Last year, I slaughtered my own chickens. Unfortunately, I did it all wrong. The work performed was spot on but the meat was perhaps most disgusting than those goat brains I ordered in India. The issue with last year’s processing is that I did it to laying chickens who are notoriously very skinny and chickens that were 3-5 years old. The meat was chewy, gamy and very wild tasting. It was a disaster. I had to kill the chickens as winters up here are very cold and I didn’t have the right equipment to keep them alive. I do this year, so the 8 birds I raised from hatchlings in the spring are still very much egg layers and I’ll be keeping them alive all winter so they can once again lay a huge amount of eggs next year. The average chicken lays 250+ eggs per year. No need to ruin that just because it’s cold outside.
This year, I have my egg layers and I purchased broiler chicks that were 1 day old in July. These are bred to grow very quickly almost dangerously quickly and slaughter at 10-14 weeks. As a comparison, my laying birds laid their first egg at 19-24 weeks and still weren’t fully grown. The meat broilers are engineered to have large legs and breasts and grow very quickly. So, I picked up 10 of the broiler birds and, as of the end of August, they were fully grown.
I waited an extra 2 weeks to see what would happen. It got pretty bad. The weight gain continued and the birds stopped having any active time. They never even left the pen to free-range. They spent their day laying by the feeder eating without standing. Also, because they slept outside at night not even climbing the stairs into the coop, they developed some issues on their skin, sores and loss of feathers. I know now, slaughter at full growth and don’t wait. Things go down hill fast.
So, today I enlisted the help of neighbors who prefer to kill animals and they did the slaughtering for me and I did the processing. It went pretty well. They’re pretty trigger happy guys so they didn’t always do a great job with the 22 rifle. They would kill the birds, hang them upside down and I’d grab one at a time and de-feather and then chop into pieces.
From start to finish, it was 3 hour job to get 10 birds processed and wrapped properly for freezer in individual bags in 1.5 pound servings. It wasn’t a fun job but a necessary one. I’ll for sure give thanks every time I enjoy chicken meat for dinner that was grown from egg to slaughter in my back yard.
I took some photos. I’m not looking my best but maybe it’s an appropriate look given the “farmer” aspect of this day.
I have had some readers ask about doing something similar. Chickens don’t take up much space. Most suburban homeowners can do this themselves. Ping me if you want to get started! I’m happy to share more specifics.
