Butchering Chickens!

So you have some old laying hens that have served their purpose, or maybe you raised some cornish cross to feed your family... now what? The thought of butchering an animal when you've never done it before can be daunting. But I assure you that you can learn! Butchering a chicken is one of the easiest animals to process in my opinion. And whence you know how to process a chicken you can then apply those same skills to turkeys, ducks, geese, and even onto bigger animals.

I have created a YouTube video on how we like to process our birds that you can find here;

But here are some written out steps for those who prefer that.

Equipment needed

All you really need to process a chicken is a sharp knife. As long as you have that you can efficiently dispatch the bird, dress it, eviscerate it and be done. But we prefer utilizing a few extra bits and bobs to make butchering day a little easier.

First, we like having a kill cone. This is a device that looks like an upside down cone that you place your live bird into. It's head hangs out of the bottom and its wings are held to its sides so you have easy access for the dispatch. We hang ours from a tree and place a bucket underneath to catch the blood. You can find the kill cone we use here;

Next, because we like to have our birds plucked we use a big pot for scalding the bird. This helps to loosen up the feathers so that they are more easily removed either by hand or by the plucker. We have a portable propane burner that we heat our pot of water on, just like if you were doing a fried turkey. You can find a similar scalding pot set up to ours here;

Then we have the plucker. We love this thing! It takes a 5+ minute job for hand plucking down to about 30 seconds. It makes something very tedious so much easier and quicker! And although it does cost a pretty penny to invest in a plucker, we have found that that has been money well spent for us, and something that we were able to quickly earn back the money spent by selling some of our extra chickens to friends and family. You can find the plucker we have here;

Lastly you'll need something to put your finished product into. There are a few different options for this. If you want to keep your birds whole we love these chicken shrink bags found here;

But if you want to portion your birds out into breasts, thighs, drumsticks and wings we like to use our vacuum sealer. Your can find a vacuum sealer like ours here;

And bags to accompany the vacuum sealer here;

How to butcher a chicken

Now that you have your equipment you'll want to know how to get the job done! Again, for a clear visual of how to accomplish this task I have a YouTube video for you here;

• First you'll need to grab your chicken. Go on. Just grab it!

• Next you'll want to place it in the kill cone, or if you have decided to forgo the kill cone you should secure the neck and head on a stump so you can remove it quickly.

• Then comes the actual dispatching. This can be nerve wracking at first. You want to make sure you are quick and efficient here. This animal is going to feed your family, and we don't want it to suffer. The way we do it is to firmly grasp the head of the bird and expose the jugular area right under the chin/beak. A firmly placed and swift cut will open up the bird and allow the blood to exit effectively. When this cut is done properly the bird will quickly bleed out and not suffer beyond the initial cut. You'll need to wait for a few minutes until the flow of blood stops before moving on to the next step.

• After the bird has been dispatched you can either skin the bird completely, or follow the process for plucking. We like to pluck our birds, so I will explain that process for you. To start you will need to have a pot of hot water for scalding the bird. I find that near boiling is the sweet spot for this. Around 150 degrees farenheit. You are only dipping the bird into the water for a few moments so you shouldn't be cooking the skin during this. You'll want to dunk the bird into the water and swish it around until you are able to pull out the wing feathers with a gentle tug. About 30-60 seconds. We start checking how easiy the feathers come out around the 30 second mark.

• Next comes the fun part! Using the plucker. Ours works with a quick flip of a switch, a good spray of water and a bucket underneath to catch the feathers. The machine turns the bird round and round the barrel and tugs out all of the feathers with big rubber fingers sticking out throughout the inside of the barrel.

• Now you are ready for evisceration. This just means getting all of the innards out. I start by cutting off the head and setting that to the side. You will find it easiest to cut between the vertibrae instead of trying to saw through the bone.

• Then I slice the skin near the base of the neck and pull that off. You'll want to be careful not to cut into the crop (a little pouch at the base of the neck that holds food before moving down to the stomach).

• After I have the excess neck skin off I pinch the crop in my fingers and pull it away so it can easily be pulled out with the rest of the digestive system.

• Now it's time to take off the neck. Again, cutting between the vertibrae will be easier than trying to hack through the bone. Make sure to keep the necks! They make lovely bone broth. I like to vacuum seal the necks into 1lb packages and freeze them until I am ready for my next batch of stock or bone broth.

• After I have the neck off I move onto the feet. I like to hyper extend the leg forward so that the joint that would be the "knee" of sorts for the chicken can be clearly seen. Slice in that joint so that you go between the bones and the feet will come right off. I like to keep these for broth too. But you do need to "skin" or peel the feet before making broth with them. That is another post for another day though.

• After you have the feet off you should flip the bird onto its breast and turn the tail towards you. I make a slice behind the tail and on either side going down to the vent. This way I get rid of the oil sack, which is located in the tail. Flipping the bird back over onto its back make a cut above the vent. Be careful not to slice too deep and puncture the innards. It isn't a huge deal if you do cut too deep, but it does make the process cleaner if you avoid it. If you do happen to puncture the instestines or something like that just make sure to rinse your bird super thoroughly in the end.

• When you have the body cavity open you simply reach in and pull everything out. It's not graceful, but it has to be done. Just reach in there and pull it all out. Most of the innards should come out all together, but you will need to reach back inside to ensure you scrape out the lungs from the back ribs near the spine and tug out the crop, esophagus and wind pipe from the hole where the neck used to be. There are special tools you can buy to help grab the lungs but I find it easiest to just use my fingers. In a scooping motion going from the spine out towards the ribs I am able to get them out smoothly. If you plan to keep the heart, liver and/or gizzards you'll need to grab those before disposing of the remaining offal.

• Lastly, when you have your bird all rinsed off we like to place them in a cooler with ice water for a few hours before packaging. This helps with the rigormortis and cooling the carcass down rapidly to deter unwanted bacteria. Of course you should make sure that the cooler is thoroughly cleaned before filling with ice water.

Packaging and storage

After all of the birds have been dispatched and chilled in a cooler for a few hours it's time to package them. The easiest and quickest way to accomplish this is to keep the birds whole, put them in the shrink wrap bags and pop them into your freezer. But if you aren't wanting to have whole birds you can choose to portion them out as well. We do this with about half of the birds we raise because sometimes you don't want to roast a whole chicken and just need chicken breasts, thighs or what have you. I like to cut out the breasts, thighs, drumsticks and wings then vacuum seal them in 1-2lb portions and freeze them. Don't forget to save the remaining carcasses to make bone broth or chicken stock later! I put these individually into ziplock freezer bags and freeze them for later use.

In the end raising some (or all) of the meat your family needs is hard work, but infinitely rewarding. We spend time caring for these animals and giving them the best and healthiest lives they can have. They enjoy sunshine, fresh grass and good food every day of their lives and are given a quick and efficient death so that they can nourish our family. We utilize every part of the animal we can. From the body used for meat, the bones for nutritious stock, the feet for delicious broth, and even some of the offal for further vitamins and nutrients, nothing goes to waste. Our familiy benefits from the best quality, most local, and most nutritious protein sources. And we save money by not paying others to do the hard work and selling some excess to friends and family. My kids are learning skills they can use to nuture and nourish their families in the future and we are stewarding our little slice of land in the back woods as best as we can in honor of our Holy Father. We are not only more self sufficient but can support others in the process. If that isn't rewarding I don't know what is.

As always I hope you enjoyed and have benefited from this blog post. I would encourage you to check out the YouTube channel for more homesteading, motherhood and natural living content! And until next time, welcome to the homestead.

Ashley