I think a lot of the answer depends on when you start timing. If you look at the whole processing production, starting with set-up, and keep the timer running until you do your final clean-up, it takes a while. For me it goes something like this:
- cup of coffee
- setting up the scalder, getting it heating, while,
- filling a 120 qt. cooler full of cold water for chilling,
- setting up the plastic table in the shade under the big pear tree
- running back up to the house because inevitably I forgot something
- grabbing a cockerel from the tractor
- carrying it to the block
- cutting its head off
- bleeding it into a bucket
- scalding it
- hanging it
- plucking it
- eviscerating it
- dropping it into the chilling tank
- repeat the last 9 steps 29 more times
- coffee break and escape from the yellow-jackets (this is normally a summer event for us)
- cleaning up slaughter station while the birds chill (often the go in the fridge for a couple of days to condition)
- quartering half of the chickens for smaller packs for the freezer (the remaining chickens stay whole, for roasting)
- cleaning and sorting gizzards, hearts and livers
- bagging everything
- labeling the bags
- roasting the carcasses for stock
- simmering the carcasses in big stockpots
- pulling remaining meat from the carcasses (for "mushy mystery-meat soup")
- pressure-canning the broth
- drink many cups of coffee during the pressure canning
- render the extra fat to make schmaltz
- sneak bites of crispy rendered fatty bits ("scooby-snacks")
- pressure canning the schmaltz and hearts and gizzards
- final clean-up and wipe down of the kitchen, knives, etc. with vinegar solution
- another coffee break.
- put the canned broth and mystery meat away after it cools
- broadcast the blood and feathers over a fallow patch of garden and till it all under
- dig a deep post-hole in the back 40 and bury the entrails/heads
- cold beer
- shower
When you include that whole list, I'd say we are probably the most inefficient chicken processors that ever lived. It takes up a whole weekend for two of us. By the time we are done with all of those steps, we look at each other and say, "why do we keep doing this to ourselves." Our fingers are all wrinkly from being in the water for days, and our necks and feet hurt from standing at the counter.
But then, during the rest of the year, when we take chicken out of the freezer, and when it has that incredible, incomparable taste of real chicken... we start talking about how we should grow more the next year.
