RAISING CHICKENS ON THE FARM - PART II

     The obvious reason to raise chickens is to get the fresh eggs, but also for meat to eat.  We killed our roosters for this purpose.  When it was rooster killing time, it took several days or maybe weeks to complete the job.  We generally would kill about 9 - 12 per day, if there were enough roosters big enough to butcher.  We did not want to get them too small, or there would not be much meat.
     When it came the day to butcher, my mom would send us kids to the chicken yard to catch at least three.  We did not usually kill more than three at a time.  We took the hook, which was pictured in the previous post.  After we had caught the designated three we took them outside the pen, and my mom would wring their necks.  It sounds really gruesome, but I can tell you that my mom was an expert, and those chickens never really knew what had happened.  After the heads were off, the chickens would run around the barn yard for a bit.  This was quite odd looking to see a chicken with no head running around.  When the chickens finally stopped running and fell to the ground, we would go gather them up.
    The next phase was to place the entire chicken into a pail of hot boiling water.  We had an old laundry detergent bucket that we used.  It looked like the one pictured.
After plunging the chicken into the hot water, we would then pluck off all he feathers.  They were put in the barrel or cage where we burned trash.  After all the feathers were off, then the birds were placed over an open flame to singe the remaining feathers and pin feathers. This was a stinky affair.

  The next step was to scrape the chicken all over and wash off the singed feathers.  Now the chicken was ready to be cut into pieces or left whole for baking.  We butchered chickens outside on a picnic table.  It was too messy a job to do indoors, though that is how we started.  Once we got the picnic table, most gardening and butchering jobs were done in the great outdoors.
   After I was a few years older, I got to cut the feet off the chicken before my mom would take out the intestines, craw, liver, heart, and gizzard.
    Once this was done, it was time to cut the chicken into pieces, unless we were leaving it whole for baking.  Eventually I got to cut the wings, legs, (which I would then cut into a drumstick and a thigh), wishbone, breasts pieces, neck, and back.  The back contained the lungs, which I got to pull out.  I also got to cut open the gizzard and clean that. I do not know why I thought that would be fun, but I did. It was interesting, but stinky and gross.  Below is a picture of a cleaned gizzard. I never ate the gizzard, but my brother liked them.

     After we got all the chickens cut up, we would divide the pieces into bags and freeze.  Often we would fry a chicken for our lunch or supper that day.  Nothing tastes better than fresh, fried, grown-on-the-farm chicken.
     All the intestines, and other unusable parts were dropped into the bucket we had used for scalding the chickens.  That was taken to the hog pen, where it was devoured by the pigs.
     Then it was time to start the process all over again.  These days could be very tiring for my mom as she did most of the work.  We kids tried to help, but couldn't do what she could.  My brother, Weldon, decided he would like to try his hand at wringing a chicken's neck.  It was really a disaster, and my mom had to finish the job.  I always felt sorry for that one particular rooster.