Chicken Butchering

"Everyone who eats meat should get warm blood on their hands at least once a year." -Kurt Mead

In my attempts to learn more about food and how it gets to my dinner plate, naturalist friend Nikki and I decided to take up an opportunity to try out chicken butchering and preparation.  Kurt Mead, resident odonatalogist, ice fisherman, hunter, craftsman, baker, and all-around awesome guy, invited us over for his family's annual chicken butchering.  The Meads raise around 50 chickens every year, which they then use to feed their family (and the occasional family friend).  They're a great example of an environmentally conscious family in their decisions about where their meat comes from.

1. Butchering: The first step of the chicken butchering process is the most uncomfortable, in that it is the actual killing of the chickens.  There are a lot of different things I could say about this.  This was the first time I ever killed anything bigger than a fly, so I was a little unsure about how I was going to react.  However, once there in the situation, the actual act of butchering was much easier than I expected.  These chickens were clearly raised to be killed for meat and I recognize that in order to eat meat, someone has to kill it.  I think Kurt's quote is true - if you can't take responsibility for your meat, than you probably should think twice about eating it.

The killing is surprisingly easy.  A chicken is grabbed, hung upside down from its legs and then the neck is cut with one smooth slice of the knife.  The chicken is killed instantly and you just have to give it some time for the blood to empty out.

2. Deplucking: This was weirdly my favorite part of the process.  The chicken is submerged in hot water for about a minute to loosen up the feathers.  Then the chicken is placed in the deplucker, a machine Kurt personally built to expedite this process.  It's a large tub with rubber fingers coming out of the sides and a spinner on the bottom.  By spinning the chicken around the fingers and spraying it down with a hose, all of the feathers magically come off - it was awesome.

Nikki soaking a chicken before putting it in the deplucker.  Kurt supervising.

3. Gutting: Removing the innards of the chicken takes awhile, but this was pretty easy for me.  Having gutted hundreds of mice and small birds for our resident raptors, I've become quite familiar with the inner workings of animal organs.  After cutting off the legs, and the "pope's nose" (a slang term for the tail/butt), you basically just stick your hand in the chicken and start taking out the organs.  Chicken by chicken, we removed the intestines, gizzard, heart, lungs, liver, and crop.

Nikki pulling out a chicken esophagus.

4. Rinsing and Packaging: Once the chicken is all cleaned out, it's pretty easy to rinse it out and package it up.  The chickens are then put in the freezer and the Mead family now has enough chicken to last them the entire year.

Fully prepped chickens also make great hand puppets!

Kurt kindly let me take a chicken home for my own freezer.  I'm looking forward to cooking it as well. How often does someone get to go from having a live animal to having a meal on his/her plate and experience all the steps in between?