Killing The Rooster

WARNING: Some people may find some of the following pictures and content  to be graphic.  I tried to keep it pretty tame but be forewarned!

I butchered a rooster today!  I have never killed and butchered an animal for food before.  My husband killed a deer once but they did all the work – I just watched.  We needed to get rid of some roosters and there is only so much you can learn about killing a chicken from books.  I wanted to get some first hand teaching.

Our friends/family Genger and Lavon raise all kinds of animals and have an amazing garden.  They were “homesteaders” long before the term became trendy.  They have been raising and killing their own chickens for decades.  I knew that these guys would be the ones to show me how to do it.

This morning I rounded up one of the Roosters and put him in the cat carrier to go up to Genger and Lavon’s house.  We arrived just after noon.  Genger began with a rooster of her own.  She showed me how to hold it and chop it’s head off and then how to hold it so the blood ran out.

Then it was my turn.  Don’t worry, my husband didn’t take any pictures of the chopping part!  Levon held the rooster for me but I took the axe and chopped his head off like a pro!  He DID NOT run around HEADLESS afterwards like I had imaged.  I was a teensy bit disappointed but since we held to their legs really good he only shook a little bit.

Next came the scalding.  Scalding the bird helps to release the feathers.  You dunk them in boiling hot water over and over until the tail and wing feathers come of easily.

Here I am holding my freshly beheaded and scalded rooster.

Next come the plucking.  Again this was surprisingly easier than any of the books I had read had indicated.  It was a little time consuming but overall was not difficult to do.

Here I am removing the feathers.

Here is Lavon inspecting my work.

Next we used some brown paper and lit it on fire and singed the bird very quickly to get rid of the tiny little hairs that were left on their bodies.  Then it was time to clean him out.

Cleaning out the rooster wasn’t that difficult either.  We made a V cut near his back end and the insides just pull out really easy.  Then you have to reach in and get the lungs and the esophagus out and make sure no little bits were left behind.  Then he is pretty much done!  I kept the liver, heart and the gizzard. I like the livers but will probably give the heart and gizzard to the cat.

Here is Genger showing me what to do if I want to cut him into pieces.

Here I am cleaning out the guts! (The bowl has water not blood in it - it just got a little red!)

Here I am cleaning out the gizzard!

And just like that I killed and cleaned my very first Chicken!  We are eating him on Thursday. I’ll keep you posted as to how it tastes!

Tagged as: axe, butcher, chicken, cull, culling, dinner, gizzards, hatchet, rooster, scald, singe, slaughter