The Potting Shed

muntjac

If you keep chickens for meat or if you need to cull a chicken you obviously want to do it in the most humane way possible. There are sites offering advice that I think are, quite frankly, rubbish so this is how I handle killing a chicken.

I was ten years old when I killed my first bird and this is how I do mine.

First take the bird quietly in the dark with a red lamp so as not to alarm the rest. Tuck the bird quietly under your arm as you are talking to the rest and close the door quietly.

Go back to the house with the bird .As chances are your going to have it screaming. Take the bird quietly again and turning the bird under your left arm so its head faces down.

Put the head in the palm of your right hand with two fingers split around the head in a 'V' fashion and close them gently.

Grip the bird tightly into your chest pulling down on the head and turn to 45 degrees pulling down slowly and firmly until you feel the neck and head separate.

Keep holding the bird against your chest and let the head go then take the birds legs with your right hand and let it flap if it wants to, forget all this rubbish about ripping feathers off and cutting the head off etc.

Hanging the Chicken
Take your bird and hang it by the feet in a cool place for a day. The blood will pool in the neck end so draining is unnecessary.

Plucking the Chicken
Get a bucket of hot water (too hot for your hand) dip the bird in and count to sixty, then take it out start taking the wing feathers out. Next pluck the legs and then the breast. These feathers will all come out easily as the hot water melts the fat that is around the pen of the feather so it nearly falls out. I can pluck a chicken in 5 minutes or so, but I have been doing this for a lot of years.

Once the bird has been plucked that there are a few fine hairs left on the bird, just ignore them.

Preparing the bird for table
Take your bird to the kitchen to dress it out.

Taking a sharp knife, 2 inches up from the body go round the neck skin, cutting through to release it. Now push that skin back to the body and using a pair of secateurs, chop off the neck as close to the body as possible.

Next slide the other side of the skin up to the head and remove the neck from the skin pocket cleanly and put the head and remains to one side.

Put the neck in a pot of water. Turn the skin back on the neck and look for any corn in the sack (crop) close to the breast, take it out and dump it with the head.

Now take your sharp knife and go to the legs, feel for the joint at the knee and cut down between this and separate the skin. Remove now completely and put with the head etc.

Take your knife and feel over the bird's stomach for the lower tip of the breast bone, where it comes to a point, and push the knife point in and cut the skin back down to the tail travelling down to about 1/2 inch from the anus. Cutting in a circle remove this.

Put the knife down and force your fingers up inside the chicken as far as you can and using your fingers pull down gripping anything that is in the cavity pulling everything out.

Don't snap anything if you can help it. But don't worry if you do.

Push your hand in now completely and force it right to the top of the chest feeling for any little lumps (the heart) remove it and now go back to the top of the bird (the neck end)

Push your fingers through the cavity that you will feel at the top of the breastbones to feel for a pipe; this is the windpipe. Grip the windpipe using a tea towel and remove it.

This is your bird completed now except for washing out.

Now take the remains and take the livers and heart out and put them in water with the neck.

Sort through the innards and feel for a hard lump of meat, this will have white membrane on both sides and is red. Take your sharp knife and holding the gizzard on edge like a shell cut down through the red meat to the centre. You will find that some small pieces of grit will appear; remove these and force the gap open like opening a clam and look for a yellow skin on the inside.

Peel this from the red meat part dump this in the bin in a small bag along with the remains of the giblets and head, put the gizzard in the water with the livers etc.

That is how I kill and prepare my birds.

If you feel unable to do the job by hand then you can get a humane dispatcher from your seed and feed stockist. This should come with an instructional pamphlet showing you how to use it.

It's a good idea to practice first on some celery sticks, which will give you an idea of how much force is required and what it feels like. Always go for full closure with dispatchers.

If you have not killed a chicken before, it is a good idea to go to an experienced poultry keeper and learn rather than jump in. The idea is to cause as little distress to the bird and the rest of the flock as possible.
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Leonie2 · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:31 pm Post subject:

that's a very good explanation muntjac. OH dispatched some of our chickens last year. I definitely agree with your advise for taking the bird in the dark, they are much less stressed that way and the others won't see what's going on.

lottie · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:38 pm Post subject:

Good concise article muntjac - thank you. I think that I would have to watch an experienced person first - for the despatching part - but the rest of it I can do.

At the moment I get mine who does it all from a friend, but it is a good idea to know every aspect of chicken husbandry. I would like to have chickens that I have 'brought' up from eggs to table birds, to complete the whole 'circle'

Just one question - and I guess the answer will be it depends on the breed of bird.

I just wondered at what age you would consider a bird if ready for the table.
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lloyd · 5 Star Club Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 2648

Bearing in mind that they are mature and laying from a few monhs old, the supermarkets sell at I believe, 3 to 4 months whereas we human beings would cull at six to nine or even 12 months. An eighteen monther is an old broiler though.
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lottie · Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:05 am Post subject:

Thanks Lloyd. My chooks were around 20 weeks when they started laying - but their breed is no good for table birds. They are hybrids bred for their good egg yield (not that I would ever have considered eating them though).
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Leonie2 · Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:34 pm Post subject:

Ours went the day they started crowing (the cockerels), that was around 6 months, ideally they could have had another month or so as they weren't fat, but then they were free range and not bred to be obesely (sp?) fat so perhaps that is why they were thinner than I expected.

lloyd · 5 Star Club Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 2648

A few years ago, I had a totally MAD hen who had been crossed with a wild bird. She and her brood were barking, so I shot and ate them. (She used to chase me round the garden and attack my feet............)

They had the darkest orange fat on the meat, and tasted sooooooo good............ Smile

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muntjac · Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 10:37 pm Post subject:

a year old is fine for me .but i put them on crushed maize for about 2 months afore the chop .chickens do have a sweet tooth if your not car:eful so no giving them cream cakes to fatten them up ,, have em yerself Wink

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