How to Pick, Pluck, and Prepare Your Own Poultry
Homegrown "scratch" chickens—as any farm boy or girl
raised on them knows—have a far better taste than the
additive-packed, cage-reared, "factory" birds sold in the
supermarkets. And that's one reason so many of us are
starting to raise your own backyard flock of biddies for
eggs and meat again. It's also why so many of us—for
the first time in our lives—are (gulp) facing the
unfamiliar and somewhat scary task of dressing out some of
those backyard birds.
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"Never fear," says Paula Delfeld, a chicken picker of some
experience. "The job is not at all as difficult as you've
probably imagined. Here's how I handle the chore on our
farm up here in Brownsville, Wisconsin."
by Paula Delfeld
The price of freedom is always responsibility. And if
you've taken up the raising of your own chickens to free
yourself from weak, watery agribiz eggs and additive-laden,
preservative-packed, and water-injected supermarket meat
... sooner or later you're going to have to assume the
responsibility of picking, plucking, and preparing your own
poultry.
When that day comes (EDITOR'S NOTE: Experienced
homestead poultry raisers know that smaller birds, such as
Leghorns, make delectable fried chicken when they're no
bigger than a pound and three quarters to two pounds in
size and that larger breeds, such as White Rocks, can be
eaten as fryers as soon as they reach a weight of three
pounds. They can also be eaten fried when they're larger
too, of course . . . but there's something so
mouthwateringly special about that first meal of homegrown
fried chicken every summer that the old hands among us
always seem to rush it to the table a little faster, maybe,
than we should), your first step will be to examine
your flock and pick out the first bird you want to butcher.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Your chickens will stay a lot calmer
and you'll work a lot less while catching the birds if
you'll get yourself a long (eight to ten feet) length of
3/16" or 1/4" metal rod from the hardware store or a
junkyard and bend one end into a handle and the other into
a crook just b ig enough to slip over a chicken's
leg but not big enough to slip over its foot. It's then a
simple matter to slowly movearound through a pen
or house full of the poultry and "hook" the birds one at a
time at your leisure.)
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