How And When To Butcher Chickens

Interested in butchering chickens at home? Here's a step-by-step process on how and when to butcher chickens to ensure you're eating healthy meat.

Reader Contribution by Sheryl Campbell
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by AdobeStock/Room 76 Photography

Interested in butchering chickens at home? Here’s a step-by-step process on how and when to butcher chickens to ensure you’re eating healthy meat.

Improve your health by eating naturally raised chickens. Their meat has more heart-healthy yellow omega-3 fat and less saturated fat than poultry from the store, and you can ensure that they are eating a natural diet of insects, greens, and seeds.

It’s as simple as raising and butchering broiler chickens in your own backyard. Once you master a few basics, you’ll spend 11 easy weeks a year raising them and one day having a butchering party with friends. You can successfully raise broilers outside in the Mid-Atlantic from May-October.

Choose Your Breed

Freedom Ranger Chickens make the best home broiler flock since they are active birds that reach their peak weight of 5-6 pounds in 10-11 weeks. They grow well in free range and fenced pasture environments, foraging for food during daytime hours. Other broiler breeds that grow more quickly tend to be unable to walk around after a few weeks as they get too heavy, too fast.

  • Updated on Mar 22, 2023
  • Originally Published on Dec 20, 2021
Tagged with: broilers, Butchering, Chicken Processing, Reader Contributions, Sheryl Campbell, Virginia
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