I just got done killing and butchering a number of Chickens when I checked my RSS feeder and found that that Gene Logsdon had put up a post on how he does it. I found it interesting to compare how he does it to how we do it.

One things for sure, Gene is faster then we are. He says…

My wife and I can kill, scald, and butcher four chickens in half an hour, if we’re in a hurry.

If he is truly counting all the steps it takes to get them in a freezer and his wife really is as fussy as he says she is, he has got us beat on speed. And to make matters worse, we have a machine to help us with the plucking (ours looks like this, but if I had to get one now I would probably get this).

I suspect that part of the secret to his speed is this…

Theoretically, the water should not be quite boiling—about 180° to 190°F. is just right. But we let the water come to a boil, then let it sit a bit. Our water is usually a bit too hot, and it cooks the skin a wee bit but this is no problem other than the skin might tear in the defeathering process. A bit of torn skin is no catastrophe either, and eventually you will learn to avoid it. I like to start with the water a bit too hot, so that if we are butchering four or more chickens at once, which we usually do, the water will not be too cool by the time we get to the last one. Better too hot than not hot enough.

I find this quick and dirty approach appealing. I am a naturally lazy fellow. But the Troll would kill me if I tried to do my scalding this way. She does not like it when the skin cooks. She says that it affects the taste. Since she can usually tell you all ingredients in a dish just by tasting it I suppose she is probably right. But if you scald the way we do, it takes longer.

We scald the chickens in water that is around 140 degrees. The amount of time we leave the chicken in the water varies with the age of the chicken. But it is generally close to a minute. The skin does not cook and our machine can still pluck the birds clean without breaking the skin. But I think both the scalding and the plucking take longer than if we did it Gene’s way.

Having said that, I suspect that Gene’s real speed advantage lies in the butchering end of things. He saves some internal organs for later eating (which we do not) and he takes the crop out at the front whereas we pull it through. But if anything those differences should make it take longer for Gene to butcher than it does us.

The real trick is the initial cutting to pull the gut sack out. People who don’t have much experience go really slow so as to not cut into the intestine and release all the crap. I imagine Gene can do this part really fast given how many years he has done it.