Butchering Time!

Today we started butchering the chickens. Just the ones we put in death row last night.  The process goes as follows:

Step 1: Get two chickens from death row and place in the killing cones, head first so that their heads stick out the bottom.  Grab their head and make two slits right below their ears (above their ears because they are upside down).  This will sever the two main arteries and they will bleed out.

Me and two chickens bleeding out in the cones.

Step 2:  After they have bled out, we scald them in 142-152 degree water to loosen their feathers. Any warmer and the skin and fat will begin to cook, any cooler and the feathers won't get loose.  When the feathers come out without any effort (usually around 1 minute) they are ready for the plucker.

Getting ready to dunk them in the scalder

Chickens in the scalder

Step 3:  When the feathers come out easily, place them in the chicken plucker.  With the hose running, turn on the chicken plucker and hose the chickens down as they spin.  In 30 seconds they will all plucked.

The chicken plucker ready for action

Click on the video below to see the plucker in action.

Step 4: After they have been plucked, we bring them over to our stainless steel table to remove the innards.

Our butchering table

Step 5:  After they are all cleaned out, we place them in a cooler filled with cold water to start the cooling down process.  After we finished all 10 for today, we bag them in grocery bags and put them in our refrigerator overnight to allow them to cool down and for the rigor mortis process to set in before freezing.  They have to rest for a day or else they will not be as tasty.

Today's work

Closeup of chickens

Tomorrow we will do 10 more.  This is all the room we have in our refrigerator each day for chickens.  If we had another fridge, like we used to have in the garage, we could do more in one shot. Oh well, tomorrow's another day.

Time to Butcher the Chickens!

Tomorrow the chickens will be eight weeks old.  Time to get them butchered.  Yesterday, one died from an apparent heart attack, it weighed 6 1/2 pounds, a good weight.  Today we were waiting for our friends to return our chicken plucker and it arrived , so tomorrow we can begin.

We captured 10 chickens and placed them in "death row" so they won't eat or drink anything for at least 12 hours to clean out their insides (intestines, crop, etc).

10 chickens on "death Row"

We also got the butchering area ready for the chicken cleaning. This consists of: the killing cones, the turkey fryers used with 142 degree water to prep the chickens for plucking, the chicken plucker and the stainless steel table.

Our Chicken Plucker ready for Action

The killing cones will be nailed up between two trees

We still have all the aprons, gloves, water thermometers, knives , etc from the last time we did this almost 3 years ago.  So we are all set for tomorrow. We plan to start with only 10 to see how tired we get and how long it takes us.  If the weather hold we should be done by the end of the week.