13 Chickens Butchered and in the Freezer

Thursday November 15, 2021 Guerneville CA.

Butcher day

Once I got it going today I went out and fed the chickens and then put the 13 chickens I selected last night in the dark into a small transport cage.  I  used the wheelbarrow to to transport them to the backyard where I have my butchering stuff set up.

Warming up

I wasn’t ready to start the process yet so I did some chair hopping and decided to start this job by one. I was also waiting for the sun to shine in my work area as a big redwood tree was blocking it.

Getting started

I did a little better than that and got started around 12:30 and processed the first 7 chickens which took me around 2 hours. It mostly took that long as I’m having a hard time getting the presoak that loosens the feathers, just right, so the feather taking off machine didn’t do a good job so I had a lot of little feathers to pull out of most of the birds which really slowed me down.

Once those birds were in the freezer I went out and got the other  6 birds and processed them trying some different times on the feather loosening soak, but that didn’t improve much. I think the water temp is too high from inaccurate thermometers as each one I have reads a different temp and the one I was using read about 145 compared to another one that read 160, so I think I’ll use the lower reading one next time to see if that helps or not.

Second batch

The second batch did get done a bit faster mostly because one gets better the more one does.

Anyway the second patch got done in about an hour and a half and all the birds were in the freezer.chickens

 

Fertilizer

I cleaned everything up and buried all the remains of the process in a hole under a peach tree.

Evening

I only had a little bit of time before dark so I chair hopped around the yard a bit then it got dark.

This is not one of my favorite things to do but it’s good to get this much of it done. I still  have to do this a couple more times before I’m done with all the birds.

Nice day.

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2 Responses to 13 Chickens Butchered and in the Freezer

  1. Curlydog says:

    Your chickens have a better life than most that are factory farmed. In return, you get a better chicken dinner and eggs than most of us. Seems fair to me.

  2. Patsy+Irene says:

    That’s why you have the chickens and yet I’m sure you don’t look forward to the day when you have to do it. Nice size chickens in the freezer now!
    Are you cooking one for your dinner?

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