Warning!!! - Chicken Butchering!

This post may not be to everybody's tastes, so proceed with caution. Otherwise, enjoy!


Every summer we butcher at least 700 broilers and at Thanksgiving we do about 65 turkeys. Our neighbors, the Brocketts, join us on most exciting things we do, so they helped us butcher on Thursday (if you call butchering exciting). (::EDIT::) In each of the 6 batches a year, we do about 150+ chickens in two days. This Thursday we did only about 75 and then about 20 of the Brocketts birds. The most we've done in one day is about 125 chickens and we still got done by 4pm!! It took us longer than that with 20 birds when we first started at least 10 years ago!


Every spring, we send out newsletters to people on our mailing list who then order how many chickens, turkeys, or how much beef they want. We order the chicks from a hatchery and they come through the mail. The broilers are raised on pasture in 10'x12' pens with a little grain. When 8 weeks roll around, they are then taken to the place - our butchering room and there the adventure begins!





Notice Thabeh in the background with her pan for carrying chickens.









The dispatchers...



Next, we scald them (no picture, sorry) and pluck them.

This is our "Whizbang Plucker" that my brother, Peter, made a few years ago following instructions from Herrick Kimball. It works wonderfully well, doing up to 4 birds at a time and getting them so clean!








Mike and Amadu check over the bird getting the few feathers that the plucker missed, then they cut off the feet. Sometimes we save the feet on request for people who like to make soup out of them.



And through the window they go into the holding tank.


The evisceraters doing their job.



Amadu's science class - homeschooling can be done everywhere!=)










"Who, ME?!"

Now inside to the "Quality Control Center" employing the girls.



Becky, "Tickle, tickle, tickle..."






Way to go, Hillary!! You can do it, too!!





Adama packaged all the "goodies" for us - heart, liver, and neck (or throat as some have called it=).


A bowlful of good chickens.


Sitting on the edge....




"We're a bit chickened out!"




Mrs. Brockett is the Inspector General who generally inspects fowl.
That would make her a Fowl Inspector, generally.

Thanks for helping us, MacDonalds! That cd played for hours. =)

"Three little chickens all in a row..."



That is a day at the Darts. Come again soon!