Processing Meat Birds
Processing meat birds requires specific skills and preparation to ensure the harvest goes as well as it can.
When we are getting ready for processing day there are a list of things we organize:
The night before we:
Pick up ice to go into our trash cans (this is where the chickens go after they are processed) and for our mini cooler to store the organs.
Set up our kill cone station with buckets & water.
Set up tables for processing birds with individual cutting boards, knives and scissors.
Prep bags for the organs.
Prep our vacuum seal bags for the parts of meat or whole birds we plan on packaging.
Set up the chicken plucker & scalding station.
Move the chickens close to where we will be processing at and check all of our equipment.
By doing these things ahead of time it allows us the ability to wake up early and get started by 9am.
We process around 100 birds at a time and we are able to do it in about 3 hours. An additional 2 hours is added on for cutting the birds and storing them.
How do we do it so quickly? You ask…
We have help!
Every time we butcher birds, we hold a class! This class allows me the opportunity to teach others life skills while multiplying the hands we have to help - which naturally decreases our processing time 😉 Yet another win-win with the meat birds!
All of this is shared in specific details along with visuals in our Chicken Processing Course on the website! I highly encourage you to take advantage of this special insiders discount I’m offering this week (February 13th - 17th) and have this resource on hand for when you’re processing your own batch of chickens!
You can, also, purchase the step by step print out that you can have laminated and keep on the table while you’re processing - it helps your phone stay clean 😉