PICKLEWAFFEN

Butchering your bird is a bit of a learning curve, for sure. I’ll do my best to walk you through it, but the best way for you to learn is to just get your hands dirty. You won’t fuck up so badly that it’s inedible.

It’s not all that difficult, once you wrap your head around it.

I would recommend starting with a 1 or 2 bird slaughter day. You don’t want to have 40 dead chickens in the queue, just to realize that it takes you an hour to do each one.

Once you get the hang of it, you can probably clean one in 15-20 minutes. There are some YouTube videos of people doing it in like 5 minutes or less, but I wouldn’t count on that.

Let me reiterate that having some extra hands on slaughter day is always helpful. Particularly if everyone has a designated job, Henry Ford style. You can really streamline the fuck out of this process, and get a ton of birds done in a day.

Besides a written walkthrough, it would be a good idea for you to get a visual as well. I’ll try to link a few good YouTube videos on the process. Better yet, go make friends with someone with chickens, and volunteer as that extra set of hands on their slaughter day.

THE PLUCK

Now that you’ve got a bunch of dead chickens hanging upside-down on a post, it’s time to pluck some feathers.

In hindsight, maybe you should get this step prepared ahead of time. In double extra hindsight, having a helper or three is bigly helpful on slaughter day.

You will need:

- A large pot of approx. 160 degree (F) water. You can use a turkey fryer, a clam steamer pot, an open flame, or any type of propane burner that you can get your hands on. Pot should be large enough to completely submerge a bird without spilling over.

- A large tub of ice water, of a similar size.

- Thick rubber gloves with a long enough cuff so that you can put your hand in the pots (hot and cold) without much discomfort
- - OR - -
- A comparable handle/tool that you can submerge the bird without putting your hands in the water at all.

- Access to a functional garden hose is nice, for the occasional workspace/glove rinse.

There are also several types of automatic pluckers that work very well. One resembles a washing machine agitator barrel full of little rubber fingers. Another goes on a power drill, and has similar rubber fingers on it. For our purposes, let’s try to avoid buying anything.

The process:

> If you read through the peachwaffen preserves recipe, this is a lot like blanching a peach.

> Take your dispatched bird by the feet (some people zip-tie the feet together, but it’s not necessary), and completely submerge it in the 160 degree water for 30-60 seconds, but no longer than 60. Be sure the water reaches the entire bird, particularly under the feathers, at the base. This loosens the feathers.

> Remove the bird, and quickly dunk it in the ice water, and remove promptly. This prevents the skin from tearing as you pluck the bird.

> Grab the bird by the legs with your off-hand, and pluck with your primary. Start with the wings, as they’re the most difficult feathers to pluck. Get them while they’re the most loose. After the wings, start with the tail feathers, and work your way toward the head. Pull the feathers away at a sharp angle, opposite the direction that they grow, if that makes sense.

> Easiest method for the above is to place the bird on a table of some sort, with the feet toward you and the head facing away. Hold the legs, and pull the feathers away from your body.

> Continue until all of the feathers are removed. If you “blanched” the bird properly, most of them should almost just wipe away.

> You’ll find a bunch of small “pin” feathers (looks like little hairs) left over that are hard to remove. The best method that I’ve found for this is to run a handheld propane torch over the bird quickly, and singe them away. Any sort of open flame will probably do, as long as you exercise caution.

> Use your hose and rinse your work area down often, just to maintain at least a modicum of cleanliness.

> No need to pluck the head, obviously. Go as far up as makes sense.

Once your bird is featherless, it’s time for the messy part.

THE KILLING CONE

If you’re going to keep any sort of poultry on your property, even if they’re not intended for meat, eventually you’re going to have to yeet one of them.

Whether you have poultry for the express purpose of filling your freezer, or if you’re only planning on the occasional old age or mercy yeet, you need at least one killing cone.

A killing cone is exactly what it sounds like.

It’s purpose is to allow you to quickly and humanely kill your bird, without doing the old “axe to the neck, and let it run around” thing.

When your (chicken/duck/goose/turkey) is inverted in the cone, it goes into a calm, trance-like state. This gives you the opportunity to (using a very sharp knife) sever the main artery in the neck. There is little-to-no struggle, as their wings and feet are restrained by the cone, and you simply let them bleed-out (into a bucket, ideally. We’ll use that blood later).

For multiple birds, butcher day is a lot easier with multiple cones. You can continue cutting, while the others are hanging.

This is another one of those things you can purchase if you’re functionally retarded, but I’d suggest that you make your own.

There are all sorts of guides online that instruct you on how exactly to build a killing cone (usually from sheet metal), but I find that a traffic cone (cut to size) works just as well. You know where to find those.

Size will vary, depending on what bird you’ve got. You obviously want the large opening of the cone to fit your bird snugly, and you want the small opening to be just large enough to pull the head and neck through, and be able to easily access the main artery in the neck.

What do you guys want to learn today? I’ve been getting some great suggestions in @rwds_bot. Stop in, and give me some input.

Otherwise, I’ve got “chicken butchering” from coop to freezer, in the lineup.

Lemme know.

I keep mine in mason jars, but generally I would caution against it for anyone else. I drink it fast enough that I don’t have any issues with bottles popping or lids blowing off. Obviously, I keep it in the fridge to slow/kill fermentation.

Some of the boys keep theirs in grolsch bottles, with good results.

This channel isn’t about preparing for the end of the world. It’s about preparing for the end of their world, and a rebirth of ours.