How to Butcher Chicken Simple, Easy and Humane Step by Step instructions

folks today on the stoney ridge farm channel we're going to show you how to take chickens from the pasture right to the freezer it's going to be a great time i hope you enjoy i [Music] ain't afraid to get the job done [Music] hey there folks this is josh stoneyridge farmer welcome back to another awesome day here off the stoney ridge farm we're helping a neighbor out today and we're going to be processing chickens so today's video is all about butchering chickens we're going to walk you through the entire process of what i do to butcher chickens it's gonna be a fun educational video let's get busy doing it [Music] all right folks welcome back to the stoney ridge farm this your first time here please hit that like button if it's your millionth time here please hit the like button we've got about 1 600 videos out here on homesteading farming and all sorts of real lifestyle stuff so what we're going to do today is process chickens we've got four different stations right here we have a station that's going to be here where the chickens are going to be we have a station right here these are the hugging cones or the processing cones uh we'll be processing the chickens there so we'll dispatch the chicken here we'll move over to a scalder come on over here with the camera i'll show you this is the scalder we're heating the water temperature up to about 150 155 ish okay then we'll go to the plucker the plucker right here is where the chickens will go after they've been scalded and that will remove the feathers then we go to the gutting station and then right over here we've got several coolers full of ice to cool the chickens before we put them in shrink bags and put them in the freezer so that's the process we'll walk you around we'll show you all this and i'll show you exactly what to do we will not show any killing in this video guys just so you know i will tell you what to do how to do it but we won't show all that these are the hugging cones or the killing cones what happens is a chicken is lowered down into here his head is pulled down through and in a aggressive and firm slicing motion we will slice and remove the head the head will fall down into these buckets these are our gut buckets okay they will bleed out it takes about 45 seconds to three minutes for each one to bleed out then they go into the scalder which has hot water in it you'll see this entire process to the plucker and over here to the gutting station right here this will contain our giblets which is our livers hearts gizzards feet and necks okay this is for our gut material okay so this will all be discarded into the compost pile all right we have everything sitting up high so it's at a good working ergonomic height then we go into coolers these are ice baths so we'll put them into an ice bath and then we'll move them to various ice baths so we cool these birds down to about 55 degrees before we put them in the freezer these are cornish cross meat birds right here there are four cornish cross meat birds in this bird cage right here and they go from here and they go right into the cones this is tony it's his chickens uh he's he's been sweating he set all this up yesterday right they set it all up yesterday oh good stuff let's get busy guys you're gonna learn something today so we're gonna get a chicken out of hey little friend out of here now guys these are big birds these are about eight to 12 weeks old these made it past about 14 weeks so they're probably gonna dress out at about six pounds okay i do not find joy in dispatching animals but i do find joy in having good farm fresh food this chicken is calm it's rested it's relaxed it's not stressed okay we're gonna lower them down into the cone right here the hugging cone all right take him by the head pull his head down just like so we'll take a knife we'll dispatch the bird just like that that's how it's done takes two seconds pull the head down with some strength and slice okay guys again we're not going to show you the kill we're just telling you exactly how to do it lower them down pull the head slice okay take the head completely off so we're at the scalding station right now we dispatched the chickens we're they're in the hugging cones we're gonna go to the scalding station these chickens are dirty okay they're chickens that's that's their thing they're dirty um they're not gonna be clean until we get done in just a second okay so we want to fully submerge the chicken in 150 to 155 degree water this process takes around it could take anywhere up to a minute it can take as little as 25 to 30 seconds to check and see if they're ready we'll pull the toe and if the skin comes off the toe they're ready skin did not come off the toe so we're going to wait just a little bit longer we want our plucker to be turning and working while we're waiting and doing this okay so pretty simple stuff this is really elementary i'll post links to everything we're using in the video description for you guys so that if you want to set up just like this you can do it at your place the plucker seems violent okay trust me it's not violent it will not bruise the meat there's no blood therefore there is no bruise there's no blood past the killing cone point okay just so you guys know we're gonna check again okay right there okay the toenail came off we're gonna toss it in the plucker gently just like that want to keep cold water going over the birds this plucker will hold two birds guys we're rinsing all around inside the plucker because the feathers fall down around the outside okay i'm gonna reach over turn off the plucker i'll keep rinsing [Music] and here is the bird completely clean just like you would have in the grocery store okay set these over here now those guys will go through the gutting process i'll show you guys the gutting process next very simple guys super easy this is super easy so don't be scared to do it on your own so we're into the gutting stations a little bit darker right here just so you guys know we're using dexter pairing knives this is a dexter sharpener okay you want to make sure you're going to be periodically sharpening your knives as you go here so again i'll post links to everything that we're using in this video description this is a paring knife this is a pinning knife i find that using the pinning knives really works pretty well uh the smaller the knife the easier it is to work with on the chickens and we're going to take this pinning knife right here and we're going to do this chicken there's a few things that i do for ergonomics there's some zip ties over here that are holding various things in place but for now we're just going to set stuff down we're going to show you really quick how to do one chicken okay so here's our one chicken he's a big boy we are separating the neck from the chicken you don't have to do that first thing we're gonna do here's here's our chicken leg bone we're gonna cut that way we're gonna go right up through and cut this way leg good to go we save the legs we're gonna do it again we'll show you one more time that way this is a slicer not a pusher so slice then cutting away from ourselves like that that's how you take the foot off okay inside here is uh the esophagus the first chamber we call it the craw of the chicken's digestive system we're gonna go in and cut up and out away from the bird right there is the first chamber of a chicken's stomach it's called the craw you may hear a little bark bark noise here in a second got to get a hold of that it's pretty slimy that's okay this is butchering this is what it's all about so there's the craw right there again part of the chicken's esophagus very simple okay just give her a little tug okay we're gonna go ahead and cut that cut it remove it and we have a bucket down below where we throw our intestines and our other such products now we're going to take the neck off okay because we're separating the necks from these chickens the gentleman we're processing birds for today does not want the neck cut away from yourself we can snap the neck just like that bam comes right off let's stick that over here for now we don't eat the wing tip some people like the wing tips i don't like the wing tips okay so we're going to do the same thing we're going to cut right here notice i'm doing all of this before i fool with any intestines i want to make sure that i'm absolutely clean with everything i'm doing before i get up inside the chicken's guts i'm going to cut down again right here take those wingtips off there's not any meat on there really guys to speak of okay it's crispiness now we're to the back of the chicken this is his rectal area right here this is people call that the pope's nose or something like that let me know what you guys call that we're going to pinch right here we're going to cut outward we don't want to stab inward because we take a risk of hitting gut gut contains salmonella salmonella is what makes you sick cut in stab in cut out just like that you didn't cut all the way into the intestinal cavity okay you want to take your finger pull in a tearing motion okay reach in all the way in and we're going to get all of the intestines out of this bird just like so okay these birds have not eaten in two days so therefore they should have a very low fecal load okay there should not be any manure that will really come across all right so now we're to the rectal area we're going to take cut right around our rectal area just like so done this chicken is ready to go on ice so that's what it looks like when it comes out of the grocery store all right guys now you can rinse it off extra if you want to rinse it off but we're going to put this in ice that one's ready here are intestines and we save what we call the giblets the giblets are the innards or internals all right this is the gizzard we're just going to simply slice away at the gizzard it goes in its own little pan we have the heart and the liver here's the heart the heart goes on in its little pan the liver is right here and very important the gallbladder do not bust the gallbladder here's the technique for getting the gallbladder loose without cutting it and without busting it pinch and pull the gallbladder is intact the liver is good to go this gets discarded that is how you process a chicken if you want to see it again rewind it do it again do it again do it again you'll learn it the next process we're going to do after we get done with all these chickens is we're going to put them in vacuum sealed bags cool hope you're learning so we're to the last part of this process guys and what we have here are large poultry bags these are a little bit too big these will fit a whole dog a dog on pig in them but i want to use an extra large poultry bag for these extra large birds this bag shrinks up in water we have boiling water right here okay it's not quite boiling it's about 200 degrees you can see right there okay it's important that we get our water temperatures right 150 for scalding around 200 for this and here's what we're going to do we're going to take our chicken lower them down in the water just like so and get this bag hot it shrinks once it comes out so we count to about imaginary number about 15 or 20. get it nice and warm nice and hot okay and then we will use that spoon to hold it fully underwater fully submerged then we're going to lift it up just like so give her a squeeze give her a good twist like so dad's over here with a hog ring i use a metal hog ring plier okay hog rings are little metal pieces like this some people use zip ties the hog ring works much much better this is ready to go in the freezer you do not need to age your chicken or put it in the refrigerator for two days or any of that magical unicorn stuff that a lot of the hippie channels will tell you to do you don't have to do that you put this in the freezer it's going to take it two days to freeze because we're putting 25 chickens in a deep freezer so you got to think about that these are pre-cooled they're about 55 degrees and they're ready to go in the freezer that's it that's how we process chickens here on the stoney ridge farm guys please pound that like button jump in subscribe the channel this is everybody thanks guys for all your help right good whoo come on [Music] i gotta call you back touch don't just get your theme this is guy that uh owns the farm and he's a little bit uh i don't know what's the word for it uh what foreign foreign