Quote:
muggs, i cannot kill my birds either. and my husband is far away from this action too (he's a greek that lived in usa for 37 years, soo...). so, i had only a choice left here: to find somebody else to do it, a neighbor. i couldn't watch, at least, but that's why i grew them. if you cannot do it either, then find somebody that can (i hope i don't hurt anybody's feelings, but i would say to find a mexican or a chinese, in their culture to kill a bird to eat it is not an awful thing, like it is in yours). here they cut the head of the bird and let it die. after that, you bring a pot of water to boil, but don't let it boil tho, just close to that point. it has to be a pot big enough to have room for the water and for a bird at a time too (i cut 6-8 birds per day when the season comes). you submerse the bird in the hot water and start to pull the feathers from wings and from tale, the bigger ones. if these are coming out easily, then all of them do. at this point you take the bird out of the water and pull out all the feathers (if the water is too hot, the skin comes of). it is gonna take some time. get sure you got out all the tiny ones from the feathers and from the tail. it is not nice to feel them in your food. after that, i wash the bird, i use cornmeal to rub the skin and clean it well. after the bird is very clean, you cut the wings and the legs (move them to see where they get attached to the body and cut right there. go to the neck and you will find a sack with food under the skin. cut the skin and take that away and throw it to the garbage. go to the other end of the bird, at the tail and in top of it it is a gland, in both sides of the bone, cut it and throw it away. find the end of the cheast bone and make a cut from a leg to another, but be very careful, cut only the skin, a little at a time. under that skin you find the intestines and you don't want to cut those. so, after you make that long cut, make an other one, from the middle of the first cut down to the bird ass (sorry!) and cut around it, been careful do not cut the intestines. now, with one hand you go inside the bird and try to get everything out. do that easy, easy, until you learn how. if there is something that doesn't want to get out inside, get a knife and cut a little bit (that is the connection with the lungs in there, but after you cut it you can get everything out). save the liver and the gizzard, if you want. attached to the liver you find a small sack with a green liquid. i don't know the english word for that. be careful do not break it, because that liquid is very bitter. (in fact, be careful do not break that out when you get the intestines out. keep your hand between the intestines and bones and it is gonna be just fine.) cut that green thing and throw it away (cut some of the liver with, but that is fine as long as you don't break the thing). don't forget to get the lungs out and everything is attached to them, the throat i mean. if you want to clean up the gizzard, cut from lateral till you rich that hard skin inside and open it. if you are lucky, that skin it stays closed and you just throw it away. if you're not lucky, that skin opens up and you have to clean the poo from inside and get that hard skin away from your gizzard. last thing to do, cut the body of the bird. where you had the wings before, there are 2 holes now. put the knife in one hole and cut down to where the legs used to be. do the same on the other side and you can get the breast away. now, you have only the ribs and the back left, cut in 2 pieces and that's all. wash the meat a few times, until it is clean and it is not to much blood in the water anymore.
the most important thing is do not break that green thing attached to the liver when you get the intestines out, because it is so bitter that that would spoil the taste of the meat. other than that, it is nothing so important. now i don't have any bird to cut, but i have some whole ducks in my freezer and i will take some pictures tomorrow to show you at least a few of the things i was talking about.
i hope nobody get offended by my post. i had read all 219 pages of this topic and i felt it is not fair to let some of you to get rid of thier birds just because they don't know what to do with them. i know how much work it means to grow them and it is not fair to give to somebody else your money, your time and your efforts. if you don't want your birds in your plates, maybe you trade them, i had read somebody's comment and she said that it was easy to cut the birds because it was not her the one that grew them up. but, still, if my post is too much for somebody, just ask a moderator to delete it. i wont get upset because of that, i understand.
i was born into a village, i moved into a town when i was about 20 and i lived in a town for 25 years. now i got buck to my village and i and my husband try to set up a farm here. we have about 70 acres of land for now, part ours, part rented. we produce corn, sunflower, wheat and alfalfa. this year we buy a house here and i'll have about 22,000sf of land as a backyard. i bought seeds to start growing my own vegetables (that's gonna be my first year of gardening) and for sure i will buy chickens, turkeys, ducks (from which we love the meat), geese and cornish hens (i'm not sure this is their name, they look like chicken, but they are smaller, they are gray and they fly). i'm considering to buy 2 pigs, some rabbits and 2 veals, but we will see (the village is small and we don't have a supermarket here, just small stores where you find just things that people cannot produce at home).
muggs, i started with an answer to you and i ended up talking to everybody. sorry for that. i just hope many other people will find helpful this post (i know there are shy people that don't want to ask this kind of questions). i hope my post will help you a bit. just ask more questions, if you want (on private messages too). i hope you don't get disgusted from the smell when you get the intestines out. that will be the hardest thing for anybody, i think. but once you throw them away it is gonna be fine. 2-3 months later, when you get the meat from your freezer to cook it, there wont be any bad smell to bother you.
Wow! Thank you for typing all of that! I consider myself a visual person, but I completely understood what you were trying to tell me. I have a handful of birds I have not grown attached to, so I think I can do this. Once I've done the deed, cut and cleaned the bird, and of course EAT the bird, I can see myself raising my own meat. I feel like this is a STUPID question (for all my real farmer friends, don't laugh)...processing a chicken is the same as a duck, turkey, pheasant, guinea, etc, etc? Right?
Also, for all of our vegetarian and vegan friends, or those that raise poultry solely as pets, they all understand what goes into raising birds for eating. I personally will feel a sense of superiority when I no longer have to rely on chicken from the supermarket. I may even brag a little once I jump this hurdle of processing my own birds!
Thank you for your advice. You will be in my ear when we try this in a few weeks!
. last year i had 120 chicken, 40 turkeys and 39 ducks. this year i will start to buy them in april, after we move into a new house with a bigger yard. i also want to buy some geese ans cornish hens (?). where's the spring:cd:cd:cd?
