Butchering Chickens...Pictures

A few weeks ago, at the request of our father, my sister, younger brother, mother and I had the opportunity to learn a new agrarian type skill from some friends of ours who have a farm- butchering chickens.  In the process we also learned some about the commercial method of growing and processing chickens, and recognizing a healthy chicken. After doing this and learnign what we did we never want to eat chickens from the store again.

Anyway, the following pictures take you step by step through the process of butchering chickens.

Beware, these are not for the squeamish as they are somewhat graphic and they may not be suitable for ladies, young children or the impaired. So, if you are any of those, do NOT click the Continue link.

But first, just something cute...

Little Miss S with her baby ducks!  They followed her around as though she were their Mama. Absolutely adorable!!
I hope that if I ever have children someday they will be able to have little animals (chickens, ducks, sheep, goats, dogs, cats...maybe even calves!) follow them around as though they were Mama or Papa. :)



Now, after you pick out and catch your chicken you must...

Hang them up or place them in a killing cone. Our friend's chickens were too large to fit into the killing cone so we hung them up. Hanging then up-side-down makes the blood rush to their heads so they kind-of go into a coma which lessens the pain they feel when you...

...slit their throats.

The chickens have to hang for three minutes before they bleed to death completely. This one has been sprayed off with water.

Once dead, they are dunked in hot water to make the feathers release.

Plucking the feathers

Some of the feathers haven't emerged yet so they have to be pulled out with tweezers.

Now you remove the feet.

Then the oil sack is removed. You have to be very careful not to puncture it so the oil doesn't get into the meat.

Next cut off the head leaving most of the neck so you have something to grad onto later when you remove the neck.

 After that the next step is to make a slit down the back of the neck so you can get your hand in to remove the gullet.

The tube in her right hand is the air tube and it is amazingly thick and hard to cut through. The other tube is the esophagus which is tissue paper thin in comparison.

This is the gullet. It was not easy for Michah to get to. Mine was very large- the size of a baseball and thus easier to get my hand around but I had to be very careful not to puncture it because if I did it would not be very pleasant! Usually the chickens are starved the night before so they do not have to much waste in their systems. Michah's was but mine wasn't.

" EEeeewww!" (the gullet)

Now that the gullet is out the neck can be cut off.

 And here comes the fun part (haha). 

To remove the insides you startybe cutting around the vent. You have to hold it because it is connected to the bowels which you do not want to cut.

Then you slice through the skin and fat- being careful not to hit the intestines- to open up the body cavity.

Once you've made your opening you must put your hand inside, moving up along the rib cage, to detach the mucus membranes from the skeleton of the bird. Then you can simply pull all of the guts out.

(the lungs)

After the guts are out you have to go in again and scrape your fingers along the back ribs to get the lungs out. They are very spongy feeling.

Last of all you rinse your bird out and off, chill it either in ice water or a cold room, and then drain it for 20 minutes. Then you can place it in the refrigerator for a couple days to age after which time it is ready to eat or be frozen.

Oh, just for laughs...

Poppey Chicken!! (Hehe- must have been fed some spinach scraps! )

Any one want to try next time? ;)

This is definitely not something that I would ever be jumping up and down excited about doing, but at least I know that in the case of me ever having to do it out of necessity, or in the case that I do end up living an agrarian lifestyle, as I wish, I will be able to butcher a chicken. (Though neither Michah or I actually killed our birds-  we just did everything else.)

What new things have YOU learned lately?