SC - SC: another chicken butchering method

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

Hi all from Anne-Marie
back when I was a kid on the farm, I had several 4H projects every year,
involving the production of meat for my family. We raised chickens, sheep,
goats and the occasional rabbit (though we could never bring ourselves to
off dear Bun Buns, not to mention dear Bun Buns having such an attitude
none of us kids would go near him).

For the quadrepeds, we always called The Butcher, who came out with a large
refridgerated truck and a big bolt gun (no bullet to richochet or get lost
in the carcass). Ms Pork Chop, or little Rosemary the Lamb would get a big
bowl of tasty grain, and never knew what hit her. Most impressive, though
I'd have nightmares about that winch for weeks afterwards...

For chickens, though, we;d do 'em ourselves. Hundreds of chickens
simultaneously (to this day, I strongly believe we are doing chickens a
favor by eating them). We had it down to a system...we'd take bleach
bottles and old plastic milk jugs, cut off the bottoms and the tops, and
staple them to the back wall of the barn, upside down. We'd drape plastic
sheeting from under the jug, down to a large lined garbage can. 

The chicken would be taken by the feet (when you take a chicken by the
feet, they get rather quiet. All that blood to their brains, I guess).
You'd stuff them in the jugs, upside down so their heads would stick out
the bottom, and their feet out the top. At this point, they're so stupified
they're basically asleep.

Quickly and quietly, before they had a chance to see what was going on,
you'd pith them like a frog. Taking a sharp knife, pierce their brains from
below their chins. Instant, painless. At that point, you would cut the
throat and let the blood run down the plastic into the lined cans. No
flopping (they were immobilized), no squawking, no blood everywhere to
distress the dairy goats in the next pasture. We'd use the blood as
fertilizer for the fruit trees in the orchard later.

Once they were exsanguinated, we'd dip them into boiling water vats we had
going on camp stoves to loosen the feathers. Then, (and this was the prized
job..me and my brother would fight over who got to do this), we used the
AUTOMATIC CHICKEN PLUCKER MACHINE!!! Get this. You could rent this gem from
the local County Ag Extension office. There's this big drum that rotates.
On the drum were floppy rubber fingers. You would take the chicken and hold
it up to the rotating drum, and the feathers would strip off. Tons of fun,
like a big buffing wheel, but feathers everywhere!

The chickens were then de-gutted (my little bro liked this job best.
wierdo. ), and we got to use a propane torch to burn off the pinfeathers
(another prized job). They were then bagged up and put in the freezer for
later use.

I rather doubt that this was how it was done in the middle ages, especially
the automatic chicken plucker part...but if anyone wants to butcher their
own poultry, I strongly recommend the upside down pithing method. Most
civilized.

- --AM
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