“Most of the poultry marketed in this country comes from farm flocks, and is essentially a by-product of egg production.”
–WILLIAM LIPPINCOTT IN POULTRY PRODUCTION, 1935
6
Keeping Chickens for Meat
In the early part of the twentieth century, the poultry industry was dominated by egg production. Today, poultry meat is big business, and present-day marketing to the mass consumer has perpetuated a dizzying array of definitions and deceptive descriptions that may not necessarily have anything to do with how the final product has been raised. Now that organic agriculture is the fastest-growing sector in the U.S. agricultural industry, everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie. What started in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a grass-roots effort concerned with treading lightly on the soil and based on philosophical principles and moral obligations is now a free-for-all, and marketing takes the prize: the consumer’s dollar. Bandied around are terms like organic, all natural, antibiotic-free, no growth hormones added, free-range, free-walking, free-running, free-roaming, and cage-free.
Cornish Rock cross meat birds stop for a drink of water at Back Beyond Farm. The farm raises and sells eight batches of 90 to 95 birds apiece to sell to customers who visit them on the farm and at farmer’s market.
Historically, Americans used “free-range” to describe animals that were permitted to roam freely, without containment. Now, most consumers equate free-range chickens with methods similar to those used up to the 1950s, where birds were rotated in large outdoor yards, capable of supplementing their grain rations with vegetation, insects, and soil micro-nutrients. They had direct exposure to sunlight, fresh air, soil, and rain, which stimulated preening (the distribution of natural oils on the feathers) and overall general health of the birds.
In fact, free-range and similarly misleading terms are not legally defined and conjure up visions of animals allowed to live their lives instinctually, unencumbered until they are humanely slaughtered for consumption.
The majority of commercial poultry grown for meat in the United States is not housed in the battery cages that many laying hens are kept in. They are kept in poultry barns, measuring up to 500 feet long and 50 feet wide, with a capacity to house 20,000 birds. Water and food are provided abundantly, through overhead nipple, cup, or bell waterers and feeders that are placed off the ground to eliminate feed waste resulting from a chicken’s natural tendencies to scratch at the soil to find food. Ventilation, temperature, and light are carefully monitored to achieve the most proficient feed conversion and produce birds ready for slaughter at 4 pounds dressed weight (the weight of the bird after it has been plucked and eviscerated) in just over a month.
These poultry houses can legally refer to their birds as being raised by any of the previously mentioned terms without clear definitions. In truth, unless the company states that their birds are raised on pasture, with consistent access to the outdoors, there is really not a lot of difference between any of the conventional meat chicken facilities. They all have Cornish Rock crossbreeds, packed in large barns where the ability to peck at the soil or green grass does not exist. They’re given conventional grains, which likely contain genetically modified varieties of corn and/or soybeans, and the birds are slaughtered in assembly lines at three to ten weeks of age. As in cattle feedlots and hog barns, conversion of feed to meat is the bottom dollar, not the individual’s quality of life.
A Barred Silver cross cockerel meat bird rests in the pasture. Meat birds who forage on grass have a richer diet and produce more flavorful meat.
Our food’s safety underwent serious scrutiny after the foot-and-mouth and mad cow disease (bovine encephalitis) scares at the turn of the twenty-first century, and the nation’s consumers turned to methods of farming that claimed to be healthier, safer, more humane. Suddenly, the adjectives used to describe the smallscale farmsteads became the semantics of agribusiness, and large corporations capitalized on consumer transformation.
Previously, individual states had private certifying agents that supervised the small, diverse farms across the country devoted to organic agricultural production. The USDA sensed a need to regulate what could be called organic so the consumer could be honestly educated, and today, farms claiming organic status for their poultry products are governed by the USDA’s certifying agency. Unfortunately, there have been several attempts by powerful lobbyists to change some of the organic regulations, so many of the same concerns remain.
Raising Meat Chickens by Type
CONVENTIONAL MEAT BREEDS
Historically, roosters from chickens that were raised for egg-laying were slaughtered for meat consumption on the homestead as a by-product of the hatch. The birds were slow to mature and weighed no more than 4 or 5 pounds at slaughter. Today, most meat chicks sold by hatcheries are hybrids referred to as Cornish Rock, Cornish Roasters, or Cornish Game Hens. These are the same breeds that are sold to commercial poultry producers like Tyson and Perdue. They have been bred to develop plump breasts, meaty thighs, and have feathers that pluck cleanly, leaving only transparent pinfeathers. They require high-protein rations, often needing supplements in their drinking water to prevent leg and heart problems, and they’re generally poor foragers. They are docile and gregarious, but making long-term pets of them is almost certainly a disaster. They have been selected for rapid growth and specific weight gain that will not accommodate longevity or the ability to naturally reproduce. Ordering straight-run (birds whose gender has not been determined) chicks tends to be most economical and will provide a variety of both larger and smaller dressed birds.
A Cornish Rock cross meat bird forages on pasture at Back Beyond Farm. The chickens graze until they are about six weeks old and are ready for butchering at seven to nine weeks old.
Commercial meat chicks should be raised separately from other chicks such as commercial laying breeds or heritage breeds. These more precocious birds are more active and may even cannibalize the slower, docile meat bird chicks.
Typically, hybrid meat bird carcasses are classified by their size, and not necessarily dependent upon sex or age of the bird. The hybrids that you raise at home are identical to the chicken offered for sale at your local grocery store:
CORNISH GAME HEN OR CORNISH ROCK GAME HEN. These are Cornish cross hybrids, not really game birds like quail or pheasant, and not necessarily hens. They are tender and young, weigh between 1 or 2 pounds, and are typically five or six weeks of age.
Chicken Scratch
Just as some breeds of cows have been developed for milk and others for meat production, hybrid chicken breeds have been developed for eggs and meat production. In the United States, the preference is for yellow-skinned flesh that is plump in the breast and thigh, but a chicken’s meat can range in color from pinkish (as in the Catalana breed) to black (as in the Silkie).
“A chicken in every pot, and a car in every garage.”
—HERBERT HOOVER’S 1928 solution to end poverty in this country
Raising game hens for sale requires a premium asking price, as most weight gain usually begins just at the time of slaughter (the cost of raising the bird to six weeks of age is much greater than the cost of raising it to 10 to 12 weeks of age, when it will dress 6 to 8 pounds). On the other hand, rather than waste chicks that are exhibiting signs of leg problems or who are injured, I have culled and dressed young chicks at this weight. They are excellent on the grill (see Beer Can Chicken, page 194), and culling them before they are lost in production can increase overall profitability.
BROILER OR FRYER. These can be pullets or cockerels, and both heritage breeds and hybrids make good broilers and fryers (a commercial breed that I have often used is a cross called a Buff-Silver). They dress between 3 and 4½ pounds and are typically less than four months of age. At this age and weight, the birds are still considered tender and young and can be used for a variety of purposes.
ROASTER. These are usually Cornish-cross hybrids. Their flesh is still tender and moist, with flexible skin and pliable breastbones and a finishing weight of between 5 and 9 pounds. Heritage breeds can be grown to this size, but it takes them twice as long to achieve the same weight and they’re usually better in a casserole or a soup.
A Buff Silver meat bird warms itself in the morning light.
CAPON. Before specialized hybrid broilers were developed, caponizing was necessary if cockerels that had been separated from hens intended for laying pullets were to finish with tender flesh. The purpose of caponizing is to force the birds into growing plump and juicy, rather than expending energy developing secondary sex characteristics like combs, spurs, and testicles. They are surgically castrated at two to three weeks if they’re hybrids, and at five to six weeks if they are heritage breeds. While the procedure can be performed at home, and caponized cockerels can still be purchased (See Appendix Four), raising capons is not necessarily economical or practical for a homestead. In 25 weeks, a heritage breed capon can eat almost 40 pounds of feed, whereas an 8-pound hybrid roaster will dress nearly its equal in 12 to 15 weeks.
A Buff Silver meat bird escaped its date with the butcher and is part of the coop. “He’ll be good for company as a stew,“ said the author.
Heritage or Dual-Purpose Breeds
Heritage breeds of poultry are perfectly suitable for smaller-scale meat production. They mature more slowly, dress smaller (taking more like 13 to 22 weeks to dress out at 4 to 5 pounds), and their carcasses will not necessarily be as butter-yellow in color or as overly plump in the breast and thigh as their giant, white, marshmallow cousins. The meat will be firmer in texture with a stronger chicken flavor. They are heartier than the commercial hybrids, and can be adapted more readily to foraging operations. These birds do not suffer mortality as the hybrids do from frail hearts or legs that cannot support added breast weight.
An added benefit to raising heritage breeds of poultry is the ability to choose a dual-purpose breed, where males are butchered for meat, and females are kept as laying hens. If you decide to raise heritage breeds, the sexually maturing males should be separated from the hens at about 10½ weeks of age to avoid harassment and injury to the hens.
Preparing Your Birds for Butchering
When I was about 10 years old, my dad decided that our family would raise its own chicken meat. We’d had laying hens for as long as I could remember, but we’d never eaten any of the chickens that we’d cared for. They were, in fact, considered pets that were kind enough to provide us with eggs.
Despite stern warnings, the white cockerels that Dad bought and designated as meat chickens ended up with names, like Cry Baby, Heart Attack, and Sylvester.
On killing day, my sisters and I sobbed when the chicken’s heads were lopped off in the backyard, and Mom plucked them in the kitchen sink. The memory of headless chickens flopping on the lawn and the smell of damp feathers in the house put an early end to my chicken meat enterprises.
Living in Brazil several years later, I was again confronted with people who raised the meat that they ate. Native poultry would be chosen at open-air butcher markets and brought home to be slaughtered. Nothing was wasted—the blood was caught in a bowl to be used in the sausage, the feet and neck were stewed with collards for a flavorful broth. Even still, it made me squeamish to be so intimate with my food.
Butcher Ralph Persons of Hardwick, Vermont, talks with his wife, Cindy (not pictured), while gutting chickens in their portable slaughterhouse during a visit to Fat Rooster Farm. Persons estimates he will butcher 17,000 chickens in 2008, up from 14,000 in 2007. Persons has been a butcher for 27 years.
After attempting vegetarianism as an alternative to confronting my dependence on meat, I met Bradford and Donna Kausen, a husband-and-wife team from Downeast Maine who fished, vegetable farmed, and grew their own meat. They taught me everything from how to skin a deer to how to prepare roadkill partridge. Most importantly, I learned to accept the fear I had in possessing the ability to deem something living a personal food item. And while I feel the same gratitude when I pluck a ripe tomato from its vine, I’m not confronted with trusting eyes and the sounds of an animal that is trying to make a connection with me.
Why do I continue to eat meat if I am aware that I am directly responsible for this animal’s demise? Because I am a meat eater, and because I want to eat meat responsibly. Because without killing meat to eat, I’ve still displaced wildlife by building the dwelling that I live in, and I’ve taken the long grass that harbors turkeys, deer, and Savannah Sparrows to grow my corn, lettuce, and squash.
I want to be ever-aware of this power I have, and to be afraid of it and to respect it. I feel that if we are to eat meat, we should know how it has lived its life and be responsible for accepting how and why it died.
Two Buff Silver Cockerels poke their heads out of a crate while the butcher prepares to do his work. While some farms do their own butchering, the author hires someone to come do the work because of how well he does the job.
There are two options available for processing the meat that you raise. The birds can be shipped to a slaughter facility and processed there by experienced butchers, or they can be processed at your home, either by a mobile processor or by yourself.
In Vermont, poultry processing facilities are few and far between. Fortunately, we have a very reliable mobile processor who comes to the farm. The birds are killed, plucked, gutted, and cooled within a few hours, and then it is up to us to finish preparing them for the freezer. There is less stress involved when the butchering is done on the farm; the birds remain in a familiar location and are handled less. There are several rules and regulations concerning the sale of meat that has been processed in an uninspected facility, however, so if you intend to sell the meat, do your homework.
The easiest way to find someone to process your birds may be to inquire at the local feed store, at the extension agency, or at a fellow producer’s farm. Again, knowing how the birds will be processed and ready for the freezer is something best decided before you are actually ready to slaughter your birds.
If you’ve decided to transport your birds to the butcher, you should keep the following in mind:
Apprentice Whitney Taylor of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania holds Poopie Poo, one of the meat birds destined for the butcher. Taylor had become attached to the chicken—it was left in the coop with the laying hens.
• Reducing the amount of stress on the birds will decrease the chance of tough, off-flavor meat. Catching the birds and placing them in their transport cages after dark will reduce stress and the temptation for cage mates to pick on one another. Remain calm, and talk to the birds as you would in the daytime, when you are feeding them. Believe it or not, if you pick your birds up by grabbing their feet and carry them headhanging-down to their transport cages, the risk of injury to their wings or thighs will be reduced, and the birds will generally be calmer. Padding the cages with extra bedding will reduce the amount of manure on their feathers and feet, which in turn will keep the processing water and the finished carcass cleaner.
• Caged birds generate body heat. Provide ample ventilation and keep them out of direct sunlight if you are shipping them to be processed during daylight hours.
• Don’t feed your birds 12 hours before slaughter, so their digestive tracts will be empty, and the amount of manure they make will be reduced. Make sure to provide them with plenty of fresh water prior to transporting to slaughter.
Whitney, left, and the author gather three meat birds for the butcher at Fat Rooster Farm
• Getting the birds to the butcher will require containers that cannot be used later to transport the processed meat, so think ahead as to how you will get your meat home.
If you are processing the birds yourself or a mobile processor is traveling to your farm, here’s a list of points to consider:
• Start getting ready the night before. If a mobile processor is coming to your farm, be sure to confirm the time and date. Prepare all needed water and electricity sources, live-bird holding pens, containers for chilling processed birds, waste containers for composting feathers, feet, heads, and innards, and freezers or refrigerators to hold the finished birds.
• As you go through the process of harvesting what you’ve grown, try to consider all of the factors that will make this process as dignified and cruelty-free as you can. The more you can keep your birds calm and comfortable during the slaughter process, the better the meat will taste. Stress can physiologically change the meat’s composition. One way to reduce stress is to keep the live birds away from the slaughter site. Birds are capable of seeing red, and distress calls and smells of blood can add to a stressful atmosphere. Aside from producing a better-quality product, one of the reasons to raise your own meat is to do so with respect for these living creatures.
• For birds that will be retailed, make sure that you have communicated with your customers. Some of them may be unfamiliar with how to handle a whole bird. Giving them cutting instructions or supplying the birds in quarters may generate repeat customers.
• Don’t underestimate the by-products of the slaughter: livers, gizzards, feet, hearts, and necks. These can be used in specialty markets, for pet food, or value-added products like pâté or soup stock.
Basic Butchering Steps for Processing Your Birds at Home
I strongly recommend apprenticing with a skilled butcher or a neighbor who has already mastered butchering if you have never tried it. There is nothing more intimidating than attempting to humanely and effectively slaughter your animals without knowing what you’re doing, especially when blood and feathers are flying.
The first step in slaughtering is finding a way of securing the bird tightly during the butchering process. A killing cone is the most efficient and least stressful method of securing the bird; it will protect its wings and thighs from bruising and keep the head stationary so that the blood will drop to the ground without soiling the feathers. Bleeding the bird out as thoroughly as possible is important; it reduces the risk of spoilage and makes a nicer-looking carcass. You should also have a very sharp knife to use for killing the birds.
If you are wet-plucking your birds, the scalding water should be ready to go and positioned close to where the birds are being killed. If you’re slaughtering more than three or four birds, it’s helpful to have one person doing the slaughtering and another doing the scalding and plucking. After scalding and plucking, there should be another pot of ice water where the meat cools immediately after slaughter. Once you’ve worked out where the birds will be killed, scalded, plucked, and cooled, you’re ready to start.
As helper Bev O’Neill, left, cuts off the chickens’ heads while they are in one of three killing cones, butcher Ralph Persons guts the birds after their feathers have been removed in the plucker. Persons and his wife, Cindy, travel across the state with his portable slaughterhouse, butchering animals and birds on the farm.
Place the bird head-first in the cone by dropping the bird in while securing its feet. Grasp the head by your least-dominant hand (right hand for lefties, left hand for righties). Fingers should be holding the head on either cheekbone, just below the bird’s eye; I use my thumb and ring finger to do this.
The second step is deciding what to use to actually kill the bird. Some experts advocate using a .22. I’m a pretty good shot, but a chicken’s head is a pretty small target, especially if it’s moving around. There is also the added worry of where the bullet goes after it exits the chicken’s head. Snapping the bird’s neck by placing its head underneath the handle of a broom or rake and pulling up firmly will also work. However, the bird will flap vigorously, potentially bruising the meat in the wings and breast. They still need to be cut across the neck to bleed out. Axes are also popular, but again, the bird will flap about, and blood spatter can’t be contained well.
For this reason, I am more comfortable using a knife to sever the jugular veins and bleed out the bird. Taking a knife with a long, thin blade, such as a boning knife, insert the tip close to where you are grasping the bird with your thumb, push it all the way to the other side, and swiftly pull the blade out away from your fingers. You should see two prominent streams of blood spurting forth, where you have severed the jugular veins. If you don’t, swipe deeper in the area that you are grasping. You should continue to hold the bird throughout this process until the wings grow limp. Some people prefer to cut the head cleanly off. I find it harder to control the bird from flapping without being able to grasp its head.
When a free flow of blood is observed, release the bird’s head. At this point, it may shudder or flap in the cone. The bird is ready to continue processing after it has grown limp, and the head droops freely.
Bev O’Neill removes feathers missed by the plucker.
Pithing—shoving the point of the knife into the back of the brain through the roof of the mouth—is said to release the feathers for easier picking, and some say that it immediately stops any sensation of pain. If you choose to try pithing, hold the bird’s head after it has been cut for bleeding out, and stick the point of the knife up into the groove in the roof of the bird’s mouth, toward the back of the brain. Make a small turn, then pull the knife straight out. The bird should then be allowed to hang for bleeding out until it is limp (about five to ten minutes).
The bird is now ready for removing its feathers, called picking or plucking. You can dry-pluck the bird by suspending it and picking the feathers by hand. I have always found this to be a more tedious process than wet-plucking, but it works when hot water for scalding is not available or if you don’t want to boil a bunch of water for just one or two chickens. Removing the feathers from the bird’s body should be done in the same sequence as for birds that are wet-plucked, described below.
To wet-pluck, remove the bird from the cone and, grasping its feet, dip it in the pot of hot water (125 to 155 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the age of the bird, with the lower temperature for younger, tender-skinned birds). Swish the bird back and forth and up and down, as you hold its feet, to encourage the water to penetrate the feathers. To test if it has scalded long enough, pull at the flight feathers on the wing; they should pull out freely. If they don’t, soak the bird longer, and check the temperature to make sure it is hot enough. I usually scald the bird no more than 45 seconds to a minute.
When the feathers pluck freely, remove the bird from the water. Suspend it at a comfortable height or place it on a level surface. Begin plucking the feathers on the wings, then shoulders, back, neck, breast, legs, and finally thighs. This sequence will follow the amount of subsquent blood loss from the various regions of the bird and will guard against bruising from blood that has pooled due to improper draining. To pluck the feathers, use your thumb to lift them away from the body and pull backwards, opposite of the direction in which they naturally lie. Make sure to dunk the bird in a bucket of cold water during plucking if the task takes longer than five or ten minutes. If the skin overheats, it will cook and may tear or become wrinkled (if this happens, the meat won’t be ruined; the finished bird just won’t look as nice).
After plucking, thoroughly rinse the bird. Remove it to a flat surface and, using a sharp knife, remove the head and legs between the bone joints.
Flip the bird on its belly, neck facing you. Slit the skin up to where the shoulders meet. Pull the skin down, and expose both the gelatinous esophageal tube, and the firm, corrugated, ridged trachea. Pull these both away from the neck, toward the shoulders.
Now flip the bird onto its back. The crop, a sac which holds the undigested food until it makes its way to the stomach, lies on the right side of the bird’s breast; you can trace back to it by holding the esophagus that you have pulled from the neck. Gently pull the crop from the breast, taking care not to rupture it. After it is free, grasp the esophagus and crop and pull until they come free from the body. Now grasp the trachea and pull it away from the body.
You are now ready to remove the neck. I find it easiest to use sharp poultry shears to snip the neck off at the bird’s body. You can also use a knife to cut between the vertebrae and remove the neck. There should now be a cavity remaining that has only a flap of skin (use this if you intend to stuff the breast as a flap to fold up over the stuffing and pinion to the top of the bird). Finally, spin the bird around to remove the nub and oil sacs lying on the top of the tail (some people don’t bother with this step and instead cut the tail cleanly from the body. Some people claim that the glands, or “the Pope’s Nose,” give an off flavor to the meat, but this only occurs if the glands are intact during cooking. By removing the tail cleanly before cooking, you can avoid this step.
Chickens that have been plucked and gutted cool off in water for at least two hours before they are wrapped.
You have just completed the clean portion of gutting your bird. Now, the innards must be removed. Flip the bird on its back, and face the tail end toward you. To open the abdomen, make either a horizontal slit midway between the keel and the vent or a vertical slit from the keel down toward the vent. A horizontal cut will allow you to tuck the legs inside and roast the bird whole, while a vertical cut is used if the bird’s legs are too short to tuck under the flap of skin, or it is going to be cut up into pieces.
After you have made your cut, grasp the vent with one hand and cut slowly between it and the tail upwards and around on both sides, toward the pelvic bones. Don’t insert the knife too deeply, or you will perforate the intestine. Continue cutting around the vent until it is free from the outer skin, and then gently pull it away from the body.
Once the vent is free and you have made either your vertical or horizontal cut, it is time to draw or eviscerate the bird. Some people tug gently at the vent, pulling out the intestines in a long coil, until the point where they are attached to the gizzard. Alternatively, you can reach inside the bird, scraping the top of the keel with the back of your hand, and reaching all the way to the neck, gathering the organs and pulling back toward the cut you have made. Either way, the goal is to get everything out without soiling the inside of the bird. If the intestines break midway through, don’t fret; just carefully rinse the inside of the bird out with fresh, cold water.
Make sure to remove the lungs—pink, sponge-like appendages that are pushed up against the ribcage—and eggs or testicles, depending on the sex and age of the bird. It might be a good idea to halve or quarter the first few birds you do, just to peer inside and see how well you’ve done gutting.
After the organs have been removed, the heart, liver, and gizzard can be salvaged. Pull the sac off the heart and trim it on the top. The liver should come cleanly away from the heart with a little tug, and you should be able to see the bright green gallbladder. Carefully cut this away with your knife and discard it. If you nick it and some bile spills onto the liver, rinse it well; bile is bitter and unappetizing. The gizzard makes excellent stock material after it has been emptied of its contents. Cut away the remnant intestine, leading to the stomach, and then, holding the gizzard in your hand, make a vertical cut along the edge. Now separate the red muscle from the yellow lining to butterfly it open. Inside will be a collection of hard objects, like stones, that the bird has used to grind the grain and other food items it has swallowed. Peel away the buttery, yellow lining from the muscle and discard. (As kids, we would often save the smooth stones in glass canning jars; a chicken’s gizzard can do almost as well as a rock tumbler to polish the stones smooth.)
After your birds have been processed, they should be properly chilled and aged. Cooling the meat down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit as quickly as possible will deter bacterial growth and prevent spoiling. On Fat Rooster Farm, the birds are rinsed after evisceration and then placed in a clean plastic or metal container filled with cold water and ice. They are left to cool for at least 30 minutes in this container before being transferred to another container of water and ice (a plastic or metal 33-gallon trash can purchased for this purpose works fine). The birds are left in these containers for at least four to eight hours to age. Alternatively, the birds can be loosely wrapped and kept for one or two days in the refrigerator to age. Aging tenderizes the meat by allowing the muscle to relax. If the birds are frozen immediately after killing, their meat will be tough and not as tasty as an aged bird’s. Chapter Eight covers freezing and using your meat in further detail.
