On Saturday morning, six chickens went through the process that took them from the coop and turned them into meat ready for the freezer. This is my third batch of chickens over a period of two and a half years. The process does get easier the more you do it. Yet this primal process can be disturbing as well as mundane. Without thinking too much about it, we tried to dispatch the chickens quickly and get through the many steps to clean them. It took us about three hours.
I had a good helper in Sarah Mitchel, who was also learning how to do it.
I bought the six chicks on April 17, 2010. I had them eight weeks (56 days). Here’s how they weighed in after processing.
#1 5.92 lb #2 6.14 lb #3 5.96 lb #4 5.71 lb #5 4.60 lb #6 4.40 lb
That’s over 32 pounds of chicken.
Sarah and I agreed that processing six chickens, especially on a hot day, was our limit in terms of attention and endurance.
Wow, you are one of the few people I know who really knows where their food comes comes from!
And what it looked like, smelled like , sounded like….
Circle o’ life, baby.
How did you kill ‘em? We used to have a guy at Twin Oaks, who did most of the butchering — he had this amazingly, brutally efficient, way of snapping their necks, almost like a whip crack. As you say, a “primal process,” but one that every meat-eater should at least know about, if not participate in.
What’s the traffic cone for?
Seriously, Dad. Did you have to get so graphic?!!