Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The Process
The process begins the night before. Food is removed from the feeders, leaving the
birds with only plenty of water and grass. We drive wooden poultry crates to the pas-
ture for morning loading. We scrub down the chill tank with bleach and fill it half full
of water (in order to save water the following day). We also pre-write the labels with
price, date, and product to save time during bagging and weighing.
The next morning before light Michael and I load the birds into crates and drive
them to the processing shed. He heats up his scald water and hooks up all the hoses
(hot and cold water comes from the house). We try to start the processing by 8:00
a.m., both so the birds don't have to wait around and so we are finished by the time
customers arrive. While Michael is killing the first four birds I scrub down the coun-
tertops, clean and sharpen knives, and prepare the ice water. I will usually see my
first birds for eviscerating within five minutes.
On the kill side Michael keeps the crated birds out of the rain or hot sun. He selects
from different crates, progressively giving all the remaining birds more room as he
goes. Each bird is placed head-down in the kill cone. This usually calms them right
down so Michael can quickly and cleanly cut their jugular. Bleed-out usually takes
about four minutes; meanwhile he is scalding the previous batch. After the bleed-out,
all four birds are secured by the feet to a pulley and dunked into the scalder (ninety
seconds at 140ºF) slowly several times. Michael uses dish soap in the water to break
surface tension and penetrate the feathers. After scalding he turns on the plucker and
places all four birds in at once for plucking, which takes approximately twenty
seconds. He pulls any remaining large feathers and removes the head and feet. At this
point the birds are transferred to the clean side of the shed.
Back on the clean side I begin the eviscerating process by removing the oil gland
with a sharp knife. I then cut the neck skin and loosen the crop. I carefully open up
the abdomen, remove the intestines, pull out the crop, and cut around the vent. All of
this offal is dropped directly through a hole into the “gut bucket.” I then remove the
heart and liver and carefully pinch off the gall bladder. The heart and liver are kept in
ice water until bagging. I use the lung remover to pull the lungs and a knife to re-
move the neck (which is also kept). After a good internal and external spraydown I
pass the bird to the cleaning crew. They meticulously examine the bird, removing
any pinfeathers, external fat, or blemishes. The birds are again rinsed inside and out
before being placed in the chill tank. Our chill tank easily holds 50 gallons of cold
water, 400 pounds of cube ice (4 lbs./bird) and 100 chickens. After chilling for at
least an hour, the birds are drained and bagged. They are ferried up to the store in
