Knowing how to butcher a chicken at home is a skill not for the faint of heart, but one essential if you want to be self-sustainable and raise your own livestock from start to table. We've been butchering our own chickens for 6+ years now and have learned a few things over the years to streamline the process.
I know many people hire out the butchering of their meat animals. We do it for our cattle, one due to the size of them, but more importantly because we don't have the equipment, including a cooler for allowing the meat to age properly.
But knowing how to butcher a chicken is quite different from knowing how to butcher a full-size cow.
We have butchered our own pigs, but this fall, we'll be sending the pair of pigs we have now to the local butcher.
For those of you wanting to know how to butcher a live chicken, then this is the post for you. I did my best to take tasteful pictures of butchering a chicken at home, but if the sign of blood makes you faint, either grab the smelling salts and a soft pillow or have someone read you the post so you don't see the pics, okay?
Listen in below to the full podcast, Episode #263 How to Butcher a Chicken at Home, of the Pioneering Today Podcast, where we don’t just inspire you, but give you the clear steps to create the homegrown garden, pantry, kitchen, and life you want for your family and homestead.
If you missed How to Raise Meat Chickens Part 1 you can catch it here.
How to Butcher a Chicken at Home
1. Rent the equipment. Having the right equipment makes all the difference. For $27 we were able to rent from our local county agriculture extension office all of the chicken butchering equipment including the cones, the scalding tank, and the big most lovely thing in the world when it comes to butchering chickens, the automatic plucker!
If you can't rent it, here is the equipment you can order online.
Equipment for Butchering Chickens
- A kill cone is essential, no missing the chicken with an ax or having it flopping all over (this seems to be the one thing people say when they watched as a kid that stayed with them in a negative way)
- a boning knife (my husband made ours but this is a similar blade)
- scalding tank – trust me, you'll never want to butcher a chicken without a scalding tank, it makes plucking so much easier
- automatic chicken plucker
- hose for rinsing
- stainless steel table for processing
- garbage can/bucket for guts
- ice chest with ice to put finished chickens in
- bags for feet/hearts
- thermometer for measuring scalding tank temperature
2. Take away the food. The night before butchering chickens remove their food. You don't want to have food in the crop of the chicken (the area they hold their food in before swallowing) when removing.
3. Set it all up before you begin to butcher the chickens. Light the scalding tank before you're ready to make sure you know how and it's working. Hook up the water hose and extension cord to the plucking machine (only requires 110 volt). Turn it on, make sure it works. Have all of your knives sharpened and laid out. You'll need to turn on the scalding tank (it's propane, so know how to light the pilot light) a few hours before butchering to heat the water. You want the water at 140 to 150 degrees Farhenheit. Too hot and you'll tear the skin when plucking.
4. Got ice? Wash out a large bin and fill it with some ice and cold water. We placed all of the chickens in here after they'd been plucked, but before gutting and removing the feet. Have an extra bag of ice handy to put the finished chickens in before you begin wrapping them for freezing
How to butcher a chicken
5. Place the chickens in the cone. Their head hangs down allowing you to make a clean cut. Note: We don't just slit the throat, we completely cut off the head of the chicken. Knowing how to slaughter or kill a chicken at home seems brutal to some, but we feel it's much more humane to know the whole process of butchering a chicken yourself and making sure it's done in the quickest and kindness way possible. Allow the blood to drain out, it only takes a few minutes.
6. Dunk chicken in the scalding tank. About 1 to 2 minutes of dunking the chicken in the scalding tank are just right. Too long, and you'll begin to cook the skin and it will tear upon plucking. Be warned, this is the stinky part. If you can do this on a cool day, you'll be much happier. We use a metal hook rather than holding by the feet so that the feet are submerged and skinned at the same time (so much easier when using the feet in broth if they're skinned on butcher day). Feathers should easily come out if you gently tug on them.
7. Place chicken in the plucking machine. It doesn't take long for this little beauty to pluck all the feathers off. It also rinses the chicken at the same time. Is there anything pretty than a bald chicken? (Okay, while butchering, I mean otherwise I just sound really weird…)
8. Create an assembly line. Don't try to cut up each chicken from start to finish before moving onto the next. We placed all the plucked chickens in the ice water bath until they were all done.
9. Remove the preening oil gland. Place your bird breast side down, and push the tail up so the oil gland is sticking up. Cut this off (it can make the meat taste funny if you leave it).
10. Cut off the feet. At the joint of the leg, cut off the chicken feet. You can save these to make a gelatinous broth or toss them. Up to you. Personally ,I keep the feet, for real, best broth evah!
11. Cut between the dimple above the neck and below the breast. Pull the craw loose, hook your finger behind it and pull it loose from the neck, but not out of the chicken.
12. Pull the windpipe loose.
13. Gut your chicken. Take your butcher knife and cut a horizontal slit to pull the intestines and organs.
14. Have a bucket or garbage bag to discard guts and intestines. If it's hot out, you may want to fill the buck with some water to keep the flies at bay. Pull out the organs (save the heart and liver if you wish), guts, and lungs. Let the weight of the intestines pull the anus down and make a v-cut around it to remove fully.
15. Rinse chicken thoroughly. Rinse chicken off again under cold running water.
16. Allow chicken to rest. Place chicken in an ice chest with ice and allow to rest anywhere from 6 to 24 hours. We were finished butchering at 1 pm in the afternoon and I packaged ours and placed in the freezer at 8 pm that evening (we ran out of ice).
17. Package chickens. In the past, I've used produce bags from the grocery store but this year we purchased the shrink bags here (this was the best price we found) To use the shrink bags, heat a pot of water to 180 degrees F. Place chicken inside the bag and dip into heated water for 5 to 10 seconds, pull out and immediately tie with twist ties. Place in freezer.
We chose to freeze our chickens whole to roast later. Pressure canning your chicken is another storage option. You can watch my free Pressure Canning Video Series here.
We butchered 26 chickens and it took about two hours. The birds were 8-week-old Cornish cross and average 5 to 5.5 pounds (a few were under 5 pounds and some almost 7 pounds) fully dressed. (Here's more on why we raise Cornish Cross, 10 Tips on Raising Chickens for Meat )
Are home butchered chickens tough
No. I usually let my birds thaw in the fridge for 2 days (beings I only let them rest 6 hours on butcher day) and have never had a tough bird. I've baked, roasted, smoked and cooked them in the Instant Pot (here's how to cook a whole chicken in an hour from frozen) with never an issue, they've always been extremely flavorful, tender, and moist.
There you have it, all the steps from start to finish on how to butcher a chicken at home.
So there you have it, how to kill or butcher a chicken at home.
Have you ever butchered your own meat? Do you have any tips?
More Articles on Raising Chickens
- 5 Tips to Raising Backyard Chickens
- Breeding Chickens Naturally: Selective Breeding for Eggs & Chicks
- Raising Chicks – Beginner's Guide to the First 6 Weeks
- Using Chickens in the Garden
- Storing & Preserving Eggs Farm Fresh Eggs Primer
- 10 Tips on Raising Chickens for Meat
- Raising Chickens for Profit
- Stocking Up on Animal Feed (+ How Much to Feed Animals)
- Planning Your Livestock for a Year's Worth of Meat Per Person
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Thank you for the post…I like to see what others do in case I see something that will make me more efficient.
I have to comment on the use of the cones. I was always raised to make the animals’ end of life as quick and painless as possible. They are giving up their lives for our nourishment, the least we can do is make their death quick. That being said, we have always use the trusty axe and they do not even have time to be afraid.
Being shoved headfirst into a cone, stabbed in the neck and left to bleed out seems barbaric. Just a thought.
I am happy to see more and more people becoming self sufficient, but maybe we can go one step further and be think about being in their place.
Jenna
Actually chickens are calmed when carried upside down. They’re very calm and not panicked at all. We don’t stab them we cut their head off, so not sure how that’s different than the ax method you use other than they’re in the cone. I know many people who have missed and only partially cut off the heads with an axe. I encourage everyone to find the method that works for them. Thanks for sharing, but rest assured our chickens weren’t treated barbaric.
I think so,
You know that Vegetables, and grains, and …. are alive either!!!???
Cones aren’t barbaric. When I slaughter a chicken, holding them by the feet or putting them in a cone often causes them to pass out. If not, I make sure to be extra swift with the axe/machete.
How long do you rest the chicken before gutting them?
Im wondering the resting length time as well.
Sorry, guys, I missed this comment and question the first time. I let our chickens rest about 60 minutes on average before gutting them. Some were a bit longer and some a bit shorter as we butchered them all, then scalded and plucked them before beginning to gut them.
Hi, I have never heard of resting, can you say the purpose of this? Thank you
So the meat isn’t tough.
Thanks for sharing! This is something I hope to do one day and it’s nice to see a step by step process to have a better understanding. Was this your first time?
Been making this a family event for several years – as in we usually butcher 100-150 in about 6 hrs. Built our own chicken plucker :http://whizbangplucker.blogspot.com/2010/04/get-your-whizbang-plucker-and-chicken.html from these plans, and we scald in an outdoor turkey frying pot. Our assembly line is a little different, but the only real tip I want to pass on….we cobbled together a small pipe to a shop vac (gotta love duct tape!) to make our own vacuum packed whole chickens. This method removed a lot of the air from the bags, and we have very little freezer burn even after 9 mo in the freezer.
I cut out the preening gland before wrapping them up to freeze.
(For those that don’t know) It’s the oil gland on the top side of the tail and you remove it by sliding your knife under it.
Why do you do that? Does it effect the taste of the meat? I’ve never done that before and would be interested to know more.
We always cut that out too. I don’t know the reason, that is just the way mom taught me to do it. We would get 100 baby chickens in the spring and save the pullets to lay and butchered the roosters. It was the chopping axe and a block of wood, boiling water in the canner and setting there plucking the chickens. Mom and I would take turns gutting and cutting them up for the freezer. Chicken tasted good back then. I just can’t buy a chicken from the store and enjoy it now. Completely different from a farm raised one.
I’ve heard the preening gland does affect the taste of the meat.
I would like to remove the whole tail/butt and do not know if this would remove the gland totally. Also is this the correct time to take off the tail. Thanks
Hello…not trying to be one of those people but I have a couple concerns with the anatomy. What you refered to as the “vent” is actually the crop. That’s where they “hold their food”. The vent is where the egg comes out. And when you say they’re calm when hung upside down its because they’re slow suffocating. Chickens don’t have diaphragms so when you hang them upside down, all their organs crush the air sacs that they breath through. I know they’re going to die anyway but I always like to be totally informed when doing anything. Let alone taking a life. Thank you for the post!
Donna,
Thanks for your info I appreciate it when it’s done to be helpful and not in a mean spirit. 🙂 I wasn’t aware of the organs and air sacs. Our goal is to be as humane as possible so I appreciate your explanation.
Would like to know do chickens when IN molt lose feathers around necks and stop laying eggs total or is there another problem that should be addressed need help with this or is there something else I can feed them to help with this I feeding them a lot of protein such as pumpkin calf manna mealworms
When chickens molt you want to make sure their nutrition is adequate and good but the molt is natural, they don’t lay eggs during that period. I feed extras from the garden if I have it but don’t add in anything extra. They love meal worms so that’s fine to give as a treat.
When the chickens are molting all of the energy that she normally puts into laying her eggs goes into growing new feathers, so no eggs until they are done. It’s also a good idea to add extra protein during this time to help with the process as it does take lots of protein to grow new feathers. One source I read suggested throwing a couple of handfuls of cat food in for them every day during this time. Cat food is high in protein as cats are carnivores and have high protein needs.
My question is why do you rest the chickens after you pluck? We never have. We have stations, first the cone person, gets chicken, bleeds it, gives to second, who hot water baths and puts into our homemade plucker, next to the person who cleans the chicken, and then into house, at cleaned sink for cleanup and bagging.I am number four.
We set up ahead of time, using 2 plastic 6 ft tables as dressing area, bucket for feet, for livers and gizzards, and for discards. Feet are sold or used for stock. I use large dish tubs(actually table bussing tubs from Sam’s) to move chickens from outside in, without mess on cement porch or, kitchen floor. Also we spray cement well before starting, and it is saturated from water, and blood will not soak into cement. So we have 4 adults, and 3 children, 8,9 and 10, learning process and assisting where they can. .
Kim,
Ours were resting because we finished each task for all of the chickens before moving to the next. I’ve heard the resting helps with the texture of the meat, but I honestly don’t know any of the reason or science behind that claim. If anyone else does I’d love to hear it. Thanks for sharing how your families process!
[…] just because you go out hunting. I’d roasted a whole chicken a few weeks ago from the chickens we’d butchered ourselves. I thought I’d thawed it all the way out before I roasted it and when we first cut into the […]
HEY THERE!
We’re new to butchering the first time we had to butcher two roosters since our precinct does not allow them. They came out great but more recently we butchered two hens around 1-2 years old each. The meat although great tasting was tough! We were wondering if meat in older hens gets tough or if we did something wrong? We roasted them the day after we butchered and again it was tasty but tough. Any thoughts?
Carolina,
Yes, older birds are tougher. A lot of folks will cook them in a pressure cooker to help with tenderness or use them as stew birds. Ever heard the term tough old bird? That’s where it comes from, so you didn’t do anything wrong.
Older (tougher) hens and roosters make great soup 😋
[…] Guide: How To Butcher A Chicken […]
Am curious – do you singe the chickens to remove the hair left after plucking? My mother did it over a gas stove flame quickly! Just wondering. As a child I helped dess many a chicken young ones and old hens for chicken and noodles! Thanks !
My mother always singed them too. She did it over an aluminum disposable pie pan with rubbing alcohol lit to flame.
What a helpful article! Thank you for thegreat information. My only question is the practicality of renting the machine if you only have a few chickens. I live alone and when I get them am only planning for a dozen chickens tops (not a very big farm lol). With such a small number, is it more economical to just kill and clean the chickens by hand one at a time, or would you still suggest the machine assistance? Sorry for the silly question, rather new to this.
Sannie,
It was pretty inexpensive for us to rent. If we were just doing two or three chickens, then probably not worth it, but for a dozen at a time, I’d say it was worth it. The plucking can take a long time and literally, the machine had them plucked in less than a minute. Our neighbors are doing meat chickens this coming year and we’re going to split the renting and do it all on the same day.
My grand son and I dispatched 14 roosters last year. Our first time! Ethan got a little queasy in the beginning, but by the end he was wielding a knife and going from start to finish. We skinned them, they were old banty’s. Cleaned them up and put them in the Nesco and made broth. So good!
I always wondered what a person does with the waste. The feathers and the innards are about all I wouldn’t use. Thanks for all the great info!
We usually save the innards for my dad to eat. Not all of it just the like heart liver and gizzards he likes all that
Good to see people actually remove the head. I honestly feel its more humane this way, I can’t imagine just cutting the throat as they would suffer greatly.
Joshua,
We felt the same way and that’s why we chose to remove them completely.
[…] Chickens are also a great way to raise your own meat. We had our first batch of meat chickens last year and are doubling our numbers this year. Here’s how to raise meat chickens and how to butcher chickens. […]
[…] and eat in as little as eight weeks. Here’s our experience and step by step tutorial on How to Butcher a Chicken at Home and How to Raise Meat […]
Did you use a knife or something else to remove the head?
Donna, we used a very sharp boning knife to remove the head.
You do not mention burning the hairs off of the chicken. Does the plucker do that also? I butchered my first chicken at age 9 and had it in the frying pan when my parents got home.
Joyce,
Yes, the plucker gets rid of all the feathers, even the little ones so we don’t have to burn them off. We did burn the hair off of our pigs when butchering, but thankfully, we got to skip that step with the chickens. Wow, you go, I’m gonna have to tell my 10 year-old to step it up then!
Great post! I just want to mention one thing. You shouldn’t eat or freeze a bird right after butchering it. They should rest for 3 days to allow rigamortis to run it’s course. Otherwise you’re eating the bird while the muscle is still tight and rigid. This results in a tough bird.
Hey, Rebecca,
Good tip. But you can also let it thaw in the fridge for a few days and that’s worked well for us so we don’t have any tough birds. 🙂 Either way, resting the bird is key in not having it tough. Thanks!
I do my chickens the same way. We have a homemade cone and boil our own water on our turkey fryer. I don’t mind plucking the feathers normally wipe off. I wear gloves. Ty for your post and God Bless!
There’s a plucking machine? Wish my parents had known about that when I was a kid. Plucking feathers for hours was not my idea of fun. 😉
The plucking machine is sweet! Seriously, a minute and the chicken is plucked.
Love your podcast. Your Christian first.
I’m Christian, 62 years old, live in the city, but you make what you talk about to where I can understand it. And you explain things. Love your lifestyle
Thank you for all you do
No I haven’t butchered any chickens, but I watched my grandmother do it. I was responsible for a calf a heifer and to many chickens for a 6 year old. she would hang them by their feet and after a while she would cut off the heads and let them bleed out. Not like on your farm, we didn’t have the stuff that your farm has. We plucked by hand. Used hot water to loosen the feathers and then stuck them in cold water after we were done. Those were the happiest days of my life, 1949.
Julia,
I so admire the people who did it old school style, I have to confess, I’m really grateful we have that automatic plucker. Thanks so much for sharing!
Where do you purchase a cone and a plucking machine
Here’s a kit that has the cone, knife, and plucker with it http://amzn.to/1XYKens
Iuse to butcher my chickens many years ago. Now I am trying it again and I think I have forgotten most of it, plus I am really slow at it. I have one question; I am doing roosters and they are colored….so when I pluck them do I have to get all the dark under the skin out where the feathers where….that is hard to get out and really slows ya down.
We’ve only done the Cornish Cross with all white feathers, I try to get all of the quill out with the feather, but having the automatic plucking machine really takes care of most of it. I only have to pull a few by hand. I suppose its your personal preference, or you could just choose not to eat the skin?
[…] How to Butcher a Chicken: This is a post by another blogger… no video, just a post. She prefers to cut the head entirely off rather than just slit the throat. I personally don’t know which is better but there seems to be debate on the matter. […]
I am new to this raising hens for meat. What do you do with the bucket of guts when you are finished?
Also, should I buy male or female chicks?
You can bury the guts as long as no dogs will dig it up. The male chickens will get bigger faster, but we usually have a mix of both male and female.
Nice instructions! How do you keep the meat from getting tuff? The last time we butchered chickens the meat was good but tuff. The chickens are only 8 weeks old. Got any ideas
I let ours thaw in the fridge for a day or two, that seems to help if you freeze them right after butchering, otherwise at butchering you can put them in the fridge or a cooler with ice (as long as they stay cold) for a couple of days and then freeze. I find it easier to let them thaw in the fridge for a day or two. I use the Instant pot, slow cooker, and roasting and never find them tough.
Thank you so much for sharing this. Been looking for a comprehensive guide on butchering a chicken. You didn’t pull any punches!
I like that you mentioned that it’s important to use a plucking machine to make sure that the feathers of the chicken are all going to be plucked quickly. My husband and I wanted to butcher chickens and meats that are stored in our kitchen area. We don’t actually own any of the tools that you mentioned that are needed to butcher chickens, so we’ll be sure to find a slaughter service that offers mobile services instead.
Thanks for the great post. We just processed six chickens today as a “trial run” before we do 50 this weekend. Any tips on keeping flies and bees away? We made sure to cover things as best we could and even put up sticky fly tape nearby, but they were still horrible!
Mainly we try to do it on a cooler day and get the gutted and plucked chicken in a covered cooler as soon as possible. You can cover the gut bucket with some water to try and help.
This is great info, but what I need is instructions for people that have just a few backyard hens and don’t have cones, or scalding tanks, or plucking machines. Any chance you could do a post for folks like us?
For scalding, just a big pot of water over a burner or fire and pluck it by hand, it will take longer but the basic procedure is the same. Without a cone you would need a butcher block to chop off the head, I’ve heard some people use a traffic cone and cut off the tip for a quick version but I haven’t personally tried it.
Your husband is almost a professional. We only tackled processing our 17 chickens because we missed booking a processing date at the plant. It took 2 of us more than 5 hours, plus more help from other family members, not including set up and clean up. That said, we didn’t use our defeathering machine throughout the whole process – it mangled the first few, so we gave it a break before trying it again – it worked much better with a lot less scalding time – probably about 20 seconds in our case (water temperature unknown).
But thanks for all the tips, great job!
Where can i get a plucker?
Thank you for posting this process! I, for the first time this spring am getting 36 meat birds! I truly appreciate any and all tips you can provide from start to finish for a newbie. I have 3 kids, 12, 10 & 5 and also want to include them in on the process… with the exception of butchering (just the head removal).
That’s exactly what we do, my husband is head remover, and then we all assembly line with the scalding, feather removal, and gutting. Congrats on your first year with meat birds!
Thanks for your post! I’ve read it s few times but just read the comments. We butchered 2 older roosters and a hen a year ago and I’m getting ready to dispatch 2-3 more roosters. Last time, the meat was very tough, however we cut the leg meat and breast meat off the body. Maybe that was a mistake. my husband wanted to try them in the smoker, great flavor but really really tough meat. My birds are free range, and they were older, so I figured this attributed to the texture… I was sad the meat was not better and want to make sure this time we do things differently. I think we will keep the bodies whole for roasting, and this time we will let the meat “rest” before freezing. Last time, We used a cone and plucked by hand, it was a good experience after the first one (just getting the hang of it) and My biggest fear is the birds suffering in any way more than need be. I am also not sure if I should hatch more babies before dispatching my roosters, as they are beautiful and a shame to see their lineage disappear.
There are some on Amazon here or your local county extension office might have one like ours does. https://amzn.to/2WImCGY
Thank you so much for this post! This is our first year raising a flock for farm to table and the butchering process is a bit intimidating. Really appreciate all the tips and pictures.
We have broiler chickens and just butchered two of them today. Can’t help but feel like we’re missing a step somewhere and might be doing this wrong. We would appreciate any help that you could spare. After the guts and everything came out and was done we put them in a cooler with ice and salt. I feel like we may have gotten a couple of things mixed up together and could use the in between steps of getting, de feathering, and cutting the feet off before the cooler.
Hi Jesi, as long as you got them defeathered and gutted, the feet can come off at anytime during the process, just a personal preference for when we do it.
We worked on turkeys 2 years ago for the first time for me so I am at least not new to the process, my husband grew up doing it all. We had rented everything from the local extension office as well and it started snowing the day we did it. We have a rooster and hen that we are going to butcher but The hen is at least 2 years older so I was going to immediately use her to make broth. Should I still wait the 1-2 days of her being in the fridge for cooking or just cook her?
Good refresher. However, you keep confusing crop with vent; they are on opposite ends of the chicken. ? You might study up on your anatomy and correct to keep from confusing novices.
Thank you Melissa for such a nice article. I recently butcher one of our chickens after many years of not having done so. And I don’t know if you or any of your readers have had this problem, the chicken turn out super tough after butchering it and cleaning it. I was wondering if it was because I left it in the scalding water too long. Any suggestions on how to avoid that with our next chicken?
Thanks a bunch!
MB
They really need a resting period, you can either let them rest in the fridge for a couple of days before freezing/cooking or we freeze the same day but then thaw in the fridge for a few days, this seems to help the meat relax and the birds haven’t ever been tough for us.
You are supposed to “age” the meat (in the refrigerator) before cooking it. Younger chickens 24-48 hours, older chickens 48-72 hours. It has to do with allowing rigor mortis to set in and then go away, which causes the muscle fibers to relax. Older chickens will always be tougher than younger chickens, so best to cook low and slow.
I’ve never butchered a chicken but my Mom did it a bunch. We owned a chicken ranch when I was a kid. She would ring the chickens necks but they would run around for awhile after she did it. Then she would pluck them all by hand, a dirty messy job. Your way seems a lot easier!
When we used to butcher chickens we saved out one to fry up in the dutch oven for dinner that night.
We didn’t have a plucking machine. My sister and I had to do it. Wondering if you can show how to skin a chicken??
I like the skin so I don’t skin ours.
I butchered chickens since I 15. We always sliced the head off.
I went to France and worked on a farm when I was 18. They asked me if I knew how to butcher chickens, of course I said yes. They asked me to cut the heads. So, I cut the first head off, just as I was taught. They were shocked and called me a barbarian. I learned that I was supposed to just cut the arteries in the neck. I never understood why until I tried it a few years ago.
It may appear barbaric to cut the arteries and leave the heads on until the chicken is drained out. But what I have found is, if done right those chickens do not feel the artery cut, so they remain much calmer. And never really know what happened. If the head is sliced off completely they fight. The French also keep the head on to prove the chicken was healthy when butchered.
Thanks
My question is ridiculous but do you have any tips on how to get over the emotional part of actually butchering the chicken? We had a rooster we had to dispatch recently and it was traumatic for both me and my husband. I really want to have some meat chickens but we are having a really difficult time with butchering day 🙁
Grace, that is my issue also! I watched meat processing videos on YouTube. It is horrific!! I have a best friend who firmly believes hunting & raising our own meat is the most humane, AS LONG AS you know exactly how to dispatch them the fastest with least fear. But the only “seen it alive & then die” I can stomach to eat after is fish that my husband’s uncle does; and even then, I think they suffer a bit from the live holding tank to table & knife but I haven’t had the “emotional connection” of raising them. I think the same thing walking through the 4H barns at the fair. 🥺🥺😩
Question sounds silly to me but was our issue.
Any suggestions on how to get it to package nicely? Left them in ice water for 24 hours but when put in shrink wrap bags the legs were always stuck up. Takes up at least 2x as much freezer space.
How do you get it to stay in the nice compound form for bagging?
Hi there I’m wanting to raise some meat chickens just have to convince hubby it’s a great move , so I am a complete newbie here , can I ask why do you dunk them in ice for 24 hours ? What does this do to the meat ?
Best regards kellie (very informative page by the way)
If you don’t chill them for 24 hours the meat is tough.
I’m amazed you’re still keeping up with the comments here. We’re new to raising meat birds, and have butchered one round thus far. We used cones and slit the jugular, and it was terrible. Multiple slices, still breathing, looking around. My wife and I are dreading the next batch as we feel we just ended up causing more suffering than was needed. How exactly are ya’ll removing the heads? Just a swift chop with the boning knife? I’d be interested in your technique so I can minimize any suffering to the least amount possible. Thank you!