Well not really, most butcher shops don't have a garden hose and extension cords lying on the floor. I set up a make shift work station outside the chicken coop to butcher the chickens. If you notice, the patio umbrella is over the fire pit and chicken plucker, that's because both days I butchered the chickens it rained.
After they were all plucked, I used my butcher table to cut them up. I won't go into details on how I did it, seeing how there are plenty of websites on how to do this. I did get pretty good at it though, and found it not to be as disgusting as it seems. When you see pictures of people doing this it looks bad, but when you doing it you're not thinking about it and you're just getting it done.
I went back and forth on how to kill the chickens. I want it to be as painless as possible for the chickens and still make sure the meat was good. I finally decided to use the kill cones which hold the chickens upside down and you cut the jugular from the bottom, then gravity helps them bleed out. I did the first eight this way and it wasn't as peaceful as they say. They say they don't feel anything when this happens, but they would move and kick around and some of them were able to jump out of the cones and lie on the ground. I would have to pick them up and put them back in to finish dying. I didn't like how it was going so I did some more research on how to do it better. I came across a woman that would swing the chickens over her head and hit the chickens head on a saw horse, knocking them unconscious. I went with this idea, and took the chickens, held them upside for a little bit, this calms them down, and hit their head from behind with a dowel. When they were knocked out and in the kill cones, it made it a lot easier to cut their jugulars to bleed out. You want them to be a live so the heart pushes the blood out, and the chicken will store longer this way. The chickens didn't feel any pain this way except for the country music going on in the background; you're not really butchering chickens unless there is country music is playing.
After the chickens completely bleed out, I would dip them in a pot of water that is around 160 degrees for half a minute or so. This loosens up the feathers so you can pluck them. I used a wood fire under the pot, and when I got to the right temp I slid it away from the fire. This worked out well.
I used the homemade chicken plucker and found it to spin to fast and not do a good job. Sometimes it would peel the skin off and sometimes leave the first yellow layer of skin on. It didn't take all the feathers off leaving me to still go around by hand and pluck the feathers off. I'm going to make a different plucker for next year, the tub chicken plucker called the whizbang.
After they were all plucked, I used my butcher table to cut them up. I won't go into details on how I did it, seeing how there are plenty of websites on how to do this. I did get pretty good at it though, and found it not to be as disgusting as it seems. When you see pictures of people doing this it looks bad, but when you doing it you're not thinking about it and you're just getting it done.
Once butchered, I put them in plastic bags for the freezer. I took a tube and taped to the end of a vacuum cleaner, and put the tube inside the cavity of the bird while in the bag. I then spun the bag around the tube and turned on the vacuum cleaner. While the vacuum cleaner was still running, I quickly pulled the tube out and spun the bag tight as possible. Then put a zip tie on it to keep it close, this made it like a vacuumed sealed bag. I left the chickens out for a few hours to "age" before freezing them.
After doing fourteen birds, I decided to take the birds to the butcher. The chicken plucker was not doing a good enough job, and I didn't want to spend all that time and money on the birds only to have crummy product. I felt like I knew what I was doing and was comfortable doing it except for the plucking, and it would take way too long to pluck by hand. Next year I'll have a tub plucker and be able to do it right.
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