Chicken Processing Day (caution: not suitable for the faint of heart, or for vegetarians)

We processed our Cor­nish X chick­ens last Thurs­day (which is a polite way of say­ing that we slaugh­tered and dressed them). These chick­ens have been quite a hand­ful. Despite our best efforts, we’ve lost about a third of them over the last eight weeks. A hand­ful died as chicks, either because they were weak or got smoth­ered. Then, about a week after we put them out­side, we had a very cold and rainy stretch towards the end of May. We think they were weak­ened by the bad weath­er, and that con­tributed to a num­ber of them get­ting sick, most like­ly from a par­a­site called coc­cidia (we noticed bloody stool in their pen). Then, only two days from our sched­uled chick­en pro­cess­ing date, we had an excep­tion­al­ly warm Tues­day and the chick­ens over­heat­ed. We went down to check on them after  lunch to find over a half dozen dead or dying. It was heart-breaking.

These inci­dents aren’t very easy for me or Dave to talk about. We are respon­si­ble for these ani­mals, and when they die there is no deny­ing that it is usu­al­ly almost entire­ly our fault. Most­ly, we make our­selves feel bet­ter by telling each oth­er how we will nev­er make the same mis­takes again — hope­ful­ly this is true. At the same time, we are get­ting bet­ter at cop­ing with the feel­ing of loos­ing one of our ani­mals. There’s a cliche about how liv­ing on a farm brings you clos­er to under­stand­ing and accept­ing death — so far, this is true.

In this case, how­ev­er, there is no deny­ing that it was­n’t just our inex­pe­ri­ence that caused so many of these chick­ens to die. For our first exper­i­ment with meat birds we decid­ed to get all Cor­nish X chicks, one of the most pop­u­lar breeds of meat chick­en. The Cor­nish X is bred to grow fast and large, which in turn makes them less hardy than oth­er birds. Through­out the eight weeks we spent with these chick­ens, we could­n’t help but to feel a lit­tle depressed about how help­less they seemed. Cor­nish Xs have a low­er sur­vival rate than oth­er breeds of chick­en, they suf­fer from leg prob­lems and weak hearts, and due to their weight they are very inac­tive. We have vowed from now on to only buy her­itage breed chick­ens. They might take longer to grow and may nev­er get as big (and they con­tain less white meat, and more dark meat, which is okay with me), but Dave and I have agreed that we want to raise birds with bet­ter instincts. Our new chicks are all Free­dom Rangers and Dark Cor­nish­es.

As we stood and stared and swore at those sev­en dead chick­ens on Tues­day, I felt both guilt and anger. Look at how much food was being wast­ed! These were our biggest chick­ens (which prob­a­bly explains why the heat gave them heart-attacks), they had been gorg­ing them­selves on our expen­sive organ­ic chick­en food for eight weeks! They prob­a­bly totaled 40 lbs of deli­cious organ­ic pas­ture raised chick­en meat, and they were being thrown into the compost!

It was, by far, the worst day we’ve had to date.

By prop­ping up one side of the chick­en trac­tor to facil­i­tate a cross breeze, and run­ning an exten­sion cord out from the house to the pen and set­ting up a fan, we were able to keep the chick­ens cool through the rest of the after­noon and into Wednes­day, which was 95 degrees. Need­less to say, we’re plan­ning on mak­ing some changes to the tractor.

Wednes­day night we went to bed ear­ly. Dave woke up at 3:30 AM to get the scalder going, and then woke me up at 4:30 so I could help him fin­ish set­ting up. The fore­cast Thurs­day said that tem­per­a­tures were sup­posed to be near 100 degrees F, which we were pre­pared for, but we weren’t pre­pared for the thun­der­storms that con­sis­tent­ly rolled through all day. Luck­i­ly, we had a tent for the farm­ers mar­ket that pro­vid­ed just enough shel­ter for the five of us (Dave, me, my mom and two friends) to stay most­ly dry.

Dave cut up two traf­fic cones and built a stand for them, so we could safe­ty hold the chick­ens upside-down while they bled out. To pluck the birds, we bor­rowed the scalder and the pick­er from anoth­er farm in town. The scalder fills with water and holds it at con­sis­tent­ly 147 degrees F, which is hot enough to loosen the feath­ers on the bird with­out cook­ing it. When we test­ed it out on Tues­day, the scalder took an unbe­liev­ably long time to heat up, so Dave built an insu­lat­ing wood­en box to fit around it to help it reach and hold its tem­per­a­ture.  The pick­er is a cylin­dri­cal spin­ning machine that is filled with lit­tle rub­ber fin­gers. When the scald­ed bird is placed inside, the rub­ber fin­gers pick off all its feath­ers. The pick­er is attached to a hose so the feath­ers can all be washed out the back as the bird spins. The next step, the evis­cer­at­ing, was done by hand.

Both Mom and I have done a cou­ple pro­cess­ing days with Pete and Jen’s Back­yard Birds in Con­cord, Dave and I have been doing a lot of read­ing and I’ve dealt with my fair share of chick­ens and knives work­ing in the food indus­try, so I felt con­fi­dent that we could process these birds safe­ty and clean­ly. We made sure to keep all our sur­faces hosed down and san­i­tized, and we got the dressed chick­ens iced as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Pro­cess­ing chick­ens is time-con­sum­ing and sticky work, but it was reward­ing to know that we were final­ly pro­duc­ing our own meat.

Which brings me to my next point: when the chick­ens died need­less­ly because of a mis­take that I made I felt awful, but when we killed them our­selves them on Thurs­day I felt noth­ing but con­fi­dence in the fact that we were doing the right thing. Yes, it’s hard to slit a chick­ens throat, and yes, it can be kind of dis­gust­ing to gut it, but we had raised these chick­ens as humane­ly as pos­si­ble, and we killed them as humane­ly as well, and if I’m going to be eat­ing meat I feel as if this is some­thing that I should know about and experience.

With that in mind:


CAUTION: some of these pic­tures are vio­lent and there is also some blood.


VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.

Check­ing the tem­per­a­ture on the scald­ing box. We bor­rowed the box and the pluck­er from a farmer cou­ple we know in town. Thank god, it would have been a pret­ty impos­si­ble task with­out them.

The chick­ens we hung upside in the cones and Dave slit their throats and then let them bleed out into the buckets.

Then we scald­ed them for about a minute.

Then they went into the pick­er, which spins the chicken

Next, we cut off their feet and heads and evis­cer­at­ed the birds.  This is done by cut­ting a hole around the chick­en’s vent and extract­ing their diges­tive sys­tem, heart, liv­er and lungs.

Intestines

Heads and guts

After we were fin­ished we imme­di­ate­ly put the chick­ens into an ice bath to cool them down. Then, we went back over them with pli­ers and a hose to pluck out any stub­born feath­ers and do qual­i­ty con­trol (dou­ble check to make sure all the birds were prop­er­ly gut­ted) before dry­ing them off and bag­ging them up to go into either the refrig­er­a­tor or the freezer.

We’ve grilled three chick­ens to date and they have all been delicious.