Chicken Processing

Well, we processed 7 chickens today.  Nikky was sick and couldn't make it, so I had to help James.  It is a very simple process and with practice we will get cleaner and faster.
I cried during the first bird... I'm sure all of you can imagine how it must feel the first time...

We set up about 50 yards down from the backyard on a little bit of a slope so the blood and water would run downhill.  On the back of the pickup, we placed a sheet of plywood covered with a plastic tablecloth for evisceration and along side the tablecloth was the tabletop chicken plucker.  We filled the crawfish boiler with water and set up pickle buckets for ice baths.
Unfortunately, the chickens weren't very close by, maybe 200 feet away.  One by one, James would pick a chicken and walk the green mile to the processing area.  I held the cone while he slit the jugular.  Each chicken bled for about 3 minutes, then it was on to the water, set at 145 degrees.  Each bird was dunked for 60 seconds to open the follicles before plucking.
The tabletop plucker is motorized.  Rather than dropping the chicken into a barrel, the tabletop plucker requires you to hold the chicken up to the spinning rubber fingers.  Since we had to hold the bird to the plucker, we had to pluck a few feathers by hand on the ends of the wings and the bottom of the legs.  I helped a little with the plucking.
James did all the evisceration.  He used to duck hunt in Louisiana, so he has had plenty of experience cleaning birds.  First he had to cut off the head and legs, cut the oil gland, sliced into the breast to pull out the windpipe, went up the bottom and pulled the guts and organs out.  That is evisceration in a nutshell.
They got washed off and dropped into an ice bath until they cooled off, bagged, then into the freezer.  James cooked the heads and feet for Tonya, the dogs got the organs for dinner.

It's gonna be a lot easier next time.