking when the skin is coming off anyway?

If you want to do super fast, skin the bird, then filet off the breast and cut off the legs without gutting. There is some loss in back and bones, but you get usable meat with about half the work of full processing. You can also do it with a plucked bird if you just want breasts and legs.

I did two chickens on Sunday, and counting the time it took to heat the water and clean up, it took 2 hours. Each additional bird would have added about 30 minutes.

 

[meowsandy]

I do my set up the night before, when I pull out the chickens I plan to butcher the next day, so that saves time on the day.

Also, I pay attention to work flow -- if you can minimize the number of steps you take, it is more efficient and goes quicker. It is like when you are designing a kitchen and you look at the triangle between the sink, refrigerator and range. The shorter and cleaner the legs of the triangle, the better the kitchen functions. When I am working alone, I arrange my set up so there is no more than 2 steps between each station (killing, scalding/plucking and cleaning). That way when I am at the cleaning station and want the knife that I left at the killing station, I can quickly grab it and move on without breaking my rhythm. Of course, if I am working with someone else, I move the stations farther apart so that we are not bumping each other.

I would make sure the scalding water stays hot enough. I get slowed down when the birds are not getting scalded right. When the temp is between 150 and 160 I can just brush most of the feathers off, but when it goes into the 140's, it feels like I have to yank each clump of feathers out.

If you have recipes that use skinless chicken, skinning is fast. Why go to the work of plucking when the skin is coming off anyway?

If you want to do super fast, skin the bird, then filet off the breast and cut off the legs without gutting. There is some loss in back and bones, but you get usable meat with about half the work of full processing. You can also do it with a plucked bird if you just want breasts and legs.

I did two chickens on Sunday, and counting the time it took to heat the water and clean up, it took 2 hours. Each additional bird would have added about 30 minutes.

Great tips, Thank You! I helped him reorganize his workspace and it did go quicker. I also help with plucking and I see that that's where most of the time is spent. I suspect the water was not quite hot enough becuase the feathers did not " brush off". Next time I think we'll look into buying/renting a plucker.

Anyhow, all our meaties are in the freezer now, and none too soon. It's gotten hot here and they were already starting to suffer.