It's Been A Loooong Time

I must first start with an apology, it has been so long since my last post and many of you probably thought we dropped off the face of the earth, but we are still here. A lot has gone on since my last blog; the hogs are just about ready to go to the proccesors, out of the ten chicks we hatched back in October, we put three hens in with the other birds, and the rest we sent of to freezer camp, and the hens are still laying like gangbusters.
     For years I raised chickens and did not really want to fool with actually killing and eating them. The reason being all the plucking we would have to do, it just sounded to me like too much work, that combined with lack of any experience processing chickens just kept me away from it. That is untill my neighbor showed me how to skin a chicken (yes, I said skin, like skinning a rabbit) there is no plucking whatsoever and a bird can be processed from coop to freezer in less than five minutes! So, when the day came the boss and I set up a little processing station which consisted of a homemade killing cone made out of chicken wire, a sturdy table, a water hose, and a cooler filled with ice water. Now I know some of you are wondering "what in the world is a killing cone??" Most of us have heard about ringing a chickens neck, or going queen of hearts with em' (Off with their heads). A killing cone is a funnel shaped device where you put the chicken in the big end and his head stick out the small end, it holds them securely so you can dispatch the animal humanely.

 While the chicken's head is hanging out the bottom of the cone, you take a knife and cut the carotid arteries on both sides of the neck, the chicken will expire in seconds. We found most of them took about 90 seconds to expire. Many people ask me; "why don't you just wring their necks, that's what grandma did", that's fine there is nothing wrong with doing it that way. The reason we decided to use the killing cone method is that it removes all the blood from the animal, and reduces undo stress on the birds.

    The skinning operation is very straight forward, and simple you just place the chicken on its back, pull up the skin about mid way on the breast and make a cut being careful not to cut the meat, place your fingers in the slit and pull, its just like taking off a pair of coveralls, once you get down to the wing tips and feet just cut through the joint, remove the neck, and behold you have a "neked" bird as we say it here in the south. From there we eviscerate the birds, I won't elaborate on that right now, give a good wash down and place it in ice water. Very easy and very tasty, we cut the breasts off the bone and voila boneless skinless chicken breast. The rest we ground up to use in dishes you would use ground beef for. You can even roast em' naked like that, the only downside to that is the exterior of the bird will get a little dry. Well I guess I have shocked your system enough for today, I originally wanted to post a blog telling you about our upcomimg series of blogs on how to raise chickens, so now that you know that I guess I can sign off. Thanks for reading and God Bless.