It’s time to talk about the butchering of our meat birds. This post does contain some blood and guts, but it’s not too bad. However, if you’re squeamish you should probably just skip this one.
I have to explain that here at Coal Creek Farm, there are no persons that grew up on a farm. Clay grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis and I grew up on four acres in western Kansas that was just outside of town, the only animal we had was a Standard Poodle named Thunder.
I have always loved country life, from the moment Clay and I started talking about where we wanted to live our conversations always drifted to a farm lifestyle. So, here we are. Everything we do on Coal Creek Farm is intentional, well, except the mistakes and screw ups. What I’m trying to say is we try to take on projects that will enhance the life on the farm and we figure since we live out here we need to take advantage of the possibilities that owning a farm offers.
Raising meat birds was a new gig. We bought 20 birds with me saying, “Just twenty?!” I was set on at least 50. There are times when Clay shows greater restraint with our projects and thank God he does or I would cause us so much work that life would become unbearable.
Two of the chicks died within the first few days we had them. I had read about these Cornish Cross birds and was concerned that they would have all sorts of problems and we would end up with zero birds to butcher. Because they are bred (emphasis on bred, not genetically altered) to grow very rapidly they are prone to heart problems and leg problems. A lot of this can be avoided by keeping the birds cool, which is why we didn’t raise our meat birds in the heat of the summer. We also chose to restrict feeding to 12 hours a day. This may slow the growth rate, but it also keeps your birds from gorging themselves 24 hours a day and then basically exploding.
We kept our birds in our basement until they got too big then we moved them into the barn in the pen you see in the photo until they got too big then we moved them into the inside of our chicken coop and we kicked our six layers and one rooster out into the barn. When the temperature started to get warmer, I opened the coop and gave them the outside run to use.
I had written BUTCHER CHICKENS on our calendar when the birds would be ten weeks old. That day came and went. When we finally had time to butcher them they were twelve weeks old. The roosters were just starting to try to crow. I like the suggestion that some of you gave me about butchering them at eight weeks. At least then I would still have a two week window and no roosters trying to crow.
We moved the big pen outside to house the birds on butchering morning. We hadn’t fed them so some of them started eating all the grass and weeds right away. Those birds love to eat.
Our turkeys got out when we were moving the birds and circled the pen wondering what was going on with their fat feathered friends. When they tired of circling the pen they ate 16 of my tomato plants. Turkeys!
First lets talk about pencil lead marks. How many of you have one somewhere on your body? Raise your hands. Mine is right there on my palm under my pinky. Where’s yours?
Moving on.
It is vital, and I am talking crucial to the point of something really critical and very important and also absolutely necessary that you have a freaking sharp knife. Not just a sharp knife, I mean one that if you tap it on your finger, it will skin your entire hand. None of my kitchen knives are that sharp. I wish they were, but no. I used Clay’s hunting knife, it is wonderful. And really sharp, I have the cuts to prove it.
I don’t have any pictures of us chopping off the heads. We originally thought we would have several people over to help us and make a fun day of it, but the response I got was either complete silence or HAYELL NO! We were under the gun to get it done so we just pressed on with our two oldest helping us….sorta. Once we were done setting up, my daughter made herself scarce. After he had chopped off eight heads my son decided he’d seen enough. My 7yo wouldn’t open his eyes when he stuck his head out the door to ask us something and didn’t come out to investigate until we were almost finished. My baby yelled at us, “Why you killing my babies?! I didun wan you kill my baby chickens!” I had no idea he thought they were his or that he considered them babies. sigh
We have a lot of work to do to make them full fledged country kids. I thought we did a really good job not getting emotionally attached to these birds. When you get into it knowing you are raising them to kill and eat you detach the ‘pet’ mentality. I love animals, but I did not love these birds, obviously my 4yo did and he was prepared to raise them and send them to college.
However, he had no problem eating them….cannibal.
Once we had chopped off the heads we held them tightly and lowered them to the ground until they were done flopping and most of the blood had drained out. Yes, a chicken will run around with it’s head cut off. these birds are so heavy that it would damage their meat if we allowed them to do that. Several of them did some flopping after we had hung them up and it caused their wing to break, we tried to avoid that, but we’re just not experienced enough yet.
After they had stopped flipping and flapping, which is about a minute or two, we wrapped wire around there feet and hung them from our clothes line to drain out the remaining blood.
We decided we were going to skin our chickens instead of scalding and plucking. We rarely eat the skin and I mean only if we buy a bucket of fried chicken.
Unfortunately, the first one I tried to skin, I did upside down and it took me FOREVER!
I mean FOREVER!
Let’s take in this picture.
Four dead, bloody chickens hanging from the clothes line. Tire ramps in the yard. A trash can for guts. A dog scavenging whatever chicken parts he can get in his mouth. A big blood stain in the grass. A child running to hide so she doesn’t have to participate in the madness. A pile of debris waiting to be burned in the background, on the top of the pile is the sickly chicken we killed first.
What am I missing?
Oh, right. What you can’t see is that the Sheriff is parked at the end of our road watching all of this….for hours he watched. I wanted to take him a cup of coffee, but I was afraid to approach him with all the blood and guts splattered on me.
I’d like to submit this to the Chicken Yearbook committee with this caption:
Ellen and Preacher playing soccer, April blowing her nose wondering if she will ever get that darn bird skinned while the Sheriff looks on.
After I finished the first bird, wisdom finally sank in, I realized I was doing it backwards. The remaining birds we took to the table and skinned from the neck down. It is very simple, the skin and feathers pull off easily. The hardest parts to clean are the wings. Doing it this way you avoid having to cut out the oil gland, it comes off with the skin.
We kept a reference book close at hand to make sure we were cleaning the birds correctly. After the first few we were good to go.
Chicken parts.
In the white bowl I saved the necks, livers, hearts and cleaned gizzards. The rest we burned, after we all played with the feet. You can’t help but play with the feet.
Look, my kids are doing something to help! We filled two coolers with ice water and stored all the clean meat in them until we were done.
Um, maybe next year we’ll have the sense to raise the table for the giant woman that had to stand there and clean birds all day.
At one point in the morning it was just Clay and I working on the birds by ourselves, he said, “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do on a beautiful Saturday morning than be outside with my lovely bride butchering some chickens.” And he was serious.
Then we remembered the Sheriff was watching and our romantic moment turned into “WE DIDN’T DO IT! WE’RE INNOCENT! I SWEAR! THESE BIRDS WERE ALREADY DEAD WHEN WE GOT HERE!”
…..to be continued, because why would I want to stop talking about guts and blood and chickens?
Need a Chicken Doctor?
Contact 
You truly are another Pioneer Woman! I couldn’t do that for a million dollars. Uh, wait a minute, yes i could. LOL
Ahhh…brings back memories (*cough* – *choke*)! Although we didn’t have the “fast growing” chickens that you did, my Dad butcherd our laying hens once they quit laying (he never, ever let us watch). We plucked…as kids, it was fun for us to pull out the pin feathers. Just the mention of scalding the chickens to pluck brings back that smell of hot, wet chicken…Blech!
I really really really REALLY want to raise chickens! I did a project with the school I used to work for and helped the 6th grade teacher incubate and hatch chicks.Out of 24 eggs we only got three chicks – bad incubator, a story for another time. But I kept those three chickens until I couldn’t catch them anymore and then they were sent to a local farmer. The kids and I named them Nugget, KFC and Scuba Steve. It was a lot of fun. I did a lot of research on chickens to try to find the ones that would produce eggs and be good for meat after they’re past laying age. I hadn’t thought of raising them just for meat. Great idea! Maybe I will have to have some layers and some laying hens and some fatties for eating. Although I do believe I would send them away to be butchered. ICK!! Props to you and Clay for tackling the job yourselves. Did you calculate how much money, if any, you saved by producing your own meat? I’d be interested in knowing that. And by the way – lead in my right kneecap put there by my sister…
Yeah, uummm… you just helped me make the decision to send our meat birds (daughter calls them “meaties”) to the butcher. Thanks for the great blog!!
It looks like you had a great time
I think I could possibly do this! Skinning the chickens sounds much better than scalding and plucking them. We don’t eat the skins either. Out of curiousity….why did you save the chicken innards?
Your candid shots encourage me to take real life photos tomorrow when we get down and dirty.
Great post!
My Dad would use an axe to chop off the chicken’s heads. We had “normal” chickens, so he would just let them run around the yard after de-heading for the amusement of the neighborhood children. Then he hung them on the fence to drain.
Did you know that your blog is the highlight of my day? I wait until I fix my lunch (even if I have had time to read it earlier), then sit at my desk and immerse myself in your farmlife. I laugh outloud, my coworkers look over at me, I don’t care. If you had asked me if I could come over and help butcher chickens, I’d have said “you betcha”. I can’t wait to read about the rest of the day!
I just found you recently, courtesy of a link to your future plans for sabotage when you visit your grown kids. Freaking hysterical. I may print it out and hang it up!
You know, you almost make me think I could do this. My friend goes home every year to butcher with her family and of course brings back a load of good birds for her trouble. I think I could deal with the skinning… the gutting and head choppin’ is what really is difficult for me to imagine doing.
As far as worry over freezer burn-perhaps if you ice glazed the meat you would have less trouble, what do you think?
Aw, heck I was counting on video! I want some chickens and I have to know how it’s done! Guess I’ll have to go to YouTube… Good job anyway – those birds are a good size!
I love your matching brown sweatshirts. You’re just too adorable.
And if you think butchering chickens is bad… try a goat!
What a great story.
1) My pencil mark is on my left palm dead center.
2) I’m a country girl, but I do not think I could have
done what you two did. Way to go!
3) Because I’m a big, fat chicken (pun intended) I purchase my already dead, cleaned and frozen whole chickens from the Mennonite Family that brings them to town twice a year for $5.00 each. Worth every penny to me.
Again way to go!
Why, pray tell, was the creepy Sheriff lurking about? Did he think you had other intentions with that very sharp knife and all of that wire. What kind of place do you live in anyway?? Maybe he was hoping for some free chicken? My sister and I had the opportunity to “raise” some chickens when we were smaller, but we sold them to someone else instead of butchering them ourselves. Blood money you could say-but it worked!!
you mean chickens don’t come from the grocery store???
Wow! You are AMAZING! I would like to say ditto to Julia’s comment “you mean chickens don’t come from the grocery store???”
We are in the process of buying a farm and are farmer wannabees with little or no practical experience, or “out of our freakin minds” as those closest to us fondly refer to us. I love your blog and intend to suck up all the information I can including misteps and mayhem, hoping to avoid some and create some of our own.
When we butcher chickens we have a tree stump with 2 long nails in the top that we hook their heads through, hold back on the feet and THUMP, they’re “done”. We’ve also got a tin cone nailed to the side of the stump, so you then stick the body in the cone, neck down, and they drain out well and cannot flop around. Works great!
?? Perhaps next time the sheriff looks on..you should get a cloth shaped doll…with a badge..some straight pins..and let the poultry sacrificing begin..
I’ve been stalking your blog, but I have to break my silence for this one. BEEN THERE.DONE THAT. HAVE THE BLOODY T-SHIRT TO PROVE IT. I grew up on a farm with a daddy who apparently thought my sister and I were Laura and Mary Ingalls. He was doing the whole “back to land” thing when everyone else was headed into the modern age. Caused us no small source of consternation, I can assure you.
Here’s a story (the length of a blog entry. I’m highjacking, I know. But you gotta hear this one.) City cousin (maybe 6 yo) visits with her grandparents the day after a chicken butchering event. There are still feet on the butchering table. She is entranced. My dad boars a hole with an awl through the top of the chicken foot, runs a length of nylon twine through it and ties a knot. Voila! A necklace for City Cousin! She wears it as proudly as any voodoo priestess. Takes it with her. Packs it in her suitcase. When she returns home to Dallas, her mother finds it wedged in amongst her panties. Strangely,kid never did come back to our house. Hmmmmm?
Oh, did this ever bring back memories… it sounds like a Saturday at my house, right down to the “how-to” book on the butchering table (though minus the sheriff staking out the place). Thanks for a good giggle to go with my morning coffee!
you guys are AWESOME!
I’m a suburban girl, all the way. My chickens come already butchered from the grocery store and I’m happy with my blissful ignorance. I am a bit curious as to why you keep the feet. I’m married to a Mexican and the site of chicken feet in Mexican grocers absolutely grosses me out.
This brings back memories. I wish my parents had skinned them. Instead we had the lovely smell of wet chicken and I spent hours plucking feathers. Yuck! And I don’t think I have any lasting scars from eating things we raised for meat (that I know of). My dad had an ingenious contraption for keeping the chickens fairly well contained. He had a deep bucket with a hole in the bottom he hung from a tree and pulled the birds head through the bottom and cut. The chickens pretty much stayed in the bucket rather than running around.
Ahhh…chicken butchering. The memories have come flooding back. I grew up on a farm in Upstate NY, and chickens were just one of those things you were expected to help with. We were the plucking type because I guess there were family members who loved crispy chicken skin. What a pain in the butt. Luckily my sister was the better plucker, so I was designated to packaging. And your right…the feet were the best to play with!
what do you do with the feet? i HEAR they are a delicacy in Chinese cooking. Maybe you can freeze and sell to someone. just a thought but probably too much trouble. ask someone in your town/city who owns an Asian restaurant if they are interested. again….probably too much trouble.
[...] of April, the happy chicken-butcherer of Coal Creek Farm has written not one but two posts on how she met Margaret Roach, learned a lot [...]
[...] – these hearty Bierochs run in their family. Thank you, April! I will try them, and hopefully grow brave, funny, and [...]
[...] – they’ve got plenty of time for pig farming. Think I’m kidding? There’s chicken-butchering, too. Anyway – this year they raised some gloriously large hogs, and when I was included in [...]
WHY was he watching you?! That’s creepy! Did someone call about you letting your kids play with the axe? I have to know!!!
I had to laugh at your post. It was similar to what happened here this past sat. when i butchered my roosters. some kids helped and others had to stay away. although i ended up using a killing cone and doing one chicken at a time from start to finish. we only live on 3 acres, but we have chickens, ducks, kids, dogs, cats, and kids (yeah i know i repeated but with 6 kids, that’s a lot of kids). i think we’ll be raising pigs next, so i’ll stick with your blog. thanks.
Hello there, just was aware of your blog via Google, and located that it’s truly informative. I’m going to be careful for brussels. I’ll appreciate should you proceed this in future. A lot of folks will probably be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
[...] Butchering Chickens Part I « Coal Creek FarmMay 21, 2009 … I had written BUTCHER CHICKENS on our calendar when the birds would be ten weeks old. That day came and went. When we finally had … [...]
Hi, i feel that i noticed you visited my blog so i got here to return the want?.I’m attempting to find issues to enhance my web site!I suppose its good enough to use a few of your concepts!!