Warning: Graphic content
We raise and process our own chickens here on Heifer Ranch. That means that when they reach 8 weeks of age, we slaughter them and prepare them for cooking in our kitchens. We wake up early one day and process all of the birds in one go. The day-long event is called "chicken chop" (or poultry processing--we're into alliteration here apparently).
At 5:30 in the morning, we transported the chickens to the chicken chopping room in one of our farm trucks. They all wait patiently in the back of the truck, quite content to peck around and lay down.
Each bird gets put in a metal cone with their head sticking out the bottom. We hold their heads, sight the cut, and use an extremely sharp knife to cut both main arteries and the windpipe in one swift, wrapping cut. We hold the head back as most of the blood drains out. The chicken convulses after it dies (as it's put in the cone and the cut is made, it's quiet and still; we try not to stress the birds).
We had three cones operating, allowing the first bird to bleed out by the time the third was killed. We then dip the carcass in hot (170 degree) water for about 15 seconds, to loosen the feathers. Then the head and feet are taken off and discarded.
The scalded carcass goes in our clever defeathering rig, which rotates the carcass around inside a barrel lined with rubber spikes, which catch and remove feathers. The rest of the feathers are plucked by hand (preparing chickens for eating is mostly defeathering, it turns out).
The bird is now ready to go inside. First, we remove the innards, taking out the intestines and the liver, etc in one giant mass. We try not to break the GI tract, since that would get manure inside the carcass. With the innards out, the front of the GI tract is ripped out, then the other end is cut off, along with the tail. The heart is also taken out (it hugs the sternum, keeping separate from the 'guts'). Lastly come the lungs, which are difficult to pry out, and the windpipe, which gets pulled out the front, at the base of the neck.
The gutting step was where I ended up doing most of the work. I got fairly proficient at it, and it was very systematic. There is very little cutting: just open up the carcass and cut off the tail, everything else is pulling.
I learned a lot about chicken (and animal) anatomy. Animals are amazingly good at using up all their inside space. The livers had rib indents from being pressed between intestines and rib cage. Lungs were plastered into the spine. The intestines were wound into a small, solid mass. The organs didn't look like textbook organs, in perfect rounded shapes with smooth outlines. They were jam-packed inside the little bodies in a crazy game of anatomical tetris. Pretty efficient. Pretty cool.
But it all came out and went into the discard pile. Once the carcass was gutted, it got passed down the line to be scrubbed out with a high-pressure water wand, then on down to be finely defeathered. Once someone double-checked for small pin feathers (the roots of feathers that get stuck in the skin), it was submerged in ice water to cool.
After lunch (yeah, we took a break and actually ate in the middle of this process. No chicken for lunch, though), we hung up the carcasses and cut them into quarters. We bagged the quarters (4 quarters to a bag) and stuck them in the freezer. We'll rotate them until they freeze solid, then they're ready to be distributed into kitchen storage.
Then defrost, cook and eat.
Now I know how to prepare chickens for the table. A great skill to have. I bet I can even apply that skill to other small animals, like rabbits and squirrels. Not that I often have a rabbit or squirrel to eat. But the option's there.
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