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Sunday, August 3, 2008

How To Butcher and Process Meat Bird Chickens Part 2 - WARNING - GRAPHIC)

On to the finishing round...gutting and cleaning....

We brought them up to the house...the Gman started with cutting the feet off, using a 4 inch buck knife.

He started with a small slit just below the breastbone, with the blade facing Up. This was to prevent any rupturing of the organs.


Next, he put his finger in that slice and carefully worked his way down to the pelvis section.











You have to keep 2 fingers inserted in the open cavity keeping the organs away from the skin and fat layer you are cutting.

Next you have to cut around the vent - keep your blade low (closer to the tail of the bird)
Insert your hand in the open abdominal cavity - first thing u will feel is the large hard gizzard. use 2 fingers to pull it out.

The instestines will come out with the gizzard.




Put your hand farther in the cavity and u will feel in the upper portion a small hard object - that is the heart. Pull out the heart. the Liver will come with it....

After the heart is out you have to remove the lungs, which are attached to the upper right and left ribcages of the bird.
Turn bird over, slit skin along neck, working from the neck - pull out the crop and windpipe and clean up the fatty tiisue surrounding the neck. There are small glands around the neck - be sure they are removed.
Cut off excess skin hanging from around the neck, this helps to clean things up a bit.
Wash the inside completly out - over and over again, get it all clean, cold water, rinse over and over again....

Turn bird over, chop neck off......clean out all remaining fatty tissue attached to skin around the neck area


Do a final close inspection for pinfeathers, weigh it, bag it, tag it ....cool it for at least 18 hours...then put in freezer to enjoy later.

7.6 pounds...

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7 comments:

Carla said...

It is so hard to believe that an 8 week old bird weighs 7.5 pounds! I know it's true, but, wow!
That 8 week time frame is what is enabling me to convince my DH that this won't be that big of a deal. He pictured several months of extra chicken mess and work.

Anonymous said...

Wow. I will admit raised as a suburban girl I have never seen the process start to finish. We will be having a science lesson with your posts. Thank you!

I also have a hard time comprehending a 7.5 lb bird in 8 wks.

Thank you for taking the time to document the process! :)

Annie said...

Hi Ceecee and Michelle, thanks for your comments - we actually got a larger one than that!

I'll blog about it later tonite or tomorrow - I got pics too!

Annie

Annie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Linda Foley said...

Hi Annie.. I posted this entry of your blog on my forum...

http://bb.bbboy.net/thejourneyforum-viewthread?forum=5&thread=11

Thanks so much! Very good stuff!

Tanya Murray said...

Well done guys. I haven't been game to post these sort of pics because of reader reaction but I'm glad somebody has. I think it's a great learning step by step and I have picked up a couple of cutting suggestions that I will try next time. We have just done our last four roosters yesterday (out of 21 Australorp day olds, we got 15 roosters!) We chose Australorp as they are good meat and egg birds so we have some pullets just coming on now to replace our other 2yr old layers. We did three turkeys last weekend and they were/are fabulous. Such a difference it makes for free ranging birds. Thanks again for the clear concise and honest tutorial.

Annie said...

Thanks Tanya! Glad you enjoyed it...please feel free to link to it if you like

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