A few months ago we bought 25 chickens for the sole purpose of raising them for meat. Sadly we lost 5 but that wasn't so bad, we still got plenty of meat. We started at 12pm one afternoon and went all the way til 4:30pm! It was a lot of work, but with so many helpers we had a nice little assembly line.
Our set up was a 5 gallon bucket cut in half with the bottom cut out of it hung around the tree in the back of the photo. Then the chicken was brought to the boiler where it was heated for about 2 minutes to make the feathers easier to pull off. After that there's a drum, not seen, that spins the chicken while spraying water on it to remove the feathers without much human pulling. From there it went to the table to be gutted then cut up. The ladder was used to hold up a hose to clean off meat and the work area. The final process outside was the "pink water" or the ice coolers.
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| The Boiler |
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| All our knives used during the day. |
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| Victor was ready for his first Chicken Butchering! |
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| Poor chickens didn't know what was coming. |
Lucca was our official boiler and dad and I (Gabby) were the killers.
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| Malachi "Yup, it's dead!" |
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| Victor "Are you sure it's dead?" |
Dad showing how to properly cut up a chicken. Malachi looks thrilled....
Our little cook preping her own dinner.
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Anything that is left (like tid bits of blood) on the
chicken is washed in the pink water. |
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This is the plucker, the water shoots on it while it gets spun
around and the "fingers" push on the body tearing the fingers out. |
Alyse and Dad finishing up some of the whole chickens. It was so nice to decide what chickens we wanted to keep whole and they came out so nice and clean! It was a great experience and we hope to do more in late summer/early fall. The home grown chicken is delicious!
Gabby .V.
Ah, chicken butchering. When we started out it took us a while too. You will get faster as time goes on. Is that a featherman plucker? If so I have one just like it. It saves a lot of time. One suggestion is to have some way to kill and scald more than one at a time. I have a turkey fryer, and I can scald two chickens in it, and I can kill up to four chickens with my killing cone set. It is made of caution cones with the tip cut off.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you had a good time nonetheless!
Graham