How to Butcher and Process Chickens
The time has come to butcher and process another set of chickens on our farm. This is always a complicated matter, one that we do not necessarily enjoy doing, but one that we know is necessary for our beliefs and lifestyle choices. We have been raising our own meat and processing it ourselves for three years now, and we have been actively only been purchasing locally raised meats for over six years now. It is something that we realized was better for our bodies and the sustainability of our planet and community. Locally raised meat that has been raised on pasture has an incredibly higher quality and superior flavor over factory farmed meats, aside from being an absolutely better quality life for the animal.
Our minds changed about meat back in 2014 and 2015 after watching several documentaries and researching about industrial and conventional farming and slaughtering processes. While we fully understand that this is not always a feasible option for everyone, and small farming mostly likely won’t take over and change the way the world eats, we know that this is a small way that we can actively make a change. We also hope that this helps to open the eyes of others. While viewing and learning about the butchering process can be triggering for some, I do honestly believe that if you eat meat or have ever eaten meat, this is something that you need to see and understand! All meat that humans eat once had a face, a heartbeat, and a personality. It did not just appear at the grocery store. Personally, I would rather know about the life of that animal and its slaughter than not know anything about it, and that justifies this lifestyle enough for me.
As we enter our third year of animal butchering, I feel the most at peace with the process than I have felt in the past. There are several sides to this story. One being the loss of the mindset that this is dangerous for our health. While I understand that much of the USDA and FDA push about the safety and quality of our food is to prevent illness, food poisoning, and food contamination by sanitary practices… I also believe that they use that as a scare tactic to prevent the education of those who wish to raise and butcher their own meat. As someone who grew up in a city setting, if I was looking at my own blog right now with no prior knowledge of an off-grid lifestyle I would think that this woman was crazy. Isn’t that unsanitary? Aren’t you going to get salmonella?
The short answer is: most likely, no. Understanding basic food sanitary practices is enough to understand how to butcher and process a chicken. This is something that you can easily learn online, in books, or take a food and kitchen safety class online or in-person. All restaurant and food establishment (including me) have to take this class, and it’s nice things to know!
The other is that we have proved those that say we are not capable wrong. It’s discouraging and disheartening to hear from those online that we are incapable of do-it-yourself homesteaders; this is even more so when it comes from neighbors, friends, and family. We have lost many people that we once close to us over our choices to live life that’s a little bit harder and much slower paced. Even as I write this out, it sounds so silly. But I am learning that food is a touchy and personal subject, and for whatever reason, it puts judgment into people’s minds that is truly saddening to see. We are learning to embrace that we are the “crazy people across the street who think they can raise and butcher a hog.” Because we did, and we did it well.
You can do this, too. It just takes a lot of research and a little bit of courage.
how we raise our chickens:
Our chickens are purchased as day-old chicks from Hoover’s Hatchery in Rudd, Iowa. This is a short trip for them, as we are located in Iowa as well. They arrive in the mail, and this hatchery has a rule of 15 chicks minimum per shipment. Because we are a moderately sized family (4 adults, 3 children), we only order 15-20 chicks at a time. We will raise another round of 15-20 chicks this autumn. That will leave us with around 30-40 chickens until next spring.
The breed of chicken that we raise specifically for meat production are Cornish Cross hens. This is hybridized breed, which was bred specifically for its large breast meat. These hens gain weight excessively fast, reaching their mature weight of 6-8 lbs by 6 weeks old. For other chickens, they are not at their mature weight until 26-30 weeks old. These chickens are docile, lazy, and can easily become ill from being obese. They grow so quickly that they outgrow their feathers, leaving them pink and naked looking. This is not due to being overcrowded.
We choose this breed because of the short timeline and the amount of meat from the bird. That means that we can process two rounds, one in summer and one in fall, before it gets too cold outside for pasturing the birds. We raise the birds in a chicken tractor, which is an enclosure that is open to the air, and move it everyday around the farm so that they are on fresh grass. We also move their feed and water daily so that they are forced to physically get up and exercise. If this is not done, they will literally just sit at the feeder and eat all day long. Scheduling the feedings for this particular breed is necessary. For the most part, it is recommended to feed them for 12 hours, and take the feed away for 12 hours. This can easily done by placing the feed out in the morning and taking it away at dusk. They should have access to ample amounts of clean water. If they are overfed, they generally begin to die from heart failure.
For this particular round, we raised 15 chickens and 14 birds made it to slaughtering day. We are not sure what happened with one of the hens, but at around week 5, she stopped eating and gaining weight and looked sickly. We made the decision to cull her and turn her into feed for our cats.
For more information about raising meat chickens, read these posts: Butchering Meat Chickens (first year) / Meat Chicken FAQ
a few things to know:
Before culling the chickens, be sure to restrict their food intake for the day. Remember, this is their one worst day of their entire lives. Killing a chicken with a crop, stomach, and intestine full of food is not fun. I have done this, and it can be a mess if you make the wrong cuts!
Our chickens were culled at around 7 weeks of age. We have let them live to be 9 weeks old. It is said to not let this breed live past 10 weeks of age, or they will have severe health problems.
preparation and tools:
To butcher, you will need to prepare some tools and equipment.
BLEACH. I do not normally use bleach in our home, as I prefer more natural disinfecting products. However, for the sake of being extremely sanitary, especially since we butcher outdoors (which is a GREAT place to do this - this is how Polyface Farm butchers their chickens - open air and easy clean up), I do use bleach for sanitizing surfaces and tools as we work.
EASILY CLEANABLE SURFACES. You will have to process your birds somewhere. This can be a table with cutting boards, stainless steel surface, etc. Just make sure that it can be cleaned as you go. If you are doing this inside, have a wash bucket with diluted beach on hand. For us, we have a hose nearby to spray off the surface and disinfect with bleach and rags/paper towels. While I love old-fashioned living and primitive skills, I also want to be safe with our food!
CULLING CONE. We use a culling cone to slaughter our birds.
PLASTIC OR STAINLESS STEEL BUCKETS. There will be a lot of mess, and most of it you may want to save. This includes blood, feathers, and internal organs. Have buckets set aside for collecting these things.
STOCKPOT LARGE ENOUGH TO DUNK A WHOLE CHICKEN. To remove the feathers, you must dunk the entire chicken into a pot of boiling water.
SHARP KNIVES. You will need sharp knives for the slaughtering and evisceration. I prefer to use sharp kitchen scissors and a pairing knife to remove the internal organs of the chicken, but you may like to use something different.
COOLER WITH ICE. As we butcher, we store the finished chicken carcasses in a cooler packed with ice and cold, clean water. They are dunked into the water and stored in the cooler as we work. Make sure the cooler is sanitized before using.
FOOD SEALER OR FREEZER BAGS. Once the chicken is finished, we use a vacuum Food Sealer to package the birds and freeze them. You can also use plastic freezer bags, if the chickens are small enough.
how we slaughter:
There is no FDA or USDA approved “humane” way to kill a chicken, at least in terms of slaughtering at an approved slaughter house. The most humane way to kill a chicken is debated, but for the most part, in terms of humane slaughter, it is best to stun the animal and then kill in the least painful way possible. Some people gas chickens in a chamber or use a gun. I do not think either of these options are feasible for small homestead butchering.
The other methods are slicing the carotid arteries in the neck/decapitation, or breaking the neck. We prefer decapitation, as it is the easiest way for us.
We hold the hen around the entire body with the wings pressed to their sides and swirl them around in the air a bit to disorient them. This helps when placing the chicken into the culling cone so that they do not flap and wiggle around. Then we flip the bird upside down, placing the head through the end of the culling cone. The cone is typically drilled into a tree nearby our work station. Then the neck is sliced and the head is severed in only a matter of seconds. We place a bucket underneath the body to collect the blood for making blood meal. This is very good fertilizer for your garden and works well for making soil blocks.
If this is your first time butchering, it is good to know that the body will wiggle around for a minute or two after the hen is already dead. This is a normal process that the body goes through. Once this had ended, we will spray off the chicken with the hose. They are often covered in dirt and feces, so they need a good washing.
defeathering the chicken:
While I have killed a handful of chickens and even a hog, my job is usually the butchering. I have a photographic memory, so I am the only one that can remember how to process the animals in our family! After my dad and husband have finished culling the chicken, it is handed off to me. The next step of the process is defeathering the chicken.
Before you begin, you will want to have a large stockpot (large enough to dunk the entire bird) filled with boiling water. Have the water at a consistent rolling boil. We have used a propane stand in the past, and this year we dunked the birds over the campfire. I thought this was really fun and calming!
Holding the chicken by its feet, dunk the bird all the way up to the first joint in the legs, where the feathers end. You do not have to dunk the scaly feet. Dunk for 1-2 seconds and pull it out of the water completely. Repeat the dunking for another 1-2 seconds and let the water drip fully away from the chicken.
Move the wet chicken to a sanitized spot, away from where you will eviscerate the chicken, and begin pulling out the feathers. Dunking the chicken in hot water opens up the pores to allow for easier removal of the feathers. It is easiest to pull them out by pulling them in the opposite direction from which they grow. Because we are working with chickens, their feathers are fairly easy to pull out, it is just a tedious job. For other poultry, the feathers are more difficult to remove, especially ducks.
The hardest feathers to remove are the wing tips, the tail, and around the vent (rectum). Try your best to remove all the small down feathers until the chicken is naked. It is okay if they are not all fully removed. This is hard to do in the moment, especially when there are other chickens waiting to be processed. Just do your best! You can always remove any little feather that you missed later before cooking.
eviscerating the chicken:
Next is to “eviscerate” the chicken, or to remove the internal organs and turn it into a product similar to what you would purchase at the store. This is the hardest part, aside from getting through the act of killing the chicken. There are only a few things that can go wrong, namely contaminating the meat with the chickens’ feces while trying to remove the intestines. But we will get into that later.
remove the feet:
Begin by removing the feet. This is simply done by slicing in between the joints of the leg and foot. With a sharp knife, you can easily slice between these two bones without cutting the bone itself, and the foot is removed in one simple slice.
The feet are entirely edible and should be kept! I will remove the toes, thoroughly wash them, and store them in the freezer to turn into a gelatinous broth. Click here to learn how to make Chicken Foot Bone Broth.
For now, set the feet aside.
remove trachea, esophagus, crop, and neck:
Next, you will remove the parts of the chicken’s neck. Make a small cut into the skin of the throat until you can see the muscle of the neck. Pull this skin up and over the top of the neck, so that it falls to the back of the chicken.
With the neck muscle now exposed, locate the trachea (wind pipe - it is ribbed) and the esophagus. You will find that the esophagus is connected to a large sack on the chicken’s right side breast, underneath the skin.. This sack is called the crop, which is where the chicken’s food first goes before entering the digestive tract. The crop grinds up the feed for them to be more easily digestible. If you restricted the food intake of the chickens before butchering, this will mostly likely be empty. If not, it may be full of food, grass, rocks, and acid to break down the food. It may even smell a little yeasty.
If it is full, you must be careful to not break the sack. Carefully pull the crop away, removing the thin layer attaching it to the breast meat. Once the crop is detached, pull or cut away the trachea and esophagus as far down the neck and into the chicken as possible. Set these aside. If there is excess neck skin still attached, cut this off as well.
Next, remove the neck, if you want. This is simply done by cutting as far down the neck as you prefer and slicing in between the vertebrae. You can also rip it off, if that is easier. Set the neck aside.
remove internal organs:
This is the scariest part, but you can do it! Begin by making a small cut on the spine above the tail and oil gland. Slice through the spine until you feel the vertebrae separate. Be extremely careful to slice slowly and gently; if you cut too harshly, you may cut into the intestine!
Once cut, you will be able to see the intestine along with some connective tissue. Begin to gently cut around the sides of the tail and vent, on the inside of the pelvic bones.
At this point, I flip the chicken over onto its back. Make a cut just under the ribcage, cutting through until you can see the internal organs. Be careful not to cut into them. This is easiest to do with kitchen scissors. Slice down the sides of the ribcage and try to meet up with the cuts that you made along the sides of the tail and vent to fully open up the bottom of the chicken.
When these cuts are met, the vent should still be attached to the large intestine. You should be able to see where that connection is and move it away from the body. This is going to take some experience to learn, but it is best to go slow and familiarize yourself with the anatomy so that you do not accidentally cut through the intestines. Even with food restriction, they are still usually filled with feces and it will leak out. This stinks terribly; I know from experience. If this does happen, remove the intestines quickly and efficiently and wash the chicken with clean water.
With your hand, fully reach inside the cavity of the chicken and pull out the internal organs with your hands. It’s really that simple.
parts of a chicken and what to use them for:
Once the internal organs are removed, the chicken is finished and is ready for packaging. But what do you do with the internal organs? Some of them are used for cooking, others can be used for in the garden or for feeding other animals. Here is some insight on the Nose-To-Tail method of butchering an animal, which we try our best to do!
Head. The chicken’s head can be used for eating, if you can believe it. It’s actually a delicacy in some countries. You can process the head in a similar fashion to the the rest of the body. You can leave it attached to the body, if you want, too. Dunk it in hot water and defeater the head. Remove the beak and cook the entire head whole. If you do not want to eat the head (if you eat chicken nuggets, you eat chicken heads!), then it can be boiled down and the gelatinous broth can be fed to dogs or cats. The beak can also be left on, if you prefer.
Neck. The neck is a yummy piece of the chicken. Because it is mostly made up of bones and cartilage, it’s perfect for flavoring the pan drippings of a roasted chicken and/or making bone broth. You can eat it any way that you would normally eat any other part of the chicken.
Heart. The chicken heart is incredibly delicious. This organ can be cooked alongside the meat during roasting, over the fire, boiled, etc. It’s quite tasty in a soup, and you don’t really notice that you are eating it if you chop it up first.
Liver. The liver of a chicken is eaten like the liver of any other animal. It is high in iron and tastes wonderful sautéed with onions and garlic in some butter or olive oil and lots of salt and pepper.
Gizzard. The gizzard is where the chicken’s food is finally ground up and turned into fuel for the body or waste. This can be cleaned out (it is usually filled with food) and fried.
Intestines. One thing that we do not eat at all on the chickens is the intestines. At this stage of my butchering skills, I do not feel safe yet with processing this part of the animal. We will often let the barn cats munch on these as we work, or we burn them. Other parts that we discard at this time are the gallbladder and the egg sack, though this is apparently edible.
Feet. The feet are amazing! Made up of 70% collagen, they are an incredibly healthful part of the chicken’s body. They can be roasted or fried, but I like to boil them down into bone broth.
Bones. Save the carcass of your chickens! They can be boiled for several hours and turned into liquid goal, otherwise known as bone broth.
storing the chicken after butchering:
When the chicken is all finished processing, it’s time to prepare it for long term storage. We have used gallon freezer bags in the past. Now we use a vacuum food sealer, which works amazingly well for this type of food storage. While I try to use as little plastic as possible in our daily life, this is really the only way that I know how to safely freeze a chicken that preserves it in its best tasting form.
Place the chicken in the vacuum food sealer bags and label the date. Get them into the freezer as quickly as possible. Then you are done!
If you want, you can freeze the whole chicken with the organs that you saved left inside the cavity, much like they do at the supermarket. You can freeze the organs separately, too. You can also cut the chicken into 8 pieces, or grind it up for sausage before freezing. It’s up to you!
involving our children:
Do we involve our children with the process of butchering chickens? Yes, we do. At first, this seemed like something that we should not allow them to witness. As time went on, I realized that this was the best way for them to understand where their meat comes from, that it is precious and should not be wasted, and that they have a lot to be grateful for. Of course, my middle child is only just about to turn two-years-old so he does not quite understand what is happening yet.
My oldest son, however, is seven-years-old and has been through the butchering process three times now. At first, he was completely uninterested in watching the slaughtering process but watched the entire evisceration. We respected that, and we also respected if he did not want to eat the chickens then or ever again. He did decide to eat chicken with us that year! Now, he watched the entire process and understands that if we want to eat chicken, which he enjoys, then this must be done. I am so proud of him and, honestly, a bit jealous of where he will be by the time he is a grown man compared to what I knew about meat growing up (a whole lot of nothing!).
Overall, this entire process is, well… a PROCESS. It takes several hours for us to get through, and we are dead tired by the end of it. The first chicken is always the hardest, and we always are so grateful for the life that it gave to feed us. I have been on both sides of the fence for meat eating. I was vegan for two years and plant based for other times in my life. I honestly believe that if you are going to eat meat, this is the best option for doing so, or finding it from a local farm that is able to have their meat inspected and approved for selling.
If you are going to do this yourself, you should know that it is illegal to sell processed meat to others without it being inspected by the USDA. This is only a feasible option if it is for your family only.
In the end, our chickens ranged for 3.5-4.5 pounds after processing! Last year, they were in the 6 pound range, so this was a much better option for us. We did not want them that large again. It takes almost 2 hours to roast a 6 pound chicken!
If you have any questions about our process, please let me know! I am happy to chat about it with you. I hope that this post eased your mind and helped you to learn more about raising your own meat chickens.
xoxo Kayla
This post contains affiliate links.
