posted 15 years ago
I guess in some ways I had an advantage, because of growing up on a homestead in Alaska. We weren't butchering animals that we'd raised (although we did have cattle), but fish we'd caught, moose and caribou we'd hunted. However, even with that background, I really dislike killing the animal. Once it's dead, it's not too bad. It gets to be a job that needs to be done, even though it's not particularly pleasant. Chickens are easier than rabbits or goats. It really doesn't bother me too much to chop the heads off chickens, although I do put the dead bird in a bucket so it isn't flopping all over the place. I have two sixteen penny nails pounded into a piece of wood just far enough apart that I can stick a chicken's neck between the two nails and it will hold the head. Then I stretch it out a bit by holding the feet, and chop the neck with a sharp hatchet. It's dead with the first blow, although the skin isn't always cut clear through (the feathers offer some resistance even to a sharp blade).
Before I start doing chickens, I put a big kettle of water on to heat. It shouldn't be boiling, but close to a simmer. Dunk the bird (after it's bled out for a few minutes) and swish it around a bit to get water under the feathers. It helps to add a couple of drops of dish soap to the water -- makes the water penetrate the feathers better. Lift it out -- into the sink is good -- and test to see if the feathers come off easily. If not, put it back in a little longer. You don't want to leave it in the hot water too long, though, or the skin will cook and start tearing off when you pull feathers. You get the hang of it after a while. (And I'm sure it's possible to find precise directions on temperature and timing somewhere on the 'net!) When you get the scalding part right, the feathers come off quickly and easily, except for the big pinions on the wings, and some on the tail. You may need pliers to grasp those (I'm talking about a mature bird here, but if you are doing eight-week-old Cornish Cross, you may be able to pull those feathers by hand). Then you need either kitchen shears or a sharp knife; cut around the vent, quickly rinsing off any fecal matter before it can contaminate the carcass. Cut open the abdomen and reach in and remove all the innards, salvaging the heart, liver, and gizzard. Put those aside -- the gall bladder will need to be removed from the liver, and the gizzard needs to be cleaned, but that can wait a minute (unless the gall bladder is broken, in which case, cut it off the liver right away along with anything that has been contaminated by it). Now reach back into the carcass and dig at the ribs -- the lungs are stuck to the ribs and will have to be scraped out. Then you need to get the windpipe out, and clean up the carcass -- I trim anything that's bloody or bruised, remove any pinfeathers that remain, and rinse it in cold water. Put it in the frig to cool, and deal with the gizzard -- clean the outside, then slit it open, rinse the contents out, and peel off the thick, tough lining. I know a lot of people don't eat the giblets, but cooked properly they are very good. The heart and gizzard should be simmered for a long time, until tender; the liver should be fried quickly in a little bit of butter. Yum.
For rabbits, I hold them at arms length by the hind legs and whack them hard at the base of the skull with something heavy. I've used a piece of metal pipe; lately I've been using a big heavy wrench. It's easy to hold onto. Then slit the throat to let them bleed out. It's easiest to skin them hanging, so have some way to hang them up upside down. I have a heavy wire fastened to the back side of our pump house that I also hang the chickens from to bleed out. The wire is horizontal, and I can fasten three chickens or two rabbits up there at a time -- I use short pieces of electric fence wire to fasten the animals to the heavy wire. I actually would rather pluck a chicken than skin a rabbit, as it's harder to get all the hair off the meat later than it is to clean up a few stray feathers. I dislike hair in my meat, LOL! But for skinning, you need a very sharp knife (if doing anything bigger than a rabbit, keep the whetstone handy and use it frequently). Cut a circle around each back leg up high, about where you can feel it is all bone, and then make a cut down each leg to the vent area. You'll have to cut a circle around the vent (wouldn't hurt to tie the vent off at this point if you want to take the time). Then, using the knife occasionally to loosen the membranes, just peel the rabbit. Make similar cuts around the front legs, and up the front legs to the neck area, and cut around the neck. The hide should just peel off. In practice it's not always that easy -- but most of the rabbits I've butchered have been adults. Young bunnies are easier, in some ways. Once the hide is off, I rinse the loose hair off, then remove guts and head same as for chickens. Of course rabbits don't have a gizzard, but save the heart and liver, and kidneys if you want to mess with them (pretty small on an animal that size). I don't care as much for the flavor of rabbit as for chicken, but soaking the meat overnight in a bowl of salt water in the fridge makes it taste a lot more like chicken!
Larger animals are done the same as the above, except that you'll either have to skin and gut on the ground (a tarp or a piece of plastic helps to keep the meat clean and to be able to gather up the gut pile after you are done) or you'll need some way to hoist the larger carcasses off the ground. If you are going to be butchering large animals on a regular basis, you should set up an area indoors with a pulley system for hoisting the carcass up to bleed out, and to make skinning and gutting easier. Set a big washtub or something below it to catch the guts as they fall out (if you are doing a big steer, or a moose or something that size, you'll need more than a washtub for the guts!). For doing large animals, you'll want a meat saw -- a hacksaw with a fine-tooth blade for cutting through bone. Don't cut the meat with it, though -- there isn't much worse than having bone dust in your meat, not even hair!
A lot more could be added to this, such as saving and using the intestines and the stomach and the hide, using the meat on the head, using the tongue (futile if butchering a small animal such as a rabbit, but well worth the trouble in a larger animal), and so on. But a book could be written on butchering, and many have been -- you can probably find one or two at the library, and if not there, check Amazon.
Kathleen