Note from Zach: I have wanted to publish a blog about the slaughter of an animal for a long time. It is something that, as a lifelong urbanite, I have always been curious about. That curiosity has only grown as I’ve become immersed in the local foods movement. It is my belief that reconnecting Americans to where and how their food gets to them, including the not so pleasant parts, is one of the most important tasks advocates have. I am particularly proud today, and grateful to Stacie Gordon, the author of this post. There are graphic images contained within, so please take that into consideration when reading.
Stacie Gordon is the second of three generations living on Red Hog Farm in Colton, Oregon. Along with her husband, parents and children, Stacie raises heritage pork, pastured chicken, eggs, milk and vegetables on their nine acres. Red Hog Farm will not turn anyone away because of inability to pay.
This is a somewhat difficult blog to write. I don’t particularly want to start a debate about vegetarianism vs. omnivorism. I do not relish the idea of reading comments about how no matter how humane my family tries to be, the fact is that we are killing an innocent creature and are going to hell. Nope. I’m not looking forward to that, and I very much hope that it does not happen.
However, many people have asked about (and several have come to witness) our process for, um, processing our birds. So here it is, with pictures. Please feel free to ask questions and if you are an experienced chicken harvester, please feel free to offer constructive criticism. We’re always looking to improve technique, reduce waste, and create a better chicken for our clients.
Step 1: The Slaughter
Slaughtering is by far the most difficult part of our process. We have a great deal of respect for our animals and the sacrifice they make for us, so we try to do things as humanely as possible. We begin by hanging the chickens from the fence by their feet. Chickens go into a kind of trance when held upside down, and we’ve never had one struggle. The rest of the chickens, meanwhile, wait calmly in their pen. Our harvesting station is mobile, so we never have to bring chickens to us; we go to them to reduce stress.
Once they are upside down, my husband quickly slits their throats and then inserts a knife through the roof of their mouth into their brains. This kills them instantly and ensures that while their heart continues to beat (pumping out blood and making the carcass clean and beautiful) their nervous system has shut down. “Braining” also causes the muscles in the chicken’s body to relax, making the feathers easier to pluck.
Occasionally we do have a chicken flop around, but have never seen any indication that this means they are in pain. Once braining happens, the bird is DEAD. And you can’t feel pain if you are no longer alive.
The heads are removed, using poultry shears, once the blood has stopped flowing. Many people chop the heads off to kill the chickens. This is effective (and actually quite humane,) but severing the spinal cord causes the heart to stop and can leave unsightly, unpleasant blood clots in the carcass.
Step 2: The Plucking
We find that it’s easier to get all the feathers off of a bird when you first dunk it in hot water. We have a propane burner and a large pot, and we keep the water at about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Water at this temperature won’t cook a chicken, but will loosen the feathers enough to make plucking easy.
Step 3: Evisceration and Cleanup
The next step is removing the guts, second wing joint, and feet. We often save feet (my husband’s Jewish grandmother says that broth is not broth without tossing a foot or two into it) and livers. Because we are not in a hurry, we can ensure that the viscera all come out in one long piece. Conventional chicken processing has been known to pierce the intestines, spilling fecal matter into the carcass and necessitating chlorine baths. We also can, with a deft movement of our knives, remove the gallbladder without piercing it, so the livers that we give to our customers are clean and free of bitter-tasting bile.
Removing the feet and wing joint are easy if you know where your knife should go. The idea is to cut cartilage and tendons, not bone.
Step 4: Rinsing
We keep a hose with a spray nozzle next to our harvesting table. After evisceration, we spray the chicken inside and out with fresh well water. If there are any stray feathers we pick them out now.
Step 5: Chilling and Bagging
The final step is to chill the chickens in ice water until we are finished with the entire batch. When we are finished, we double bag each bird and weigh them. At about 9 weeks to finish, we are ending up with five pound, soy-free and corn-free birds.
And we’re done! As Joel Salatin says, you don’t want to do this every day. It should be a little painful to take a life. But our chickens live happy lives and are greatly enjoyed by us, both while they’re alive and while they are being eaten for Sunday dinner. Thanks for reading.
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank so much for posting this. I truly appreciate your bravery. i think this is especially important information for the many people who have jumped on the urban/backyard chicken bandwagon without stopping to consider what they will do with their hens once they have stopped laying.
Great post, Stacie! The realities of harvesting animals os one of the things that we carnivores really need to come to terms with. And it really does hurt every time. I decided a couple of years ago that I could not go on eating meat unless I could face that reality and I am so glad I did. I have such a deeper, more grateful and gracious attitude toward our food animals than I ever could have cultivated before.
BTW, what breed are your broilers? Are they one of the French Label Rouge strains?
Thanks Duane! I agree with you…I think we are more “okay” with death when we get to see the process from beginning to end. For example, we bury the feathers and waste from our chickens in our pasture, where they feed the grass. The next year, new chickens will eat the grass and grow. When their time is over, they will feed the grass. It's an honor for an animal to not be wasted.
chickens eating chickens!!!
They are a cross between White Cornish (not Cornish cross, but the original Cornish) and Rhode Island Reds. We have, to be honest with you, not been happy. The dark feathers make them really hard to pluck to prettiness, and they have lots more leg meat and less breast meat. They also grow slowly, making them expensive to raise. We have a couple more heritage breed birds to experiment with, and if we have similar results we'll probably stick with the Cornish Cross. Next year I will try giving supplemental protein to the heritage birds…maybe earthworms!
Exactly!
I've had the same disappointment with my heritage Barred Rocks- very shallow breasted. Next year we'll be raising Dark Cornish and Dorking (gonna be a b**** to pluck, I know) and hopefully the year after that we'll have some Cornish/Dorking crosses. We should compare notes! I've been considering one of the Label Rouge strains, like the Red Rangers from JM Hatchery. The non-heritage birds don't really fit our growing philosophy to a “T” but I've heard really great things about these birds. I'm still on the fence. They mature in 12 weeks- longer than a Cornish X but faster than heritage- but they're bred for raising outdoors and better at foraging. Decisions, decisions!
joya, my personal feeling is that heritage breeds are great and should be
raised, but dont be an absolutist on the issue. if a non heritage breed
simply fits better, do it, and dont feel guilty.
Z
Good points, Z. And to tell the truth, we haven't been absolutist in the past. We have two hybrids (Golden Comets) in our egg laying flock right now and though they're excellent egg layers, I've been disappointed in their health and hardiness on the free range. It never hurts to give something a try to see if it fits.
indeed, thanks for all the support today and always, you are quickly
becoming an important person in the movement.
Z
I raised Les Poulets this year and loved how thrifty they were. They did take longer to grow but the huge size and meat quality were worth it to me. I left 2 of the huge roosters with one of our restaurant customers & they loved them! We will be raising more next year for sure!
To Stacie: this was a great post, thank you for sharing!!
Aw… now I'm blushing!
It's so true, Joya. You really are amazing. Heather, I'm raising some Les Poulets next year. But these Red Cornish have been taking closer to 20 weeks to get up to four pounds. Our feed costs on these are astronomical, and we also pluck and clean by hand. So a light colored bird is a big bonus for us. These ones look like they all need a bikini wax. Plus they don't have that nice layer of yellow fat under their skin, which is the BEST for a gorgeous roast chicken.
Guys – I am a vegetarian (I go back and forth sometimes eating birds & fish) and I am very happy to see this post and read about the genuine way you are raising and 'processing' your birds. I think what the average person who may read this needs to know is this is *not* the way the vast, vast majority of birds are processed in the US, especially not if you eat from most food-truck-serviced restaurants, grocery chains & fast food places. In fact, I find very little about this to be “graphic” as Zach warned compared to the stuff I've seen (in pictures & video) go on in the big processing plants where most meat comes from.
Zach, thanks for the process and pictures….always looking to find anything to be more humane and efficient….almost identical to our process other than we use a plucker vs by hand as we do 70 birds a week and we hang the birds in a cooler to let them drip dry before bagging. Oh one other thing…our gloves are blue!
Thanks so much, Stacie! There's been a lot of talk about the treatment of livestock with the release of Foer's book Eating Animals. Much as I disagree with his conclusions (have only read excerpts so far) I like that the book is at least getting people thinking and asking questions about how we get our meat. I think it's essential that consumers get in touch with the process of how meat gets from the farm to the plate. This knowledge has the power to change our relationship with meat–whether it's going vegan or deciding to be more selective in one's meat choices. It's also enormously helpful to know what's in the real of possibility. Don't like how conventional chickens are processed? Lots of farmers are doing it other ways. This was an excellent post!
I think as we get more variety (esp. with heritage breeds) out there in the marketplace we'll start thinking about cooking different kinds of birds different ways. For example, I won't be brining the bronze turkeys I buy for Thanksgiving–probably not using as much butter, either, as I've used in the past for conventional turkey. There are some roosters sold at my food coop that make excellent stew, but aren't so good for roasting. How cool to select a bird depending on what you want to do with it!
I believe strongly that farms need to be transparent. We have no secrets…you want to know why your chicken costs more? We'll show you the price of the feed. You want to come and watch the harvest? You are welcome. The difference between this post and photos or video of chicken factories is obvious…these pics were taken by the people participating. The photos of chicken processing plants are taken by people who have to sneak their cameras in, and then passed around the internet like drugs. If industrial agriculture would like to get a few of their customers back, they could start being transparent too.
I can't tell you how many times someone tells me that if they knew how chickens were butchered that they would be a vegetarian. I would like to offer a middle ground between ignorance and veganism.
Bravo Stacy. As good as ever.
Thank you for sharing this process. I firmly believe that if you can't imagine taking the life of the animal you are eating, you shouldn't eat them. I have pictured this but never seen it laid out so succinctly. Thank you for the valuable lesson.
Stacie, this is great! I remember harvesting chickens with my family, and though it was a sad time to kill our chickens it was also a happy time to do it correctly and provide for ourselves. We always used old bleach bottles with the neck and bottoms up out to put the chickens into to keep them from flapping around.
And here's a tip that I've always loved. If any of your hens has undeveloped eggs use them to make noodles for your chicken soup that night!
-Krista
Great blog post. Much like others have said, I believe that if you're gonna eat meat, you should at the very least observe the process, if not participate. We had our first ever rooster slaughter this year, with rooster chicks that were sent gratis as “packing peanuts” with our hen chick order. We did everything like you did except the “braining”, and will use this technique if we need to slaughter ever again. Thank you, and wonderful post.
And thanks for the comment
I couldn’t agree more. If we are going to eat meat then we need to take responsibility for it. This doesn’t exactly mean we have to kill every animal we eat ourselves, but we at least have to recognize we are a part of the process by consuming it. The images above are familiar since I grew up on a farm, but I think it’s VERY important for any carnivore to know what happens before that tender piece of chicken ends up on their fork. Thanks for sharing!
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