Butchering chickens

[ejb]

Anyone here raise chickens for meat, but then bring them someplace to be slaughtered? Any estimates on what it costs to do that, and anyone know anyone in the New England area (preferably western, mass, southern vt or northern ct area that does this?

I know people that raises sheep and cows and pigs but have them professionally butchered....not sure if I have the stomach to do the chickens myself (I am working up to it/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif...but in the mean time it would be nice to drop 10-20 off at a time and pick them up all cleaned and ready to go...anyone know a place like this? and how much it might cost per bird roughly?

 

[JohnMiller3]

I'll bet Pete (Boondox) would arrange something with ya... the slaughtering is not the problem... the plucking of the feathers is a little time consuming though... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[MossRoad]

I'd be interested in what you find out. I've seen it done by the chop, drop and run method, which is kind of gross( headless chickens flopping all over the place).

Then I saw some show on chickens on PBS. It showed a guy that had a galvanized sheet of steel rolled into a long funnel with an opening large enough to fit the chicken head through. He mounted it on two posts in the ground. He'd then grab the chicken by the feet and drop it into the funnel head first. That chicken could not move and seemed calm. He put a pan under the funnel and cut off the head with a sharp knife and it drained in the pan. No flopping around or anything like that. Seemed a lot neater and cleaner as well.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

They use machines for plucking. We have one, it has a bunch of rubber fingers on a rotating drum. You dip the bird in boiling water first then just hold it against the fingers as the drum spins and it takes off most of the feathers except for a few small ones. Usually takes 15 seconds per bird. Most amish farmers who raise chickens have one in their barn.

 

[Boondox]

MossRoad -- That's called a killing cone -- pretty efficient. And you're right; when upside down the birds go pretty calmly. (Some of them flap like crazy trying to get upright again, but if you gently pull their head down and hold it, they calm down really quickly.)

JMIII -- Plucking is such a pain -- and the skin so full of saturated fat that I'm not supposed to be eating -- that we simply skin them with the feathers on. Skinless, boneless meat...about 10 minutes per bird. Of course during tourist season we've been known to butcher them next to the road with much flashing of axes and cleavers. We found it reduces traffic on our little dirt road. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Pete

Pete

 

[Egon]

Oh go for it. 10 or so at a time is just a nice number. All you need is a chopping block and axe for loping off the head, A pail of boiling water to dunk them in and then pluck them. Feathers come out easy. Then singe the real fine stuff off using a torch or alcohol soaked rag and its on to cutting them open and removing the insides. Had to help do this all the time when I was a kid. The smell of hot wet feathers and singed feathers will remain with you for the rest of your life.
Course if they are free roaming chickens it's all worth it when they end up on the plate. Nothing at all like the dried cardboard disguised as chicken the supermarket sells. Probably a whole lot more nutrious to as they get to eat real food.
It's really not that bad doing it your self but the only way to find out is to try one.
Egon

 

[ejb]

>>It's really not that bad doing it your self but the only way to find out is to try one.


Probably if I had help with a few I could stomach the rest myself...don't have much of a problem processing fish and they are not that far from chickens on the food chain/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif. Like the idea of those plucking machines though...

 

[Boondox]

Another six weeks or so we'll be butchering some Buff Orpingtons. If you need the practice, we're up in Stowe.

Pete

 

[JohnMiller3]

<font color=blue>...They use machines for plucking...</font color=blue>

Thanks Robert... now ya tell me... /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

I'm telling my Father... no more plucking for me... get one of those machines... /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[cmsedore]

When we used to do them, we did the following:

1. Suspend chicken by its feet from two short ropes hung from the overhang (slip knots)
2. Hang metal bucket from beak (you use stiff wire and pierce the lower beak). We used a metal 5 gallon pail, IIRC
3. slit throat (chicken's)
4. wait a bit (blood drains into bucket)
5. take down and process

No mess, no headless chickens running around.

-Chris