Here is another post I wrote during the last part of summer but never got around to publishing on the blog.

We have just recently finished butchering our last batch of meat chickens for the year.  We have been raising the Cornish Cross broilers for 10+ years now, and they have become an important part of our farming operations and how we feed our family. In fact, outside the accepted American norm of a dog or cat, chickens were the first farm animal we ever raised for ourselves. We started with just a few laying hens, who’s primary function turned out to be more along the lines of “pets” instead of the stated purpose of producing eggs. However, it was at least an introduction and it wasn’t long before we began to expand our flock. We even experimented with quail, pheasants and chuckers, all of which we enjoyed, but as we began to focus on producing good, healthy food for our family we cut back to just the chickens and occasionally a few turkeys. We also started increasing the number of birds we raised. At first we started with around 20, then 30, then two and three batches of 30. Now we usually raise two batches of 50, although that can change depending on how much other meat we have, such as beef, goat, deer or elk.

Over the years, we have hired out the slaughtering and butchering part of our operation, and it wasn’t until three years ago that we decided to take the leap and do it all ourselves. Actually, it was the ever increasing cost of having them done for us that finally forced us to make the change. Now that its done I’m glad we did, for it has given us a much better understanding of what it means to husband animals for food. For more about this please take a look at my Dad’s post Responsibility in Slaughter.

When we first get them in the mail, the little chicks are so cute and adorable you can’t help but like them, but it doesn’t take long before that attachment begins to fade … rapidly. Its not the same with the laying hens, but these Cornish Cross have so little personality that it seems the only thing they live for is to get fed. Such complete occupation with their appetite does not provide very fertile ground for any kind of relationship. I guess it’s much the same in our own lives. Whenever we become overly focused on ourselves, or our own interests, our relationships with others are always the first thing to suffer from neglect.

I don’t have pictures from the rest of our set-up, but this is the brooder house where the chicks spend the first three weeks of their life on our farm. The waterer is gravity fed from a five gallon bucket in the next room, which makes it very easy to keep the birds readily supplied with this elixir of life. We used to employ the common one-gallon waterers sold at most feed stores, but soon tired of constantly cleaning and refilling them; these are much easier! After they have gone through their first growth spurt and have feathered out we move them outside until they are ready to butcher.

Once their allotted time has expired we prepare to “harvest” our investment, giving them a free ride to the killing cone. Chickens that are raised completely on prepared-grain feeds are very easy to catch, however, because we want a healthier meat we try to minimize the amount of prepared food and give them as much grass as possible. This makes for a much tastier, cleaner and healthier meat, with the correct balance of omega fats, CLA etc. and none of the toxic hormones and antibiotics. However, it also means they are much faster and more active, so catching them can be a little more work. In fact, unlike birds raised solely on commercial feeds, these can still fly quite well.

These are our killing cones, which we made out of common traffic cones Dad picked up from the City Street Department. This time, instead of buckets, we placed them over a trailer load of compost, which makes clean-up really easy. With this setup we can simply put them head down in the cone which squeezes their wings next to their bodies, thus holding them still and freeing up both our hands to do the knife work.

This is our scalding set up. It is actually an “Amish Canner” set on top of the outdoor, propane cook-stove we use to can juice and vegetable produce. It is relatively easy to keep at a stable temperature and holds plenty of water to completely submerge the birds without spilling over the sides. We keep the temperature around 150 to 155 degrees, which loosens all the feathers for plucking but does not over-cook the skin. It works great.

Here is Dad running our Wizbang Chicken Plucker. It is the one and only piece of equipment we use and we wouldn’t do without it! The first batch of chickens we ever butchered ourselves we plucked by hand. We were familiar with mechanical pluckers after seeing them being used at the place which has done our butchering in the past, and we had even read about building your own.  However, we had convinced ourselves it would not be worth the expense and effort. How wrong we were! There was only 35 chickens in that first batch but by the time we finished we had changed our minds. A plucker was built using plans and supplies purchased from Herrick Kimball in time for our second batch and we’ve never looked back!

This is where we gut  and prepare the birds for packaging. Once you become familiar with what you’re doing, it actually goes quite fast. After we are finished with the knives we weigh them and place them in the large watering trough you can see on the left side of the picture. We fill the trough with cold water and ice to aid in cooling the birds as much as possible before packaging.  This is so the meat will freeze fast enough to keep from spoiling and also to prevent the freezer from thawing, which is what would happen if we put them in warm. Using just water and ice actually performs the initial cooling process faster than a fridge or freezer and is also what we use to cool our milk.

This is the end of the line. Mom brings the birds in after they are done cooling and washes them up, placing them in bags so they are ready to pop right in the roasting pan as soon as they thaw. We try to pay attention to each step along the way so that when we get a bird out of the freezer there is no extra preparation needed before it is ready to cook. As my parents have often told me, “Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today.”

It might seem like a lot of work, but there’s no question about whether it is worth it when the family sits down to a delicious, home raised meal around the dining room table.

Tyler