Back in the 1980s when we lived on the land, we had very little money. We used to purchase “end of lay” hens for $1 each and would slaughter and dress them so we could afford to eat chicken twice weekly. These old chooks were tough, so they needed long cooking as a stew or cooking in a pressure cooker. Still, they were a valuable source of protein for our hard-up family of six, and the price was about a third of what they would have cost already dressed.
In the first season, killing and dressing the chickens was a long, drawn-out affair over weeks. In the second and subsequent years, we set up an assembly/disassembly line.
How to Kill and Process Chickens in 5 Steps
- First we had the chickens in boxes ready to kill. These were alongside a scaffold which had 10 cones in two rows of five. When my husband wrung their necks, he put them upside down in the cones with the heads through the bottom until they stopped moving.
- From there I picked them out and dunked them into boiling water in the old copper that our forebears used to heat water and wash clothes in. I held on to their feet as I dipped them in the water.
- Then onto the plucking table, where I started on their wings, down their legs onto the chests, and worked around to the back. The hot water loosened the feathers. Sometimes they needed an extra dunk in the boiling water, but I was careful not to start it cooking. That would tear the skin as I pulled the feathers out. We swept the feathers into a bucket and buried it deep in the compost.
- After de-feathering, the animal went to the gutting table, where my husband cut off the head and feet and took out the guts and any half-developed eggs.
- A quick wash and the chook went into a plastic bag and into the fridge.
We set things up so we could deal with 25 chickens before breakfast, 25 before morning tea, 25 before lunch and 25 before afternoon tea. Then we cleaned up before dinner. 100 killed, plucked, gutted and into the freezer before nightfall, with all the tidying up done.
Ideally, we would have hung the chickens for a couple of days to tenderize them. We didn’t have the facilities for that, though, and with the heavy fly population around, it was better to refrigerate them first and freeze them as fast as possible. By the time we’d done the first 25, the amount of time they’d spent in the refrigerator was minimal. Both fridge and freezer worked overtime that day and night.
We ate egg yolks for the next three days and chicken twice a week for the next year. Backyard farming is a big part of self-sufficiency, and just a plain smart idea.
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