So, I have to ask what is the process for processing a chicken exactly? Do you snap the neck, or cut the head off to kill them, do you hang them upside down to bleed them out? Do you have to pull the feathers by hand or is there a tool or something to help with that part? How long is the process? Might be morbid, but I am honestly curious.
I'm going to treat these first 10 the way I did as a duck hunter. well, with ducks if they weren't dead immediatley after being shot, I'd snap their neck as fast as possible to eliminate suffering. with the chickens, I'll chop the head off. If using a block, I'll use an ax. if I use a killing cone, I'll use large pruning sheers and let them bleed out. That will come down to my production size. For instance, I'm only growing 10 birds right now, I will probably cull 1 or 2 this week because any that are semi failure to thrive, I want to probably harvest them first so I don't risk them dying and the meat spoiling. Cornish Cross birds are notorious for having health issues because they are bred to do nothing but eat eat eat 24/7 and die. so they get so big so fast (8-10lbs in 8-10 weeks) that they can have heart attacks and break their own legs from how muscular they get. All of my 10 are looking pretty good, feathers are coming in nicely. This morning I noticed they are starting to almost look pretty and typically cornish cross just look like nasty monsters of chickens lol. But I do have 1 that is very very lazy. I thought I'd butcher it this past weekend, but it would get up to come eat and drink and I figured if its still mobile then I'll keep fattening it up a bit. This morning all 10 were walking around and chasing me looking for fresh water and food so I'm glad I didn't cull too early.
I don't have any real goals for bird size on this first batch. if I end up with 4-6lb birds when done, I'll be happy because in May I plan to build a larger brooder where I can safely, cleanly, and humanely raise at least 20 chicks at a time. Then at about 3 weeks I'll move them to either a small paddock/pasture we are making for them, or a chicken tractor so they have more soil to turn over. Its a bit cleaner for a larger flock so they aren't living constantly in their own ammonia and feces. for my smaller flock, I'm giving them fresh bedding/shavings to control that kind of stuff. But going forward wanting to raise more birds, and raise them as healthy as possible to improve the quality and volume of meat for us, I'll try to get them either chicken tractored, or new pasture.
Some people are really big on plucking. You can get a chicken plucker but they're sorta pricey, like $400-1000. You chop the head off the bird, dip it in hot water to scald it for a moment, toss the bird into the chicken plucker, it spins around in circles removing all the feathers. then if you want you can do a second dip with a little parafin wax in the hot water to help remove the last of the feathers. Some people just chop the head off, drain the blood, remove the guts, dip in hot water with wax, and start plucking.
My plan is, remove the head then pull just a couple tufts of feathers on the chest. get the knife inbetween the skin and the meat, and carefully carve all the skin off the bird, as this takes the feathers of super easily. I will probably keep like 2 of these 10 birds in tact for beer can or braising, but my method of skinning them out allows me to very easily carve out the breasts, stack those in whatever quantities my wife wants for freezing, then I'll do the same for the wings and legs, I'll keep those in a separate bag for BBQ'ing. I'll probably save gizzards and hearts
at least for the dogs, if not for myself.
Then whats left of the carcasses will likely get separated. feet etc into a pile that will go into broth for the dogs, and the rest of the scrap meats and bones into soup stock for the humans.
a lot of people are really big on leaving the skin on and plucking the whole damn bird and I think its more out of being naive than anything cause thats a LOT of unnecessary work in my opinion!
