The first…
WARNING THIS WILL BE GRAPHIC> While I encourage you to read on I will be describing in detail how we processed our chickens…
Once that you've decided on a killing
First you make a stone of your heart
And if you find that your hands are still willing
Then you can turn a murder into art
I am pretty sure that The Police were not talking about chicken processing.
I am surprised at the number of my Facebook friends that were disturbed and maybe a little horrified at our newest venture. I guess I shouldn’t be. The vast majority of people in this country are very disconnected from their food. Not just animal sourced food either. Don’t think I am telling the truth? Do you eat peanut butter? Right now, without googling, picture a peanut plant. Eat kiwis? Cashews? Picture them growing. Where does canola oil come from? Picture the plant. Not easy is it? So many of us buy our food in a clean well-lit giant building, we don’t even think about where it comes from.
The way we see meat has been sanitized. We don’t see the head, feet, or other parts that remind us this was a living creature. If you eat and enjoy meat, this shouldn’t bother you. It might, but it shouldn’t. You should be more concerned with how these animals live and die, that what they look like after the fact.
Factory chickens have some of the worst conditions out there. When we decided to get chickens we wanted to have them for both meat and eggs. When we had ducks, years ago, we sent them to be processed. You dropped them off in cages and they came home in bags. While convenient, it wasn’t cheap. We eat a lot of chicken and for us to raise them for consumption, it needed to be cost effective.
We were fortunate enough to have a friend who was about to take her chickens to auction. Our friend Tomme gave us a flock of lovely Columbian Wyandottes. These were to be our “canaries”. If something was to go wrong – if the coop wasn’t secure, if we had predators, if the horse decided to stomp them, we would know, and not have a financial risk. We could also practice our processing technique. If for some reason we could not kill them or process them, we wanted to know before we invested any more time and money.
Before we got the chickens I researched. A lot. I joined forums, I asked questions. I spent a day watching “chicken snuff films” on YouTube. I wanted to be fully prepared for what we were going to do. There are a lot of ways to kill a chicken, and if you look on the internet, you can pretty much find them all. There was the guy who chopped the head off using his deck rail as a chopping block, letting the head fall to the waiting dogs and cat below, the man, laughing maniacally at the flapping and blood from the deceased bird the whole time. There was a sweet hippie woman who gently held and petted the bird before slitting its throat and then pulling the head off, crying the whole time. There were the hipsters in so much protective gear they could have been wearing haz mat suits. There was a mountain of a man who hung the bird up, slit its throat and nodded solemnly as he said, “That’s how they did it in the bible”.
From all this I was able to get enough information to come up with the cleanest most humane way of killing a chicken that I felt capable of. So the night before, we pulled the food and readied ourselves for the morning. The next morning, after milking, we boxed up two chickens and brought them to the garage. They were calm in the dog carrier as we gathered the rest of what we needed. Finally, it was time. Avery took the bird and placed her in a cut off road cone, head down, over our stainless grooming sink. There was a slight adjustment to the size of the hole, and then she fit nicely. There was a moment when she wouldn’t put her head through the hole and when she did, she pulled it back up. I had a brief moment where I was reminded of the Swedish Chef on the Muppet Show, but I knew this chicken had no idea of what was about to happen. There was no thrashing or fighting. I think she was confused but not distressed. Once her head hung down I took up my knife. I had bought a brand new extra sharp ceramic knife just for this purpose. There would be no sawing, no crushing before cutting. This was to be quick. I gently parted the feathers below the jaw, took a deep breath, and cut, firmly. Blood poured out. There was a moment of hesitation as the blood spilled onto my hand. I second of repulsion, but I thought it was really selfish of me to be thinking of myself and not the animal giving its life, so I held firm to her head. Her feet twitched a bit and Avery held on to them. I held her head to ensure that in her final spasms she didn’t withdraw it into the cone. I also tilted her head back so the blood would come out faster. Within a minute any twitching stopped. There was no flapping at all and very little movement. As the blood was draining, we dispatched the second hen with similar results. Within five minutes, the worst part was over. It was clear there was no suffering, or anxiety on the hen’s part. It was not gross. It was not horrifying. It just was.
The plucking was not quite as smooth. Our scalding technique needs improvement, but it got the job done and the feathers came out pretty well. Avery is a better chicken plucker than I am. I think I grab too many feathers, and my bird had a lot of holes in the skin. The birds were wet from the scald and the feathers fell in the giant bucket and the whole thing stayed pretty clean.
I have known how to cut a whole chicken into serving pieces since I was about eleven. That’s more than 30 years of chicken cutting; therefore the gutting was my job. The process is pretty amazing. I was afraid there was going to be a smell, but really it smelled like chicken. I was a bit sad to see the quantity of unfinished eggs, but it was also pretty interesting. I don’t know if it is because they are fresh, or if it’s because they are old, there was a lot of yellow fat on them. It made them quite slippery, but other than that, it was pretty simple. In about an hour we had two clean, dressed out birds. While I was cleaning out the last, we decided to get two more. These went even faster, as our scalding was getting better.
And that was it. We had four birds in the fridge resting and going through the process of rigor mortis before the meat will be ground on two and the other two will go in the stock pot. In the end, it was pretty satisfying. I like chicken. I like eggs. I like chickens. I am sure as we grow our own flock we will have birds we get attached to. Not all of them. But my guess is we will grow up several and end up with a good number in the freezer. I’m good with that. They will live a free happy life and come to a quiet end. And they will be delicious.
Side note, blood coagulates quicker than I thought. The next day, I thought of those crime shows where you see a body that has been dead for hours in a pool of blood. I am pretty sure that is not accurate.
WARNING THIS WILL BE GRAPHIC> While I encourage you to read on I will be describing in detail how we processed our chickens…
Once that you've decided on a killing
First you make a stone of your heart
And if you find that your hands are still willing
Then you can turn a murder into art
I am pretty sure that The Police were not talking about chicken processing.
I am surprised at the number of my Facebook friends that were disturbed and maybe a little horrified at our newest venture. I guess I shouldn’t be. The vast majority of people in this country are very disconnected from their food. Not just animal sourced food either. Don’t think I am telling the truth? Do you eat peanut butter? Right now, without googling, picture a peanut plant. Eat kiwis? Cashews? Picture them growing. Where does canola oil come from? Picture the plant. Not easy is it? So many of us buy our food in a clean well-lit giant building, we don’t even think about where it comes from.
The way we see meat has been sanitized. We don’t see the head, feet, or other parts that remind us this was a living creature. If you eat and enjoy meat, this shouldn’t bother you. It might, but it shouldn’t. You should be more concerned with how these animals live and die, that what they look like after the fact.
Factory chickens have some of the worst conditions out there. When we decided to get chickens we wanted to have them for both meat and eggs. When we had ducks, years ago, we sent them to be processed. You dropped them off in cages and they came home in bags. While convenient, it wasn’t cheap. We eat a lot of chicken and for us to raise them for consumption, it needed to be cost effective.
We were fortunate enough to have a friend who was about to take her chickens to auction. Our friend Tomme gave us a flock of lovely Columbian Wyandottes. These were to be our “canaries”. If something was to go wrong – if the coop wasn’t secure, if we had predators, if the horse decided to stomp them, we would know, and not have a financial risk. We could also practice our processing technique. If for some reason we could not kill them or process them, we wanted to know before we invested any more time and money.
Before we got the chickens I researched. A lot. I joined forums, I asked questions. I spent a day watching “chicken snuff films” on YouTube. I wanted to be fully prepared for what we were going to do. There are a lot of ways to kill a chicken, and if you look on the internet, you can pretty much find them all. There was the guy who chopped the head off using his deck rail as a chopping block, letting the head fall to the waiting dogs and cat below, the man, laughing maniacally at the flapping and blood from the deceased bird the whole time. There was a sweet hippie woman who gently held and petted the bird before slitting its throat and then pulling the head off, crying the whole time. There were the hipsters in so much protective gear they could have been wearing haz mat suits. There was a mountain of a man who hung the bird up, slit its throat and nodded solemnly as he said, “That’s how they did it in the bible”.
From all this I was able to get enough information to come up with the cleanest most humane way of killing a chicken that I felt capable of. So the night before, we pulled the food and readied ourselves for the morning. The next morning, after milking, we boxed up two chickens and brought them to the garage. They were calm in the dog carrier as we gathered the rest of what we needed. Finally, it was time. Avery took the bird and placed her in a cut off road cone, head down, over our stainless grooming sink. There was a slight adjustment to the size of the hole, and then she fit nicely. There was a moment when she wouldn’t put her head through the hole and when she did, she pulled it back up. I had a brief moment where I was reminded of the Swedish Chef on the Muppet Show, but I knew this chicken had no idea of what was about to happen. There was no thrashing or fighting. I think she was confused but not distressed. Once her head hung down I took up my knife. I had bought a brand new extra sharp ceramic knife just for this purpose. There would be no sawing, no crushing before cutting. This was to be quick. I gently parted the feathers below the jaw, took a deep breath, and cut, firmly. Blood poured out. There was a moment of hesitation as the blood spilled onto my hand. I second of repulsion, but I thought it was really selfish of me to be thinking of myself and not the animal giving its life, so I held firm to her head. Her feet twitched a bit and Avery held on to them. I held her head to ensure that in her final spasms she didn’t withdraw it into the cone. I also tilted her head back so the blood would come out faster. Within a minute any twitching stopped. There was no flapping at all and very little movement. As the blood was draining, we dispatched the second hen with similar results. Within five minutes, the worst part was over. It was clear there was no suffering, or anxiety on the hen’s part. It was not gross. It was not horrifying. It just was.
The plucking was not quite as smooth. Our scalding technique needs improvement, but it got the job done and the feathers came out pretty well. Avery is a better chicken plucker than I am. I think I grab too many feathers, and my bird had a lot of holes in the skin. The birds were wet from the scald and the feathers fell in the giant bucket and the whole thing stayed pretty clean.
I have known how to cut a whole chicken into serving pieces since I was about eleven. That’s more than 30 years of chicken cutting; therefore the gutting was my job. The process is pretty amazing. I was afraid there was going to be a smell, but really it smelled like chicken. I was a bit sad to see the quantity of unfinished eggs, but it was also pretty interesting. I don’t know if it is because they are fresh, or if it’s because they are old, there was a lot of yellow fat on them. It made them quite slippery, but other than that, it was pretty simple. In about an hour we had two clean, dressed out birds. While I was cleaning out the last, we decided to get two more. These went even faster, as our scalding was getting better.
And that was it. We had four birds in the fridge resting and going through the process of rigor mortis before the meat will be ground on two and the other two will go in the stock pot. In the end, it was pretty satisfying. I like chicken. I like eggs. I like chickens. I am sure as we grow our own flock we will have birds we get attached to. Not all of them. But my guess is we will grow up several and end up with a good number in the freezer. I’m good with that. They will live a free happy life and come to a quiet end. And they will be delicious.
Side note, blood coagulates quicker than I thought. The next day, I thought of those crime shows where you see a body that has been dead for hours in a pool of blood. I am pretty sure that is not accurate.
