Harvest a Chicken - PEP BB animal care.sand.chickenharvest

Our chickens are starting to fall off the egg laying. However they manage to lay all year round!!

We have some new chicks on the way and here is one of the old hens.



She was thanked for her life. thanked for all the chicken eggs she gave. She was killed with the killing cone.



Next comes the plucking, real easy when you can stand and use both hands!



A naked chicken



Check out the colour of the chicken fat on that gizzard!! yummy( i guess chicken tractor and moving them everyday to new grass pays off :) ).   So from left to right offal which went promptly to the pigs, heart/liver/gizzard,egg yolks saved, dressed chicken.




If you are wondering we did two birds at one time. hence why there is more offal/guts/organ meat than just one bird ;)

I like process chickens 2 ways, since I did both today I figured I'd show both. Large roosters I pluck and small roosters usually get skinned.  While I'm waiting for my pot of water to heat up, I pick a few of the smaller roosters to skin.

I only skinned 4 birds to stay within the process and store in an hour requirement. I feel like I get more out of the smaller roosters when I quarter them and I save on space in the freezer.

After those 4 were in in the fridge I went back out and the pot water was almost boiling. Just in time to coral 2 roosters to for round 2.

After the chickens are processed I let them rest in the fridge overnight and will freeze most of it tomorrow morning.

The 4 carcasses from the skinned chicken will be made into stock.

I clip the toenails and freeze feet for dog treats. The necks hearts and liver will be turned into a gravy for an addition to their food.

I'll let the gizards sit over night and clean them in the morning. Then marinate in buttermilk and fry them duck fat.

I harvested a rooster. It was satisfying to see him relaxed right up until the moment of slaughter. I used a sharp knife to kill by bleeding, then beheaded, plucked, and butchered him, then refrigerated all the parts I intend to eat/cook. I'm not entirely sure about the requirement to "properly store within an hour."

Two questions:
First, does the entire process from live bird to stored meat have to fit in an hour, or does the meat have to be stored within an hour of completed butchery? The rooster was alive at 10:51 and refrigerated by 12:12, so if the former I'm going to have to pluck faster next time.

Second, how long-term does the storage have to be? I'm planning to cook the organs tonight and the main carcass tomorrow, so I haven't wrapped anything tightly, just gotten them cleanly into the cold. (Now that I think about it, I should switch the organs to a better container for the next couple of hours anyway.)

Because of these doubts, I'm going to hold off submitting this for the badge bit and may wait until next time once again so that I have the process [more] perfected.

I think the idea is that the warm meat gets cooled down or cooked within an hour of the bird dying.  Did you scald it before plucking?  That usually speeds it up quite a bit.

I think the storage is dependent upon your plans.  If you're cooking it within a day or two, covered in the fridge is probably fine and would count for the BB.  

The Food Preservation badge is probably a bit more stringent on having good long-term storage.

Mike Haasl wrote:I think the idea is that the warm meat gets cooled down or cooked within an hour of the bird dying.  Did you scald it before plucking?  That usually speeds it up quite a bit.

I think the storage is dependent upon your plans.  If you're cooking it within a day or two, covered in the fridge is probably fine and would count for the BB.  

The Food Preservation badge is probably a bit more stringent on having good long-term storage.

Thank you for the clarification! I did not scald it; I like to save the feathers for costume and jewelry-making, and dunking them into hot water with the chicken sounds like it would spoil them, or at least add extra work before I can store them.

It sounds like I was a hairs-breadth from getting this bit once again, but next time!

I received a last-minute call from some friends who needed help processing some chickens. My whole family chipped in and we got half of their birds harvested before it started raining.  

For this BB, you need to process 1 bird for meat and provide documentation in the form of pictures or video.
Requirements are:
-1 Live Chicken
-Killed in a humane manner
-Processed and either prepared or properly stored within an hour

To document your completion, provide proof of the following as pics or video (less than two minutes):
-Living bird.
-Bird after slaughter, depicting the method used.
-Organs separated into suitable for human consumption / not suitable for humans consumption, next to plucked bird.  

So far my least favorite homesteading activity.  But something needed to be done.  Sixteen months into my new homestead.  Got seven 'straight run,' 'mama hatched' chicks from church friends.  Five of the seven were males : (  Gave one away, harvested two (one of them in the pictures below, still have two cockerels left in the flock of 10 now.

See below pictures for BB.

01 -Living bird is in the restraining cone.  He was part bantam and rather rambunctious.  The flock is much calmer without him around.
02 - The deed is done, just after his larger brother.
03 - Chicken plucked, human food in white bucket, other innards in red.  Ready for the ice bath.

This rooster was sometimes acting aggressively to humans coming to feed his flock. So he ended up feeding us instead.

I always slaughter chickens using a slaughtercone and then cutting the head of using a pair of loppers. Since chickens will keep on moving for a while shortly after they die I think separating the head is (on a homestead scale at least) the most humane way possible to do it. Since this way you know for sure it is not alive anymore instead of slowly bleeding to death from a poorly done artery cut or neck break.

I don't have a fancy plucker and just work by hand. After plucking I burned the remaining hairs of and processed the bird further. Organs were then separated in edible and in-edible.

Hopefully I’m posting this in the right place.
Our egg layers were slowing down with their egg productions, so we decided to butcher them and start a new batch.

I butchered 16 meat birds today. Whew! I dunked them in 170 degree water, then plucked the bird. I kept the liver, heart, and gizzard. Then I wrapped it in butcher paper and put them in a cooler for the night. Freezing them tomorrow.