Killing the meat birds.
We (ok, I) bought chickens this summer. Got four layers and four meat birds. Now, meat birds are an interesting breed. Amazing really. Our were Cornish Rock cross and by the time they were ten weeks old, last Friday, they were seven or eight pounds already. Big as full grown regular chickens, but clearly still juvenile.
The layers (big pic) are a mix-mash of cool breeds. We have an Ameraucana, a Barred Rock, a New Hampshire and a Silver Laced Wyandotte. They’re all normal sized for ten weeks but next to the meat birds, they looked pretty small.
I built them all a wee coop (big pic) to live in. Actually, just to sleep in. They all run about free range – truly free range – during the day and then they come home to roost at dusk.
This past Sunday, the 21st of September, my neighbor Brent and I killed the four meat birds. Andi, Tallis and Luca documented it as best as they could. Barnaby distracted them as often as he could.
Quite a process, but nowhere near as unpleasant or messy as you’d believe reading most of the accounts I found on the blogs around the ‘net.
The boys were rather upset about the killing, Tallis more than Luca. Luca was contemplative mostly. A bit sad and quiet, but mostly seemed ok with it. They went through grieving the birds’ death really fast, though. Tallis was inside with Andi and Luca for a while, crying really hard. I went in before we did number four (the last) and asked if he wanted to be there for that one and he did. From then on he was in engaged, interested and involved. Andi gave him her camera to work with and had him document and much as he could. That helped a lot, I think. He was solemn – so was Luca and the rest of us, for that mater – but he was upset anymore.
I took a hit to the heart too, actually. This was my first killing of really anything except fish. And road-kill. I was there when each of my two dogs were put down, but I wasn’t doing it myself, you know? So, this grief was wan and shallow and came on stealthily. When it was all done and the carcasses were icing down, I noticed I felt down and grey and letharigic. Took a few hours of sunshine and calmness to come around fully. I expect next time it’ll be a lot easier.
The best help I found on the web is Chicken Processing by Kimberly Bobrow, at her family blog. Her detailed narrative from the perspective of a first-time chicken processor was right on the money. Our experience followed theirs nearly identically, though I didn’t find the plucking or disembowling as difficult or unpleasent as Kimberly reports they did.
We were careful to measure the scalding temperature (140F/60C) and did the scalding for 75 seconds – or as close to that as we could. We found the first and fourth birds easiest to pluck – for both of them, the water was 140F/60C. We numbers one, two and three right together. For numbers two and three, the water cooled slightly, about five degrees F for each bird, to 135F and 130F. And it made a difference. I had a tough time getting the wing feathers out of number three. We let the water heat up again for number four and again, the plucking was easy.
So, the scalding process is important. Most of our time we spend on plucking and if we’d hosed the scalding it would have taken a *lot* longer.
Sharp knives are also very important. So much so that I even stopped to hone one of mine while I was working and found it’d gotten dulled. The first leg I cut off I did wrong and hacked around the bone quite a bit before I figured it out. Soft steel, hard bone, dull knife….
What else? Oh yes, cut the neck out before you try to remove the entrails! Wow. That would have been a lot easier. As I did it, I had two hands buried in the bird each time, trying to cut the off esophagus, just below the neck from inside. Paring knife in one hand, the other wrapped around the guts, fishing for the stringy bits up top. Had to move very slowly and carefully. Still sliced my hands a few times.
So, do the neck bit first. Then cut around the vent (anus) and remove the entrails. And don’t forget the oil gland in the tail.
The gall bladder is delicate. More delicate than you’d expect after you learn how tough everything else is. Just be carefull when you’re seperating it from the liver. Best do that in a large pan so if you spill it, the bile won’t contaminate your table and get all over the meat.
For now, suffice it to say it was a bit unsettling for all of us and about as messy as cleaning a mess of fish. Smells about the same, too. OK, not so fishy, you know, but the guts and stuff smelled the same. Hmmm… so did the horse, come to think of it. I guess everything smells that way when it’s dead and gutted.
Turns out, by the way, that packing tape alone makes a fine killing cone. Don’t even need plastic bags or anything – just wrap the tape around their bodies, pinning their wings down. I tried a bag with the first bird and she just blew out of it like a rocket. I realized that, hey, when it’s time to take this tape off, she’ll be dead. So we just taped her wings down and that worked great. Tape came right off afterwards, too.
We have lots of pictures and when I remember to suck them off the camera, I’ll post some here with some more narrative of the process.