Chicken Butchering Day...

Hello everyone!

Today we are posting about butchering chickens.

Wait a second!  Read on!  It's not too gross! 

Here is the story.

A little ways back, our friends got approximately 50 chickens.

25 laying hens, and 25 butchering chickens.

When the butchering chickens were about 11 weeks old, our friends began to plan a butchering day.  Being that we are urban farm girls, we had been wanting to learn for a long time how to do this.  So we asked if we could join in and help.  As you can see, our friends said yes.  :)

When the chickens hit 12 weeks old, they scheduled the butcher day for the 9th of July.  A Sunday.  So, we drove up to where they live and immediately set to work.  Here's a picture of our work space. 

CAUTION:  We hadn't taken pictures of our area until we had butchered the first set of 8.  Next step, into the pot (this makes it easier to pluck).

At first, just the boys were doing the work, but after they butchered the first set of 8, we ALL began to pluck.  Fun, right?  Not our favorite job ever, but its not to bad.

After the 1st set of 8, we did the second set.

After that, we did the third.

That was our last set.

 We don't have any pictures of chopping, but we would assume that you probably wouldn't want to see them anyway.  Plus, we need to keep this blog young child friendly!

Our friend Emma (her family owns the chickens), was really grossed out!  We all were though.  Except for one family of course.  They had come to show us how it's done.  They have lived on a farm for a long time, so they were more experienced while the rest of us had never done it before.  But now we know how it works!

The only thing we didn't do was gut the chickens.  That was the dad's job.  Really gross.  But to most peoples' surprise, the butchering didn't smell to terrible.  What they did to prevent that, is that they made sure that their chickens' last meal was on Friday evening, a day and a half before the butchering.  The only real smell (which was hardly noticeable) smelled like wet dog, and we didn't smell that until we dipped them in the water.

After we were finished, all the chickens were butchered, gutted, and packaged.  Then we ate a lunch of macaroni and cheese, hot dogs and potato salad.  After that we all went home.  Our friends gave us a chicken to take home.  We are saving that for Sophia's birthday dinner of fried chicken!

Quick comment:  I must say that it wasn't too hard to butcher the chickens.  They were really mean!  They did a lot of pecking and scratching ever since they were a just a few weeks old!

Sorry there was no pictures of Hannah.  She was camera shy that day...  :)

Goodbye now!

Hannah & Sophia

What did you think of today's post?

Was it to gross?

Was it interesting?

Do you want more pictures?

Please comment!