Ani with Chickens March 2009
Yesterday I had my first exposure to chicken butchering. My friend Grams and her son Eric invited me over since they knew I was anxious to learn how be self sufficient with our family meat preparation. We had an assembly line with a few helpers outside, one to chop the head, two to dunk in hot water and pluck the large feathers out and two in the kitchen plucking remaining feathers/hairs. After the birds were cleaned, Eric and I sat down to gut the birds before their final cleaning. Over all it took us less than 3 hours to do 12 chickens, from killing to freezing. Apparently, most farmers can knock out allot more birds in that amount of time but according to Eric we did it the “clean, slow” way.
I don’t want to go into every detail here, because one can find butchering directions in extensive detail in books, or online. My reason for blogging about it today is for encouraging others to not feel overwhelmed by the idea of butchering your chickens or any other animal for food. It can be a little tedious and perhaps a bit nauseating for others but truthfully it is not hard. Eric threw the axe while I watched, since I’m a bit too petite for his size of axe but all the other steps were very easy to perform and understand.
Cleanliness is the most important factor. Through we did allow the blood to drain into the ground, there wasn’t really a whole lot of blood to drain. Being a city-girl all my life, I imagined gushing blood, but yesterday, I realized that my perceptions were wrong. Other than feathers scattered about, a large bloody mess was no where in sight.
I was surprised by the level of respect each participant had during the process. No one was screaming “GROSS”, and no one was swinging a bird around. Instead we all knew our job and we did it with a thankful heart for the meat we were preparing. Eric says he keeps his respect for the bird at all times, from the time they are little chicks, and while they are growing into explorers, untill the time they breath their last.
While pulling out the innards I felt like I was in an anatomy class learning and inspecting each organ. All I can say is that the Creator did a pretty spectacular job! I was amazed how clean each bird was on the inside. Yeah there was blood but each organ looked so healthy, at least on their outside. I did only see one “bug/parasite” in all the chickens I cleaned but that is to be expected. These were free range chickens and I’m curious how other caged birds compare. I learned the importance of taking the organs and entire intestinal tract out in one piece, the trick is to not sever the intestines for keeping the bird as clean as possible.
Eric and Grams were going to pass along 6 of the clean chickens but I just couldn’t take that much, since I had just recently stocked up my freezer. So I came home with 3 chickens, 24 chicken feet (for stock), and one great chicken butchering lesson!
For a great chicken tutorial see: How to butcher a chicken
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