We did 7 Cornish Cross birds at 8.5 weeks old. It took 3 of us (all newbies) about 5-6 hours. We used butcherachicken.blogspot.com as our primary instructional. It was fabulous and informative and invaluable!
The biggest surprise for me was the smell. I guess I was already ready for the sight of all that would happen but pictures only show one dimension. The smell of the warm, dead bird was really tough for me. I discovered that the birds that were kept in an ice bath between plucking and evisceration were more tolerable. I could swear that the smell of dead chicken is still on my hands today. Hubby says that the scalding step left him with a "wet-dog" smell that he can't get rid of.
Also, the FEEL of the innards. Again, pics can't give you an idea of how it's going to feel to actually touch the internals. Warm insides were more yucky to me. I was surprised by how squeamish I was about this.
Overall, both of these could be easily remedied (for me) by working with colder birds.
Removing the head went better than bleeding out. Hubby was in charge of this part and had originally opted to use the method of slitting the jugular so as to avoid any mishaps of unsure blows for beheading. He said that he could swear the bird was in pain on the first couple that he tried. He then just started taking the whole head.
Our drill mounted Power Plucker did not work to our satisfactory. Is was purchased with our killing cone on Amazon after hearing so any BYCers rave about them (any plucker, not necessarily the Power Plucker). It did pluck the bird fast but left many of the quills inside the bird. My family is pretty obsessive about getting all of those out so for us, that was a deal breaker and we went to hand plucking. Still not 100% but better.
Speaking of plucking. We had a hard time getting all the feathers because they were just so sticky. It seems like it was hard to pluck and drop the feathers. They all just seems to stick on your hand and then back on the bird making it hard to tell which were plucked and stuck or which had not been plucked yet. Did we just not use enough water to rinse during this step or what?
We did not have a good plan as to what we wanted to do with the birds. We want to freeze some as broilers and some as parts but because we didn't plan in advance, we had to just refrigerate and the birds whole for resting and then organize our parts before the shrink wrap and freezing. I wish we'd been better prepared so that all those jobs were already done.
We lost a lot of time in the morning just setting up our stations. Next time, we'll do as much of that as we can the night before.
We have 7 more to do in a couple of weeks. If those birds are not super yummy, we may not even bother doing it all again. It was a lot of work but well worth it for a fresh, tasty chicken dinner. Especially since our egg birds are REALLY trying our patience! Thanks to soooo many of you who unknowingly made it all possible through your advice and voice of experience. I can't wait to taste our efforts.
The biggest surprise for me was the smell. I guess I was already ready for the sight of all that would happen but pictures only show one dimension. The smell of the warm, dead bird was really tough for me. I discovered that the birds that were kept in an ice bath between plucking and evisceration were more tolerable. I could swear that the smell of dead chicken is still on my hands today. Hubby says that the scalding step left him with a "wet-dog" smell that he can't get rid of.
Also, the FEEL of the innards. Again, pics can't give you an idea of how it's going to feel to actually touch the internals. Warm insides were more yucky to me. I was surprised by how squeamish I was about this.
Overall, both of these could be easily remedied (for me) by working with colder birds.
Removing the head went better than bleeding out. Hubby was in charge of this part and had originally opted to use the method of slitting the jugular so as to avoid any mishaps of unsure blows for beheading. He said that he could swear the bird was in pain on the first couple that he tried. He then just started taking the whole head.
Our drill mounted Power Plucker did not work to our satisfactory. Is was purchased with our killing cone on Amazon after hearing so any BYCers rave about them (any plucker, not necessarily the Power Plucker). It did pluck the bird fast but left many of the quills inside the bird. My family is pretty obsessive about getting all of those out so for us, that was a deal breaker and we went to hand plucking. Still not 100% but better.
Speaking of plucking. We had a hard time getting all the feathers because they were just so sticky. It seems like it was hard to pluck and drop the feathers. They all just seems to stick on your hand and then back on the bird making it hard to tell which were plucked and stuck or which had not been plucked yet. Did we just not use enough water to rinse during this step or what?
We did not have a good plan as to what we wanted to do with the birds. We want to freeze some as broilers and some as parts but because we didn't plan in advance, we had to just refrigerate and the birds whole for resting and then organize our parts before the shrink wrap and freezing. I wish we'd been better prepared so that all those jobs were already done.
We lost a lot of time in the morning just setting up our stations. Next time, we'll do as much of that as we can the night before.
We have 7 more to do in a couple of weeks. If those birds are not super yummy, we may not even bother doing it all again. It was a lot of work but well worth it for a fresh, tasty chicken dinner. Especially since our egg birds are REALLY trying our patience! Thanks to soooo many of you who unknowingly made it all possible through your advice and voice of experience. I can't wait to taste our efforts.
