AAR: Small Flock On-Farm Chicken Processing

Task: Process A Small Flock of Laying Hens For Use as Soup Birds

Conditions: Given 14 x 2.5 year old Rhode Island Red laying hens, 1 x non-squeamish human helper, 1 x Improvised 'killing cone' (inverted plastic gallon milk jug with bottom and top cut away enough so that an inverted chicken may be inserted and its head accessed through the 'spout' of the milk jug, makes cutting the chicken's throat and bleeding them out easier),1 x 5-gallon bucket for blood, 1 x precursor to the precursor of the "WhizBang Chicken Plucker" (old timey electric drum feather plucker we bought for $50, DIY whizbangs can be built for ~$100), 1 x portable table, cutting board, fillet knife, boning knife, and 1 x propane fired turkey frier or LARGE stock pot  with the ability to dunk one fully feathered bird in 140 degree water for up to 2 minutes to loosen the feathers to aid in defeathering)

The Drum is spun by a 4HP motor and plucks the bath loosened feathers off easily.

Standards: Process each bird, from killing stroke to fully eviscerated, de-feathered and placed into deep freeze, in no more than 30 minutes per bird and in batches no less than 7 birds per day initially, in any weather conditions above 0 degrees F, while retaining all desirable extras such as feet, hearts, and livers.

Basically, you catch a chicken, hold it upside down by its feet (all the blood rushing to its head 'calms' it making transport easier), place it head first into the inverted gallon milk jug with the bottom and top cut away.  You might have to help guide its head out the bottom of the 'cone'.  Place the still inverted chicken over the 5 gallon bucket, locate its jugular vein and carotid artery on the sides of its neck being sure to move as many feathers out of the way as possible, slice the veins/arteries ensuring not to cut the wind-pipe.  Allow the chicken to bleed out for ~2min.  Once spasms/twitching has ceased, we removed the heads, then dunked them into ~140 degree water fully for ~2min or until feathers along the wing tips pulled out easily.  Transferred them to the plucker, plucked them, pulled any remaining feathers by hand, took the now naked chicken back to the propane burner and singed off any remaining hairs, (this also allegedly kills the naturally occurring low-level strains of salmonella that live on the skin of most ground based poultry) <-- could totally be an old wive's tale, I haven't seen the science, then took to the butchering table, eviscerated them in accordance with the multitude of 'DIY chicken processing videos' available on YouTube, rinsed them off, hydro-chilled them, bagged and placed them into the deep freeze.

We averaged ~20-25 min. per bird which we felt wasn't bad and was a comfortable pace.  It was near freezing and our equipment layout was optimized and we were utter n00bs so I would venture that 15-20 min. per bird is a valid goal for our second attempt.

AAR:
Improves: 
1. proper knife sharpening equipment on site.  No matter how careful you are, your knives will dull fast unless you can somehow totally defeather the areas you are making the killing cuts in (you can't).  I would bring every piece of knife sharpening gear I have as well as honing rods to the next event because trying to put an edge back onto blades with sub-standard stones in freezing weather is not a good time.

2. bring one of those long stick lighters for the propane stove.  We had a normal lighter and a piece of wood that we had to use to try and light the burner every time we needed to heat the water back up or get as flame to singe the birds.  This was not ideal.

Sustain: 
1. I felt we conducted adequate research online via web sites and videos regarding small scale chicken processing so that we had a fairly good idea of what we were trying to do.  Having smart phones on-site capable of pulling up those reference videos also helped if we needed to see a certain step-again.  Googling for video results the phrase "humane chicken processing" will show you most of the videos we watched to get us started. The two below were the most helpful.