Edgington Farm: Processing Meat Chickens Round 1-2013

Hi all. Well, yesterday was the day. We bid farewell to our 4 Cornish Rock chickens. So, our foray into processing our own meat chickens was overall a success! I'm pretty happy about the outcome.

We sequestered them for about 24 hours without food to help get their crops cleaned out. That was to make cleaning them easier. We, however, did not take their water away.

Mitch created a special cone like the ones you can buy at specialty stores. I think it really made the whole task easier, cleaner, and more humane. It's designed so that you put the bird in upside-down. (This is actually very relaxing for a chicken!) It also hugs them so that they feel more calm.

We removed their heads, allowed them to bleed, scalded them with water, and then plucked
away. The key to scalding them is to not have the water be boiling but hot. If it's too hot you'll cook the bird instead of readying it for plucking. The scalding really does aid in the picking quite significantly. After hand picking the feathers, we tossed them into a large plastic tote full of ice water to bring down their temp and keep them cold before butchering.

I was surprised by how quick and easy it was to do them all, and that was just hand picking the feathers instead of an awesome mechanical plucker. It was at times a bit stinky. It's not exactly for the faint of heart.

They all dressed out (eviscerated, plucked, cleaned) at about 3-4 pounds each. We weighed them on a small hanging scale. I'm pretty happy with this since it only took them 7-8 weeks to get that large. I'm actually impressed!

We had a quick crash course on butchering them properly and then I set about to bagging them up in gallon ziploc bags and used my cute little sealer for small stuff. We had scalded one a little too long and cooked it a little so, we just decided to eat it for dinner.

We ate one that day, cut one up to freeze, and froze 2 whole ones. We ended up with a pile of stuff to use for soups, broths, etc. that we also froze.

So, what's the difference in flavor? Our farm raised birds are far more tender and moist. I love that. Our BBQ chicken was yummy!