Chicken Processing Day

The day finally arrived this weekend. It was time to process our meat birds. Given the fact that this whole experiment was my idea, I hoped and prayed it would go well. My in-laws were in town to watch the kids, because we knew it would be an all day adventure.

The day began at 6:00 a.m. I set up the chicken scalder my father-in-law and I built a few months ago. You have to scald the birds after they bleed out so the feathers will come off easier. The water is not boiling, but it is hot enough that you don't want to stick your hand in there (I learned that the hard way when the sink stopper came out). I set up the processing table where Regina would eviserate the birds, and put out trash cans to put feathers and discarded body parts in.

We ate breakfast and started on the first birds around 7:30 a.m. I hung them up, bled them out and let them hang for 10-15 minutes. Then I would scald them for about 30-60 seconds, hang them back up, and pluck them. Hand plucking is by far the most tedious and time consuming part. It took me at least 30 minutes per bird. Not only that, but wet chickens don't smell the best. The closest thing would be wet dog, but worse.

After the plucking Regina would eviserate and cut off the legs. The feet can be boiled with the bones to make chicken stock. Apparently they are rich in collagen. She made me cut the heads off, which I found hilarious. She can reach inside a chicken and pull the guts out, but cutting off the head is too gross.

With a break for lunch and another to refill the scalder, it took us almost 13 hours (10-11 of which were spent working). The sun had long gone down when the final chicken was in the freezer. It feels good having a freezer full of farm raised chicken.

It was hard work, but having enough chicken for 5-6 months makes it worth it.
Here's what we learned:

- Most of these birds were as large, if not larger, than the ones you buy in the store.
- If we're going to do this again, I need a mechanical chicken plucker. My father-in-law and I will build one this winter. It has these little rotating rubber fingers that strip the feathers right off the bird. Even if it can cut the plucking time in half I'll be happy with it. Plucking is really the only reason it took as long as it did. We could probably do twice the number of chickens in one day with it.
- Our chicken scalder needs a better drain plug. We also underestimated the time it takes to get the water up to the right temperature.
- Hanging the chicken upside down to deliver the coup de grace works, but it's mighty bloody. Chickens like to flop around quite a bit as their bleeding out, and it tends to spray blood everywhere. It is possible to make something called a "killing cone", pictured below. You stick the chicken into it head first and it holds the bird still so they can't flop around and makes that part of the process a little cleaner.

- We liked raising our own chickens, and will do it again, however, we didn't like losing 1/3 of our flock to health problems. We're going to try a couple of different approaches, like buying stock from a more reputable hatchery, and buying breeds that don't grow as fast, so don't have as many health problems.

Just to give you an idea of how fast these meat birds grow, take a look at this picture. The brown chicken is an egg laying breed we bought at the same time as the meat birds. They are the same age (8 weeks) but you can see a massive difference in size. They are meaty little freaks of nature.