Breed

The Cornish-White Rock hybrid, which is a cross between those two breeds, goes by various names in chick catalogs, such as Vantress, Hubbards, and simply Cornish X, which means it’s a hybrid. This breed produces meat the fastest, and it’s the closest to supermarket chicken. Some hatcheries advertise a dark-colored version of the Cornish-Rock hybrid, for people who prefer colored birds.

Most of the chicken consumed in the United States comes from Cornish-Rock hybrids. These chickens have been bred to grow quickly, utilize feed efficiently, and produce lots of breast meat. Commercial and home chicken producers both use these breeds. They’re not good birds for pasture raising, however, because they don’t gain weight well on pasture and aren’t active birds.

You can use any of the dual-purpose or heavy breeds that are fairly fast growing for meat: Plymouth Rocks of any color, Cornish of any color, Orpingtons, Faverolles, Wyandottes, Chanteclers, Hollands, and Delawares are good examples. These breeds are better for pasture raising and can also be raised in confinement. Recently, some hatcheries have been offering meat-type birds that are better suited to free-range or pasture conditions, such as Red Rangers, but these breeds aren’t easy to find in all locations. The very heavy breeds — like Brahmas and Jersey Giants — take a long time to mature.

Producing your own meat-type crosses isn’t too difficult to do, either. For example, you could have a flock of Buff Orpington hens laying eggs for you and keep a Plymouth Rock rooster with them. Of course, you’d need to incubate the eggs the hens produce to get your meat chicks (see Chapter 13 for more on incubation). For best results, cross two breeds that have good meat qualities.

Technically, you can eat any chicken, but you want to avoid certain breeds because they won’t give you much of a meal for your time and money. Breeds to avoid are any of the egg production breeds — such as Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, Isa Brown, and Cherry Eggers — which have a light frame. Also avoid the small ornamental breeds.

Also avoid the hatchery offerings termed “frypan special” or “fryer mix” or any other term for groups of male chicks from lightweight layer or ornamental breeds. You can eat these, and the chicks will be very cheap, but you’ll spend a lot of time and money raising these birds, with very little meat as a result.

Sex

If you’re going to raise the Cornish-White Rock hybrid chicks, we feel it’s fine to order “as hatched” or “straight run” (which means no sexing, just sending chicks as they’re grabbed) because both sexes make good meat birds, with little difference in maturation rate. If you’re ordering other breeds, you may want to order cockerels (males). They grow a little faster and larger than females, and they may be cheaper.

Two specialty types of meat chickens require that the sex be determined:

• Capons: Capons are castrated male chickens. Castration used to be a popular method of producing tender, fat chickens more quickly. If you want to go this route, you need to order male chicks — probably White Rocks or another heavy breed — and learn how to caponize them. Castrating a chicken requires invasive surgery because a chicken’s testicles are inside the body. We don’t believe there’s any advantage in caponizing cockerels over using a Cornish-Rock hybrid, as far as meat taste and texture go, and the process is a bit complicated and inhumane.
• Cornish Game hens: These birds are a gourmet menu offering. Cornish Game hens are young, small Cornish pullets (females). You also can use Cornish-Rock hybrid pullets, with no difference in taste.

Housing

Meat birds need about 2 square feet of floor space per bird. More space is nice for active breeds, but the Cornish-Rock broilers aren’t very active. They don’t need roosts or nest boxes. Because meat birds are here on a temporary basis, the housing can be temporary, too, but it must protect them from predators and weather. See Part 2 for housing ideas.

Wire floors are sometimes used for meat birds for cleanliness, but they can cause breast sores in the broiler-type birds. Use a deep litter to cushion these birds, and keep it clean and dry. Because meat birds are prone to leg problems anyway, don’t use slippery flooring like tile, paper, and metal.

Meat birds, particularly the Cornish-Rock broilers, benefit from having their housing lighted from 18 to 22 hours a day. The large birds need to eat frequently to keep their metabolism going, and chickens don’t eat in the dark. The most recent research, however, shows that they need a short dark period, from 6 to 2 hours, in which they won’t eat. This schedule gives the bird’s metabolism a break and helps prevent sudden death syndrome. In cold weather, birds require more food, so keep the dark period shorter. Using a timer on your lighting is the best way to achieve this.

Birds on pasture are subjected to natural daylight and darkness, which is one reason they grow a little slower. (Remember, chickens don’t eat in the dark.) When days are long, this fact may not make a big difference, but when you’re raising meat chickens on pasture in early spring and late fall, it can make a big difference in the time needed to get the size birds you want.

If you’re putting meat birds in movable pens on pasture, you must take great care not to crush or run over birds when moving the pens. The Cornish-Rock crosses often move very slowly.

Nutrition

From the time they start eating, meat chicks need a high-protein feed. The protein percentage should be 22 to 24 percent for the first 6 weeks and a minimum of 20 percent after that. Broiler feed is also high in energy (fat), and using it reduces the pounds of feed required per pound of gain, compared to other types of poultry feed. To feed your meat birds, you can purchase commercial meat bird, game bird, or broiler feed. (It goes by different names in different places.) Starter ration or broiler starter refers to the feed with the higher protein content, and grower or finisher ration refers to the feed with the slightly lower protein content.

If broiler-type birds don’t get enough protein, their legs and wings may become deformed, and they may become unable to walk. They will need to be disposed of then because they won’t eat well.

If your brooder houses meat birds as well as other types of birds, feed the higher-protein meat bird feed to all the chicks rather than use a lower-protein feed.

Some meat bird starter feed contains antibiotics. One bag of medicated feed is okay to start chicks, especially if they seem weak from shipping. After that time, you can change to unmedicated feed if the medication worries you. No residue will remain in the meat when the chickens are butchered. Some people prefer to keep their chicks on medicated feed throughout the growth period, and some new medicated broiler feeds allow this feed to be fed right up to butchering. But check the label to see if the medication used requires that you stop feeding it a few days before butchering; if it does, switch the meat birds to an unmedicated feed the last few days.

In some areas, vegetarian and organic feeds are available for purchase. If they’re not available where you live, you may be able to have feed specially made for you, although certified organic feed has to be ground under special conditions and from organic grain. Generally, to have your own feed blend mixed for you, you must order a fairly large amount, usually 1,000 pounds. This amount can be hard to transport, store, and use before it goes stale and loses nutrition. For more about chicken feed, read Chapter 8.

We prefer to feed our meat birds pellets, crumbles, or mash, because it blends all the ingredients and prevents birds from picking and choosing what they like and wasting the rest. Feeding whole grains and scraps isn’t a good idea for meat birds.

Pastured and free-range poultry

If you have a well-managed pasture (not just a grassy spot in the yard), the pasture can furnish a large part of your meat birds’ diet. The birds will probably need some high-protein feed on the side, but the amount of feed will be greatly reduced.

For help in determining what type of pasture grasses to grow in your area, consult with your local county Extension agent. You’ll need the proper machinery to plant this pasture and maintain it. In principle, you’re producing a crop on the pasture and your animals are harvesting it.

It may take a little longer to get pasture-raised birds to a good eating size. Also, because pasture-fed birds move around a lot more than confined ones, their carcasses have more dark muscle meat and less fatty breast meat. The skin of the birds may be a bit more yellow due to pigments in the grass.

Free-range meat chickens that are just given the run of your land with no particular care taken regarding the type of vegetation they eat will vary tremendously in how fast they grow and how tender they are when butchered. The more exercise the bird gets, the tougher the meat will be.

If you want a good rate of growth in free-range situations, you need to provide some broiler feed. We don’t really recommend free-range conditions for meat birds. Managed pasture is much better if you want birds raised on grass.

Chickens must be frequently moved to clean pastures. How often depends on the weather, the rate of vegetation growth, and the number of birds. Move them before they eat all the grass to the roots or the pen gets too dirty.

When moving pastured chickens, you must take care not to harm them or stress them too much. Keep water available at all times, and make sure the birds have a shady place to go when the sun is too hot.

Stress management

Stress affects how fast your meat birds grow and may even kill them. Stress can come from temperature, crowding, disease, predators, or too much noise and confusion in the immediate area. All birds eat less if stressed and, as a consequence, grow more slowly. Even the stress of butchering should be kept to a minimum: The meat tastes better if the animal isn’t subjected to a lot of stress just before death. The Cornish-Rock hybrid broiler birds may keel over dead if their stress levels get too high.

Broiler-type birds are subject to sudden death syndrome. The chickens are usually found on their backs, feet in the air. You may also notice a convulsion just before death. This condition results from a combination of a genetic weakness, electrolyte imbalances, and heart arrhythmia, and it happens more likely when birds are stressed by heat or other factors. It is also more frequent in males.

Don’t eat any meat birds that you find dead. There’s always the chance that the bird died of disease, and a carcass that sits around — even for a short time — may be contaminated by flies and other insects.

Home chicken raisers should avoid using medication to treat the stress-related problems of meat birds. Instead, they should improve management techniques to minimize stress. Don’t use antibiotics as a preventive for diseases — use them only to treat any diseases that come up. One of the reasons for raising your own meat is to avoid meat contaminated with antibiotics.

If you need to medicate your meat birds for any reason — whether by injection, with medication in the water or feed, or any other method — make sure you read and follow the exact label directions on the product regarding how long you must wait before butchering the birds.

You don’t have to rely on medication to keep your meat birds free of stress. Here are some tips for raising stress-free meat birds naturally:

• Place your meat-bird pens in a place that’s out of the way of noisy, busy conditions. Chickens may seem to adjust to busy, noisy locations, but their bodies still feel stress, and that translates to less weight gain and more problems with illness and sudden death.

• Provide your meat birds with a clean space, and keep the litter dry. Large, heavy meat birds like the Cornish-Rock cross are prone to developing sores or blisters on the breast from the amount of time they spend sitting. Even birds in clean conditions develop them, but wet litter makes them more common.

  Usually the blisters are found after butchering; most of the time, you can cut out this area after butchering, and the bird will be safe to eat. But if breast blisters appear infected or raw areas get bigger than a quarter on live birds, you may want to destroy them; we don’t recommend eating these birds.

• Make sure your birds’ environment has a comfortable temperature. Heat is a big killer of heavy meat birds, so make sure your meat-bird area is well ventilated. You may need to run fans in really hot weather.
• Develop a feeding routine, and stick to it. Routines reduce stress because the birds know what to expect.
• Don’t let pets and kids scare the birds. They may literally scare them to death.
• Keep predators out of the pens. Predators, obviously, are another source of instant death.

Why you may want to hire the job out

You may have many good reasons for hiring someone to butcher your meat birds. One of the main reasons is time: A skilled person can do the complete job — killing, plucking, and cleaning — in a very short time, whereas it may take you hours to do your first few meat birds.

A bird can be plucked by hand, but a machine does it faster and cleaner, and most professional butchers have plucking machines. You can buy or make them too, but if you’re doing only a few birds a year, it’s a big expense and one you’re not likely to want to incur.

As you may expect, butchering is messy and smelly. It creates a lot of disgusting waste that has to be disposed of — something some people have a hard time doing on a small piece of property. And if you live close to your neighbors, they may object to butchering.

We find it worth the small amount of money it costs per bird to have a professional kill and clean our meat birds for us. No mess, no fuss — and we still have good, wholesome meat that we raised ourselves.

What’s involved in doing it yourself

Many people want to experience the whole process of producing meat at least one or two times, from the chick to the chicken fryer. If you believe you can do it, you probably can, even though you may be a little clumsy and slow at first. If you’ve butchered game or other livestock, you probably have a good idea of what you’re getting into; if not, read the rest of this chapter.

In a few urban locations, butchering may be prohibited. If you’re an urban chicken-keeper who has managed to produce some meat birds, you may want to check your municipality’s laws.

To do your own butchering, you need the following:

• The proper location: To butcher your chickens at home, you need to have the right location — and that isn’t your kitchen! You may finish the cutting and packing inside, but you need to kill and clean your birds outside your home. (For more on choosing the proper location, see “Choosing the location,” later in this chapter.)
• Plenty of water: Having abundant, clean water available at your butchering site is important. You use the water for filling the tubs to scald birds, to wash birds as you clean them, to fill containers to chill birds, and to clean up after the butchering is done. If water is available at the site, you’ll be less tempted to reuse water when you shouldn’t and will clean the birds more thoroughly.

• Someplace to dispose of the waste: Wastewater has blood, manure, and bits of feathers and other things in it. If it’s legal to run the discharge to a sewer, you could do that; some people route it into the septic tank, and if you’re butchering ten or fewer chickens, that would probably work. (Taking a lot of butchering waste puts a big strain on home septic systems.)

  If you can’t route the waste into your septic tank, the wastewater needs to flow into the ground somewhere. You may want to have a screen at the end to catch larger pieces for burial.

  Don’t direct the wastewater onto vegetable crops or into ponds, lakes, streams, or old wells. Doing so is generally illegal.

  You’ll also have to dispose of solid waste, feathers, heads and feet, organs, and so on from cleaning the birds. Put a big, lined garbage can near your cleaning station, with a lid to discourage flies and wasps. If you have room on your property, bury this solid waste 3 feet deep as soon as possible. Remove it from plastic bags first. If you can’t bury it, you need to wrap it in several plastic bags for disposal at a landfill. Make sure it’s legal to do so first.

  Don’t try to compost feathers and guts. It can be done, but it’s very smelly and attracts pest animals. Bury it in the garden, but don’t spread it on the soil surface. And don’t try to put it into the garbage disposer. You’ll only clog it — imagine explaining that to a repairman. Plus, this waste shouldn’t be anywhere near your kitchen sink, for health reasons.

• Time: Butchering your first chickens will take you quite a bit of time, but when you get the hang of it, it should take about 15 to 20 minutes to get each chicken freezer ready. Plan for a lot more time than you think you’ll need so you don’t feel rushed. Your first few chickens may take an hour each, so plan accordingly and start small.

• Labor: Standing, bending, lifting (maybe heavy lifting to empty chilling or washing containers), and repetitive cutting are involved in chicken butchering, but the average person should be able to handle the labor. Because the average home butchering involves small numbers of chickens, you probably won’t have to worry about carpal tunnel from handling the knife, but people with limited hand function from arthritis or injury may need some help.

  If you have difficulty standing for long periods of time, you may be able to adapt your cleaning station to a seated position.

Killing equipment

You can kill a chicken with your hands (see “Looking at your options: Killing methods,” later in this chapter), but most people prefer using a knife or an ax. You also need a way to keep that knife or ax sharp. If you use the ax method, you need a solid surface to lay the chicken’s head on that’s a comfortable distance off the ground for you. Many people find a large stump or use a sturdy stool or small table. You’ll be hitting it with the ax, so it must hold up to that.

You may opt to use killing cones (cone-shape metal or sometimes plastic holders with an open bottom; see Figure 16-1). The chicken is inserted head down either to kill it or after it’s killed to drain the blood (or for both reasons). The cone keeps the chicken from running around with its head cut off or splattering blood everywhere. The cones are nailed or hung somewhere off the ground. Most homeowners can make cones from thin sheet metal if they can’t find them to buy. It’s nice to have a couple sizes, to hold large and small chickens. You may want just a few or many, depending on the number of chickens you usually butcher at a time.

Instead of using cones, some people have a rack or a rafter with nails or hooks in it. The dead chicken’s legs are tied together with a piece of rope or wire, and it’s hung on a nail to bleed out. The rack or cones need to be at least 3 feet off the ground.

You need some sort of bucket under each chicken to catch the drained blood. Any kind of bucket will do, but blood may stain light-colored plastic.

Finally, you need a garbage can to hold waste.

Plucking equipment

Most home chicken butchers pluck their birds by hand, although plucking machines and plans for making them are available. In some areas, you can also rent plucking machines.

The most important tool a home butcher needs for plucking is scalding hot water and a way to keep it hot and clean. Even if you use a machine plucker, you need to scald the birds first.

You need a large metal container big enough to immerse a whole chicken held by its legs without having too much water overflowing. If you’re going to heat the water elsewhere and pour it in, you may want to use a plastic or wood container.

The most labor-intensive and dangerous way to bring out the scalding water is to heat it inside and carry it out to your big pot. Most people prefer some way of heating it on-site. You can use a propane grill, propane camp stove, or electric hot plate to heat water. A new method of heating water for butchering is to use one of the turkey fryers on the market.

Many people prefer to heat water in one container and pour it into the container used to dip the birds into. Others use just one unit, dumping the water in the heating unit when it’s dirty and adding new water. If you want continuous production, your heating element needs to be strong enough to heat the water to about 140 degrees Fahrenheit in the time it takes to clean one bird.

You need some sort of thermometer to monitor the heat. You can purchase a candy or deep fry thermometer in most large stores. One with a clip to hold it on the pot is ideal.

If your heating unit is propane, you need propane tanks and propane to run them. If your plucking machine or heating element is electric, you need access to electricity. A lot of water is involved in butchering, and water and electricity don’t mix, so make sure any extension cords or plug outlets are located where they won’t get wet.

Cooling and cleaning equipment

After you scald the chickens and pluck the feathers, you need a table to work on while cleaning the birds. Make sure the table is at a comfortable position for you to work. You can use a picnic table, a folding table, an old countertop, boards on sawhorses, or any other platform that works for you.

Here’s a list of all the equipment you need for cleaning your chickens:

• A good knife: You need at least one good, sharp knife for cleaning: either a boning knife or a butcher knife. A boning knife with a 5-inch blade and a butcher knife with an 8-inch blade are common choices. You may want both, and a meat cleaver is also handy at times.

  Sporting goods stores sell good knives for cleaning and butchering. Heft them and see what you like. A knife should fit your hands well. A strong, well-made knife is worth the additional cost.

• A knife sharpener: Dull knives cause accidents more often than sharp ones. A butcher’s steel is a piece of rounded metal that you hold in one hand and stroke the blade of your knife over to keep it sharp. It doesn’t sharpen a dull knife, but it helps keep an edge on a sharp one and should be used after butchering each bird.

• An outside sink or container with a drain: After you clean the birds, you need to rinse them. Many people use an old kitchen sink or laundry tub. Some fit a drain in the bottom of a big plastic tub or half-barrel. The drain should connect to a pipe or hose that leads wastewater away from the person cleaning to a suitable discharge site. It should be at a comfortable working position for you.

  Some people just use a garden hose and rinse the birds at their cleaning table. This process gets a bit messy underfoot after a while, unless you’re on a well-drained surface and you keep that hosed clean, too. Rubber boots may keep your feet dry and keep you from slipping.

• A container full of ice water: After the birds are cleaned and rinsed, they need to be cooled. You’ll need large containers of ice water for this. Clean plastic tubs, picnic coolers, or barrels will work. You’ll need very cold water — preferably ice water — in the containers. So either buy bags of ice or make ice in your freezer ahead of time and store it.
• Soap: Be sure to wash your hands frequently during the butchering process to avoid bacterial cross-contamination of the meat. Wash between butchering stages such as plucking and cleaning. Wash if you use the restroom and, of course, before you eat or smoke. And wash well when you finish the job.
• Plastic gloves: If you’re squeamish, you may prefer to wear gloves.
• A spray bottle with a mixture of one part unscented chlorine bleach and two parts water: Use the bottle to clean the table if it gets contaminated with feces from a punctured intestine or contents of the crop.
• Paper towels: Paper towels are handy, especially if you don’t like wiping blood on the back of your pants.
• A waterproof apron: You can get an apron at janitorial supply places, at some feed and sporting goods stores, or from a gardening supply catalog. Wear old clothes that you don’t mind getting stained, even with your apron.

Packaging/freezing supplies

Packaging supplies for chickens are generally plastic freezer bags. Some people are now using vacuum-sealed bags. If you want to, too, you’ll need a machine that does the vacuum sealing; they’re quite common now in small appliance stores. Size the bags according to how you want to store the chickens. A whole chicken generally needs at least a gallon-size bag, and more likely a 2-gallon bag. If you cut up the chickens before freezing, you can use smaller bags.

Buy a waterproof, permanent marker to write the date on each bag. If you cut up the chickens, you can use butcher’s paper, heavy brown or white plastic-coated paper, to wrap the pieces. You tie it with string or special tape that’s used to seal packages.

Choosing the best time of day

We recommend that you kill your birds in the very early morning. Adjust inside lighting the night before so that it doesn’t come on until you get inside to gather the birds. You’ll be able to pick up sleeping chickens very easily. Gather them and kill them while they’re still in a drowsy stupor. Kill all the birds you’re going to butcher and have them hanging up to bleed out before daylight, if you can.

If the before-daylight kill isn’t practical for you, at least keep the catching simple by going out and catching the birds the night before, either picking them up in the pen after dark or catching them just before nightfall and confining them in carriers or cages. Put them in a comfortable, preferably dark place and don’t give them food or water overnight. Kill them as soon as you can in the morning.

Catching the birds the night before lets them and you calm down. If you have to chase birds all over, they’ll be very agitated, and you’ll be hot, tired, and maybe covered with mud and chicken poop. You’ll have lost time that you could have spent cleaning and packaging the birds. You may be very ready to kill the birds at that point, but it’s better not to do it in revenge. You’ll be calmer and less likely to rush things or make mistakes if the chasing and catching are followed by a good night’s sleep before the butchering.

Birds held in a confined, darkened area will be calm and easy to handle. Move slowly and talk calmly while removing each bird from the cage, and disturb the others as little as possible. Birds that are frightened will fight back and frantically try to escape. Research has shown that animals killed when they’re in a calm state actually bleed out and clean easier — and taste better, too. Providing a calm and relaxed environment is a humane way to do butchering.

Don’t feed your chickens the night before you butcher them. Unless it’s very hot, don’t give them water, either. Cleaning birds is much easier when their crops and intestines are empty.

Looking at your options: Killing methods

Killing methods are hotly debated among home meat producers. You have several good options for killing chickens, and everyone seems to have a method they prefer. Different cultures have different ways to kill chickens, too. Some religions have very strict rules that must be followed both for the killing and butchering of animals.

If you’re Jewish, Moslem, or Hindu, speak to a religious leader to find out how you should kill and butcher your chickens.

For the most part, the common methods of killing described here are equal in terms of the amount of pain or distress they cause to the bird. However, some methods may not appeal to you. It’s actually not too hard to physically kill a chicken, but it’s often very hard mentally for the first-time butcher. Either you become accustomed to it or you don’t. If it’s too hard for you, remember that you can find people who will do it for you.

Some methods you shouldn’t use under any circumstances:

• Using electrocution or a stun gun doesn’t work well and often doesn’t kill the bird.
• Using gas of various types contaminates the meat.
• Shooting a chicken is a senseless waste and hard to do humanely.
• Drowning is inhumane.
• Using power tools to cut off the head creates a tremendous mess, and these tools aren’t designed to cut through skin cleanly — they rip and shred instead.

Scalding

In a large container big enough to immerse a chicken, heat water or add heated water. The water should be about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. If the water is too cool, the feathers are hard to remove. If the water is too hot, the skin will start to cook, and it will tear as you pluck.

Holding the chicken by its feet, dip it in the water to cover all feathered areas. Slowly count to ten. Remove the bird and try pulling out the wing feathers: If they come out easily, begin plucking all the other feathers. If they don’t slide out easily, dip the bird again.

Change the water when it looks dirty or becomes cool. Scalding is quite smelly. Be careful not to drip the water on yourself, spill it, or get your fingers in the pot while dipping the bird.

Hand-plucking

You may need rubber gloves to handle the hot, wet bird. Grasp feathers and pull them out in the direction they were growing, working as quickly as you can. Try not to grab the skin. Keep plucking until you’ve removed all the feathers.

Some immature feathers, called pinfeathers, may be hard to remove. They look like a thick pin in the bird’s skin. Most broiler-type pinfeathers are white, although colored birds may have dark pinfeathers. Grasp them with your fingernails and pull them straight out, or if you don’t have fingernails, use tweezers or needle-nose pliers. You can also place a flat blade, like that of a butter knife, on one side of the pinfeather and put a finger on the other to pull it out.

Checking out the flesh

How much flesh a chicken has and the size of its breast vary by breed and age. If you’re used to store-purchased chicken and you’re butchering a breed that’s not generally raised for meat, the breast of the bird may look small and skinny to you. This appearance is normal.

The drumsticks of birds raised on pasture may look darker and larger than those of Cornish-Rock broilers, which are what commercial chicken comes from. The legs of other meat breeds and nontraditional meat breeds may look longer also. This difference is also normal.

The age a bird was butchered and its feeding program determine how fleshed out it was. Some breeds of birds never achieve a lot of flesh on their bones. Cornish-Rock meat birds should be quite plump and heavy by 8 to 10 weeks; if not, something is wrong with your feeding and management. Most heavy breeds of traditional chickens finish growing at 20 to 25 weeks.

Examining the bird for signs of disease

When you’re butchering your birds, you should be examining the carcass for both signs of disease and signs that your management program is working well. Modern meat birds aren’t alive long before they’re butchered and thus have less chance to pick up a disease or develop other problems, but it doesn’t hurt to at least look over your carcasses and their organs carefully.

A healthy carcass has white or yellow skin. Chicken skin is normally loose and thin. The skin and fat of chickens raised free-range or pastured usually have a deeper yellow pigment. A healthy carcass may have bruises on the skin that can happen during the killing process, but a lot of bruises mean your birds aren’t being handled correctly.

Breast blisters on meat birds are fairly common. They look like a blister on the skin with clear fluid. They’re superficial blemishes and can be cut out, and the meat is safe to eat.

Silkie chickens aren’t often eaten by home chicken owners, but in some cultures, they’re a delicacy. Their skin is bluish black, no matter what color their feathers were.

Some conditions render a chicken unsafe to eat, so keep an especially careful eye out for the following:

• Abscesses are lumps filled with pus either outside or deep inside a body. Don’t eat birds that have abscesses. Abscesses can happen because of an injury or from disease, but either way, the carcass is unsafe to eat. If many birds have abscesses, something is wrong in your management — check your housing for rough objects and don’t crowd your birds.
• Tumors can be hard or soft and can be found anywhere on the body or on an organ. Some may contain fluid. Don’t eat birds that have tumors. Don’t mistake forming eggs for tumors, though. In older hens, some eggs may be forming in the oviduct, near the backbone of the bird. They can range in size from that of a marble to an almost fully formed egg. If you look inside the lump and you see egg yolk, it’s a developing egg. In some cultures, these are considered a delicacy and are saved to be eaten, but most people toss them out.
• The liver of a healthy chicken is reddish brown. If it’s very pale or mottled looking or it has white spots, the chicken was diseased. Most other chicken organs don’t have much to tell you.
• Open sores or wounds mean the chicken isn’t good to eat.
• An outpouring of straw-colored fluid when you open the tiny hole in the back of the bird to remove organs during butchering means that the body cavity filled with fluid because of a disease process. Don’t eat the bird.
• A butchered bird that was left for more than 1 hour at temperatures above 40 degrees Fahrenheit should be discarded.
• Any bird that was partially cooked from being scalded too long or at too high a temperature should either be completely cooked immediately or discarded.

Don’t eat chickens that died of unknown causes or that were killed by predators. Birds that looked or acted ill before butchering are also unsafe to eat.

Removing the head, neck, and oil gland

If the bird still has a head, you need to remove it. What you do with it depends on whether you eat chicken necks:

• If you like to eat necks: Carefully remove the crop and the esophagus and trachea tubes before detaching the neck. Chop off the head just below the beak. Try to slide your knife between the vertebrae instead of cutting through bone.
• If you throw out necks: You can just cut through the whole neck close to the body without the hassle of removing the head or fussing with the tubes and crop.

If you’re using the neck, slit the skin on the underside of the neck and then cut it off near the body. On the underside of the bared neck, you should see two tubes, like small straws. About halfway down the neck, you’ll see a small bulge if the crop still has food in it. Don’t squeeze or cut through the crop, if you can help it, or the food inside will contaminate the meat. If the crop isn’t full, it will be hard to see.

If crop contents get on the meat, take the carcass to the water source and thoroughly rinse it. Clean up the table with the bleach solution in the spray bottle and rinse before proceeding.

At the end of the neck near where the head once was, find the two small tubes. Cut between them and the rest of the neck at the top, and then pull carefully away from the rest of the neck as you slide your knife or finger down behind the tubes to break the connection all the way down the neck. The trachea is stiffer and has ridges. The esophagus, which the crop is attached to, is thinner and flexible: Make sure you follow down the esophagus to detach the crop from the neck flesh.

When you’ve detached the tubes and crop from the flesh all the way to the shoulder, cut them off as close to the body as you can and discard them. You can the leave the neck on or remove it and put it in a container to save. Don’t worry about the ends of the tubes poking through the neck hole; when you pull out the organs, these should pull out, too.

Now you need to deal with the oil gland. It’s a bright yellow spot on the back of the tail and the bottom of the spine. Lay the bird on its breast. Either remove the whole tail at the spine and discard it, or, starting from the spine, use your knife to slice under the oil gland, down and past the tail, and cut off the gland, leaving the tail on.

Removing the organs

Your bird should be minus head, neck, and oil gland now. Place it on its back on the table, butt end facing you. Pull up on the flesh and skin over the top of the vent, or butt. With a sharp knife, make a shallow slice across the back of the bird, just above the vent. Don’t make it too wide at this point, and don’t push too deeply — you want to cut through the skin and flesh to make a small hole to the body cavity. Hold the knife across the bird, not pointing down or poking into it.

When you have a small hole, put your fingers in it on both sides and gently pull apart the skin and flesh. If chicken poop comes out at this point because the bird wasn’t empty before you butchered it, or if at any time when you’re removing the intestines you break them and poop comes out, you must take the bird to the water source at once and thoroughly rinse it. Try to hold the bird downward while doing this so poop or contaminated water doesn’t run into the body cavity. This is why running water is better than a bucket of water to rinse with. Many people use a mild liquid soap to wash the carcass when this happens. You must rinse completely if you use soap.

Place the bird in a clean container while you use your bleach spray to clean off the table before continuing. This kind of mess quickly teaches you to starve your birds at least 12 hours before butchering.

Now that your hole has been widened, slide your whole hand, fingers out straight (yes, your whole hand will fit in all but Cornish Game–size hens), into the bird tight up along the backbone as far as you can, preferably to the neck. Slightly curl your hand and rake — don’t squeeze and pull — the organs back toward the rear. Most of the organs will come out in a big clump. They will be attached to the vent by the intestines. Move them to the side and carefully cut around the vent in a circle. Then discard the whole mess.

If you’re going to cut up the bird for cooking anyway, you can simplify organ removal by splitting the bird open. You can use a knife or a heavy-duty pair of scissors for this. Turn the bird on its breast and, starting at the rear, cut through the backbone all the way to the neck. You must have a steady hand and cut very shallowly — you don’t want to cut into the organ mass. Split the bird open with your hands and then remove the organs.

Some people save the heart, liver, and gizzard for eating. If you like them, separate them into a clean container or plastic bag. The liver has two lobes with a small, green, pointed sac between them. This organ is the gall bladder. If it breaks when you clean the bird, any meat it touches will be stained green and will have a bitter flavor. Before saving the liver to eat, carefully cut it out.

Gizzards you save should be slit open. They may have stones, grain pieces, or foreign objects in them to be removed. They also have a yellow lining that you should remove.

Put your hand back up inside the bird to remove what’s left. Usually the heart and lungs are still in there, sometimes with bits of other things. The lungs adhere to the ribcage very closely and can be hard to remove. You need to get a finger between them and the ribcage wall. If you like to eat the heart, save it in your clean container. Some people trim off the wing tips and remove fat under the skin near the large opening at this point.

Now take the carcass to your water source and rinse the inside cavity and the outside carcass thoroughly. Place your cleaned bird in cold water for chilling. The water should totally cover the bird so no parts are exposed to insects. Chicken should be chilled as soon as possible after butchering.

Some people believe that aging the bird a day or two in a moderately cold temperature, such as that of a refrigerator, before eating or freezing makes for more tender and flavorful meat. We don’t believe that young birds, especially the Cornish-Rock hybrid broilers, need this.