Chicken Day

Raising livestock is an enjoyable task. Knowing that our family will have a self-sustaining food source is a powerful feeling. Knowing that the food they eat is nutritious and natural brings a great degree of accomplishment and pride to my soul.

Part of raising your own food is transforming a living creature into food. This is a process that takes a lot of preparation and a touch of skill. Of course the goal is to cull the animal as quickly as possible. None of us want to see an animal suffer.

The first bird I ever slaughtered: Did not go so well....I held the duck in place and attempted to cut its head off. Unfortunately my aim was terrible. I ended up slicing two arteries in my left index finger...it still does not bend properly. After this terrible event, Sarah and I created a much better method.

I am going to describe our "chicken Kitchen" and all its components. Then I will go over the process of processing the birds. It all starts with the killing cone.

You can buy killing cones on the internet or at your local seed and feed store. If you happen to keep rolls of flashing around, you can create one in about thirty minutes. I found a template on Pinterest and had 20 inch wide flashing in the shed. I cut it out according to the pattern and pinned it together with rivets. You could use self tappers or drill it out and use little nuts and bolts. I suppose you could even use glue. Any which way, I had rivets and used that. I also added a little extra flashing to the top of the template. This made for a larger area to screw it into the tree. I chose to only attach it at the top. When I first cut the neck, I lift the bottom of the cone out to direct the blood into the pan. At some point I am going to add another piece with a groove in it to run from the bottom of the cone to the pan. As you can see in the picture, blood currently runs down the board its attached to and often times misses the pan entirely.

The next piece to this puzzle is the dunk tank. There are several ways to pluck a bird. Of the options, heating the birds has been our best option. We do not have the money to buy a bird plucker and I just haven't had the motivation to build one, though I do have the washing machine parts to build it. To buy one, you are looking at $200-500. I made a small drill-powered plucker years ago after seeing something similar on "Alaska: The last Frontier" Our dunk tank is simply a thirty quart stock pot, turkey fryer base, and thermometer. The temperature needs to be between 160 and 180f. We soak the birds for 1 minute. If the water is too hot, you will cook the skin and the feathers will never come out. Trial and error has found that One Minute is the right time. When we work together, I will kill the bird and leave it in the cone until Sarah is ready to scald the bird. She then scalds and plucks while I dress the birds. At the beginning, I would recommend to the novice to do one bird at a time. If you leave the birds too long, they begin to stiffen which makes plucking more difficult. Also, the water temp being above 160f kills microbials on the bird.

Next is the Plucker:

Our Plucker was a fun project to build. I made a wooden frame that would support the drill and the plucking cylinder. The cylinder is an 8 inch length of 6 inch PVC with matching end caps. Threaded rod runs through the center of the caps and has lock washers and nuts on both sides of the caps to lock it into the rod. The fingers are 1.5inch pieces of black rubber bungee cord. On the inside, I put a screw through the bungee and glued them in place. We have a large alligator clamp that we put on the drill trigger while we are plucking.

FARM LIFE FARM PROCESSING TABLE

Next up is the processing table. We have a small table visible in the lower picture that we

move to the right side of the processing table for finishing up the plucking. The right side only matters as the ground slopes down to the right and we don't like to stand in mud. The plucker works well but does not get all the feathers off. So Sarah cleans the last bit off at the small table and hoses off the birds before moving them to the processing table. If you look closely at the sink, you can see that we have a splitter. The hose comes in under the sink and runs into the splitter. The right side of the splitter goes to a shower head for the sink. The left side goes to a length of hose long enough to get to the dip tank and the plucking table with a spray nozzle. The two grey food tubs are about two feet long and 10 inches deep. We bought these at Restaurant Depot a few years ago. These bins are great if you will be processing animals.

Once the birds are bare, I gut them on the processing table. At some point we will do a video of the process, but there are myriad videos on youtube.

That is the equipment. Lets run through the process.

1. Collect the birds.

   1. We lock them in their coups every night. It has an auto door that we turn off the night before slaughter day. We have run around with a net and caught them in the past, but having them all locked up certainly simplifies this process. We put them in a dog crate and bring them out back.

2. Kill the birds.

   1. I grab the birds out of the cage by the legs and swing the bird three or four times by the legs in a long fast arc. This causes blood to rush into their heads and calms them .

   2. Place them in the cone

      1. Reach into the bottom of the cone and pull the head through.

      2. I used to use a machete, but now I hold the head and cut through the neck and direct the blood into the pan below.

      3. Cut the head off completely

      4. I also hold the bird in place for a minute until it stops thrashing. A few times, the bird has flew out spraying blood everywhere. Then we have to fight off the dogs...no fun

3. Scald the birds

   1. We dunk the birds neck first into the hot water and hold it submerged with a garden hoe. One minute submerged has proven to be perfect.

4. Pluck the birds

   1. Over to the drill plucker and run the fingers over the birds from all the angles.

   2. move the mostly plucked birds to the small table and clean off the remaining feathers.

   3. Scrape off the leg scales

      1. If you scalded the birds properly, scratch the scales where the scaled leg meets the feathers. the outer scales will separate and you can scrape them off.

      2. Scrape off each toe and the nail cap.

         1. If you do not want the feet, simply cut them off where the feathers meet the scales and add to your scraps bucket.

   4. wash off the birds

      1. You do not want feathers in your meat. A quick spray will wash away the hangers-on.

5. Move the bird to the processing table

   1. I make a slit at the breast and pull the "tubes" out of the neck.

   2. push the esophagus and trachea into the cavity and swirl your finger around inside the thoracic cavity to break the connective tissue free from the tubes

   3. go to the rear and make a cut between the cloaca and tail

   4. cut the other three sides of the poop shoot and separate it from the connective tissue. Be careful not to puncture any part of the digestive system.

   5. cut a big enough slit to fit your hand into the abdominal cavity and pull out the guts.

   6. If you will be keeping the vital organs, the liver will come out with the intestines.

   7. Cut the liver away from the intestines and carefully cut the gall bladder off of the liver. If you happen to puncture the gall bladder, wash it off immediately. I tend to just throw away any livers that get bile on them.

   8. Reach in further and pull out the heart, kidneys, and lungs.

   9. wash the bird off inside and out.

   10. Move to the grey bin for further butchering.

That is the chicken processing process. I am going to do another post with how we use the scraps for dog food and other details.