 Well, it's time the time has arrived for the chickens to be butchered So in this video, we're gonna be butchering chickens. If you don't want to see chickens butchered don't watch this video and You know, I understand some people don't want to Think about chickens being butchered or see chickens be butchered and I understand that I respect that that's fine So don't watch this video The only meat that my family eats is meat that I personally have killed and butchered That's how we've decided to to eat meat So other than the meat that I kill and butchered were vegetarian and in most cases I raised the meat or Hunt or fish the meat that we eat. So We feel like that gives them a good life and that's what we do with it. So again, that's that's our decision I know people are of different opinions about it, and that's fine. But again Please don't watch the video and then be upset by it and then complain in the comments that you're upset by watching chickens be butchered Just please don't watch the video But if you're interested in seeing how we put your chickens This is this is the video Starts with a really sharp knife Because the sharper the knife the less pain the chicken feels And so I have a pretty sharp Knife already, but I just want to make sure it's absolutely razor Sharper sharp as I can humanly get it This is not an instructional video on how to sharpen knives We have had classes here at the low technology Institute about sharpening knives and maybe we'll do that class again once Once we're able to host classes Most of the messier bits are going to take care outside. So we're going to Put the put the chicken down and then pluck them outside So we're going to bring them in Eviscerate them take the the inwards out. We're going to keep the liver the heart And the gizzard and then we're going to prep the the rest of the chicken for freezing and get rid of the innards We're gonna use all that out in the in the garden as fertilizer It's a bittersweet day It's a butchery day that means these three roosters Are gonna be butchered today, so It's not a regular video it came with a warning at the beginning It might not be one you want to watch if that butchering a chicken is not something you're interested in seeing but for us It's really important To know where our meat is coming from without fossil fuels We're really limited to what meat we can get here locally and for us. That's our chickens We don't need more than one rooster. We have a small flock and frankly These guys were making our flock Not very cohesive because the roosters are above the hens But among the roosters there's a pecking order and with four roosters That's a lot of competition to see which one is the top banana And so with these three starting to crow and starting to become full adult roosters I've seen them trying to mount the hens it puts a lot of pressure on Sid our our dominant rooster our rooster that we're keeping Actually, they're his Sid is their father, but they don't know that So anyway, these three need to be butchered. That's what we keep them for They've had a great life. They've lived out in the outside with their with their friends They've gotten to eat insects and chase mice and eat vegetables and run around They've had a great life and it's really important for me that they die quickly and As painlessly as possible and then we're gonna eat most of them and turn them into soups and food and It's you know keeps us happy and healthy and we only eat meat once a week at most So this is you know a couple weeks at least worth of food for us Or a couple weeks of meat for us will turn into many different things, but like I said, we're gonna be butchering these chickens today I'm gonna walk through that process how we do that So if that's something that you're not interested in seeing probably best to skip the rest of this Video rather than watch it and then send me an angry message that it was upsetting to you Please do not watch this if it's not something you want to see But if you're interested in learning how chicken goes from this to something on your plate This is a interesting video and I urge you to watch it with an open mind if it's not something you're involved with It'll make you if nothing else appreciate your chicken the next time you eat it just think about how much goes into that that That breast or that thigh or that nugget so these chickens these roosters We're separated out this morning. It's now just after lunch. We separated them out this morning and they are They've been isolated without food because I want their systems to be as empty as possible I don't want to be dealing with a full stomach basically when I have to clean them out So one by one, I'm going to take these guys over to where They're actually put down So this is a calm quiet kind of Corner of the yard in a temporary little pen here So I'm going to pop in grab one of them and bring them over to the next station All right, I'm going to describe what's going to happen here before I do it This is a cone that I cut some off. I'm gonna put the chicken upside down in it so I extend his neck down so what's going to happen is I'm going to slice his veins in his neck the reason he's upside down is That gravity is pushing blood downward, right? He's got a little bit of extra pressure in his head when I slice them his pumping heart will quickly Pump the blood out of his system and he'll lose consciousness really quickly After he's lost consciousness when his blood pressure has dropped enough He'll get no blood to his brain and he'll die and it will be within 5 to 10 seconds and I can tell because I can feel the heartbeat right now. I can feel his heart beating and I feel the heartbeat stop and then about 10 to 15 seconds after his heartbeat is stopped The blood drains starts to drain out of his muscles and the nerves Are getting no signal from the brain and so then everything starts firing off And that's what you hear about a chicken running around with his head cut off There's no consciousness there. So when you see him moving, it's not him struggling. He's already dead So when he starts to shake and his his legs kick, he's already dead his brains dead His heart's not pumping. It is completely involuntary nerve action. So that's what Causes a lot of people to stress. They think oh the chicken suffering the chickens gone so So I have his head down here and they expose His neck so I can get a clean cut the most important thing for me right now is I get a clean cut on his neck and Cut through his met all of his blood vessels as quickly and cleanly as I can So that he Doesn't feel anything. I have a sharp knife. So it's very quick It's very I hope and as far as I can tell painless and then he slips into unconsciousness and then he's down All right Thank you chicken. I'll make this as quick and as painless as I can the blood's gonna go in the garden okay His his heart is stopped. I can feel his heartbeat is stopped and he's lost consciousness So at this point, he's essentially dead. He has no consciousness. No heartbeat. There's maybe a half a cup of blood in the bucket right now so he's dead and In a little bit maybe he's gonna start to his legs might kick That's just nerves So he's already dead. That's just nerves. That's not him there hasn't been a heartbeat There hasn't been a heartbeat in 30 seconds to a minute That's just air leaving his lungs. He's not he's not alive. He hasn't been alive for 30 seconds so it looks a little Disconcerting and I understand that but I Know that he's not there. This is not, you know, the chicken that I raised from a hatchling that I raised from an egg He's gone already So I let him drain a little bit, but it's pretty much drained. So what I'm gonna do next I'm gonna take him out and bring him to the next station so that I can bring in his brother I'm not gonna leave him here until his brother comes. I like to talk to the chickens tell them what's gonna happen to thank them To say I'm sorry that they that they're gonna die It's probably more for me than it is for the chicken Luckily they can't anticipate what's about to happen, right so that they don't think oh, I'm about to die They're just having a regular day. So I Like to justify but for me, this is what's important about eating my own meat I'm connected with it. I have to experience this before I eat the meat. It makes me more conscious of the meat I'm eating I can't just go to the grocery store and buy meat and eat it. That's not how it works. So For me, this is This is that this is more respectful To the animal into the meat And if more people did this so we'd have less stress on our environment from all the animals that we grow Because we are so far removed generally from from meat processing. So anyway I'm gonna take him now over to the table where the butchery will continue. Thank you chicken. I'm sorry I'll make this as quick as I can. I'll make this as painless as I can as quick as I can Thank you. I'm sorry. He's been gone for 15 seconds. So this is just nerves That's all three chickens dispatch. So now we're gonna move on to plucking them The next step is plucking and essentially I have to get all the feathers off I've got a bucket Hot water here. It's about 160 degrees and I'll link to the video that I watch to learn how to do much of this And I don't really deviate too much. But yeah, so 160 degrees the chicken goes in Maybe a bigger bucket would have been helpful, but I didn't really have one So this is kind of like blanching and what it does it loosens the feather in the I don't know if it's a hair Follicle cell or what it is, but whatever is the feathers attached to see they're still kind of sticking on there a little hard So a little longer This were a little deeper it'd be better Couple of I don't know a minute or two really depends on the chicken the Temperature of the water. Oh, yeah, so now it's coming off easy. So now I give it a last swirl and now Just start taking all the feathers off nothing more Unpleasant than eating chicken and getting feathers in your mouth Some feathers come off very easily Some feathers do not the wing feathers are particularly difficult so about five minutes And it goes from something that looks you know a chicken to something that looks like Something you'd eat once it's cleaned up Makes a real big difference to get those feathers off Okay, it is now time to clean the chicken So basically I want to take out the innards and keep all the good stuff So essentially the first thing is to take out the craw And the esophagus So I'm going to cut the skin around the neck. I don't really want this skin So I just make careful incisions here So I'm just gonna pull the skin off and I'm gonna have a couple different piles going There's stuff that's gonna go into the garden into the compost Stuff that it's gonna get cooked up and fed to the dog like that Now Here's the craw Craw is kind of like pre digestion. So I don't really want what's in there I do want to keep the neck though So I want to just kind of reach in and cut very carefully So I'm not cutting the craw or the esophagus. So that phrase that really sticks in my craw That's what it's talking about It's kind of like where the chicken choose something. So I don't really have so there's like little rocks and Pebbles in there and the chicken uses that to kind of to macerate its food kind of like a Rock grinder. So that's gonna go in my viscera bucket underneath the table Now I've got the neck Wings I'm gonna pop the legs up the feet off. So I just bend them and then right in between these these bones, there's a opening Any twist Unless you can run up against a bone with the knife the sharper your knife stays Okay, so now I've got the craw out So now I'm gonna work back here. What I want to do is take this off which has stink sack Or so I want to cut down. Oh Lucky me. I went right between the vertebrae and I want to avoid the cloya the cloya. I've always forget how to pronounce it, but basically chickens only have one Exit so to speak. This is where eggs come out. This is where poop comes out So I don't want to just cut willy-nilly through here and open up the intestines onto my meat So what I'm doing is I'm kind of slicing around This is the tail tail section here, and I want to just Loosen that up And I've cut through the the vertebrae Very very very carefully cutting on the back of the thigh Again, don't want to cut into I can see there the colon That's what I want to avoid Because then we have a mess on our hands Nice fat chickens are right. There's the colon. So one of these chickens is gonna be our Thanksgiving dinner because we don't have a turkey How would we get a turkey? Basically putting my knife man. There's a lot of fat in this guy. He's a fat chicken Basically, I'm just kind of cutting around until I can see inside here. I'm gonna open them up a little bit So here's the breastbone. There's some open space here because I'm gonna have to get my hand up in here in a minute Unfortunately the bigger your hands are Less easy this becomes so right now. I'm just Pulling things off the sidewall. There's the intestines. I'm just scraping and pulling down Everything on the inside Through the diaphragm got the lungs the heart the gizzard To actually my fingers right here. I'm all the way up to the top of this chicken And I'm just scraping down the ribs Pulling out everything chicken fat if I made schmaltz actually I probably should make schmaltz. We are running low on butter and things like that so this schmaltz Might be worth keeping so now I have the inside out I want to get this all out because I don't want it doesn't taste good Okay, so this chicken is now essentially what you would buy at the grocery store if you bought a whole chicken Unless they give you the gizzards which are here in the pile and I'll separate those out But yeah, so this is what you would buy in the grocery store So now I'm gonna put him in the bath of salt water and ice to cool that skin down. All right So what do we have? We have the stink sack and the colon. We don't want that Here's the intestines. We don't want those Here are things we do want here is chicken liver. It's a kidney. I don't want that if you see here on the chicken liver that's the Bile Producing was it the gallbladder. You don't want that and you don't want anywhere near it. So I'm cutting The liver. I'm leaving plenty of space around it And I'll take the rest of the liver. Thank you very much We'll probably have this for dinner tonight with onions on toast. Here's the heart. He's a fat chicken, man And this is the skinny chicken So this that will feed that to the puppy dog Usually I butcher the chickens earlier and there's not this much fat in them. This is great Now I know usually we want to avoid fat in our diets But we don't have any more access to oil so animal fat becomes more important So I'm gonna save that. Maybe I'll render it. I don't know. All right. Here's the gizzard and the gizzard is kind of An additional stomach It's a big giant ball of muscle and this is all viscera that can all get thrown away To open this up basically what this is it's a big ball of muscle and inside is a like a balloon and inside that balloon Is the stuff that he's been eating and this compresses and opens and compresses and it Basically helps digest Whatever the chickens been eating so real carefully. I'm gonna cut around the periphery. I don't want to cut that inner balloon But I knew you need to cut that muscle muscle is basically just meat, right? Up and I cut it, but now I know where it is. Yeah, see now. I got the inside of it Dang it makes it a lot easier, but now I have to clean them gizzard So here's that balloon. I'm pulling it off the sidewall of the all the muscle yuck There's pebbles and things in here Now I have to wash my board before I do the next one. So there's the gizzard. I'm gonna give this a rinse We've got livers fat And bits for the doggy We could perfectly find to eat hearts chicken hearts and this is perfectly fine to eat, but we prefer the liver Two more tickets to go