It is the morning after we processed our Cornish Cross Meat Chickens and I am looking out over the backyard seeing all of our labor and efforts come to an end. I am also opening my fridge to see 21 perfectly plucked and processed chickens! We know as a family the Lord provided us with these chickens and we do not take this sacrifice lightly. We cared, raised, and grew these chickens to the best of our ablilities, giving them the best life possible.

We understand the sacrifice and want to make clear that we do not take this lightly and end the lives of these birds as humanely as possible.

That being said, there are

*GRAPHIC IMAGES OF CHICKEN BUTCHERING*

I texted my husband one day and told him I had just ordered 20 Cornish Cross Meat Chickens from a hatchery. At this point nothing surprises him, so he went along with it. I ordered the chicks in December for a hatch date of January 24th. I found a reputable hatchery that ships day old chicks from Meyer Hatchery. I ordered 20 Cornish Cross straight run chicks for $2.53 each. This totaled $63.54 and with shipping ended up being $73.54. I loved the chicks from this hatchery. In the meantime I did all my researching on how to set up a brooder and what would be the best supplies to use. I ended up going to Sam’s Club and buying plastic storage containers when they went on sale. I bought two and my husband build chicken wire covers for the tops of them. Tractor Supply had chick feeders, waters, and brooder lamps that I purchased. I placed all the chicks inside one container at first until they were about shy of a week old. These chicks did not receive any vaccines, antibiotics, or special grower gels. I chose to give them ‘magic water’ as I’ve heard farmers call it. It’s simply honey, crushed garlic, apple cider vinegar, and water mixed into their waters for all the health benefits! I really enjoyed making this for my chickens.

I dipped all of the chicks beaks in water as I placed them into the brooder. I fed them 24/7 for the first week and then transitioned to 12 hours on, 12 hours off after the first week. It was important to keep them warm and dry so I changed their bedding quite frequently.

Here is the picture of the brooder we set up. I put the boxes on top of a large dog kennel so our dogs couldn’t get to them.

The hatchery sent me 22 and all of them ended up making it. Another reputable hatchery is Murray McMurray Hatchery. I’ve heard great things about them and I will try them out in the future. The chicks arrived on the week of their hatch date at my local post office and I was called to come pick them up. The employees at the post office are extremely kind, but when it comes to picking up your chirping chicks, they want you to come as soon as possible to pick them up. I totally understand!

I will say having the chicks was probably the most time consuming process of the entire operation. I cleaned their brooders every couple of days and it was a chore moving them all out to clean. That being said, it still didn’t take up too much time. We got hit with snow several weekends in a row and I didn’t know if the weather would ever warm up enough to put the chicks out on grass.

I waited for all the snow to blow over and we quickly starting reaching 65-70 degree temps. The chicks had been living in the garage under brooder lamps until this point. I had started slowly raising the lamps farther away from the bins so that they could adjust to a colder temperature. The chicks were also starting the feather out nicely by this point.

The next task for the chicks to be able to go outside was to build the chicken tractor. If you've never heard of a chicken tractor then you were me a few months ago. I started on Youtube watching Justin Rhodes and his family along with the chicken king himself, Joel Salatin. Justin models his homestead after Joel and so do a lot of farms around my area. Further along I will tell you how I adopted the Joel Salatin method of making your own chicken feed. I ordered some books and started learning how I could fertilize my yard with chickens. Chicken tractors allow your chickens to have fresh grass everyday. This is also a great option for backyard chickens. It did not tear up my yard as much as I thought it would. The grass would start growing back within a couple a days! I also learned how I could reduce my feed cost by supplementing 20% of the chickens feed with grass. I used all of these sources and sent my husband to work on building a chicken tractor. We tore down a shop work station made out of 2x4 wood and used all the scraps to build our chicken tractor. A friend from my husbands work had previously given us a pretty significant amount of hog wire for free, so we used this as well. The only cost we put into the tractor was tires and latches!

It doesn’t need to be pretty, just has to keep predators out and chickens in! We used the same 2x4 pieces of wood to create the backside of the tractor. Where my husband is standing is where we created the door with hinges. I used a tarp and zip ties to provide shelter for the birds during the rain. I would watch the forecast for rain and usually at night I would cover them.

Next, it was time to put the now feathered birds out on grass! It was 70 degrees the day I put them outside. By the time this day came, I was ready for the birds to get out of my house. Bigger birds means more poop to clean up. They also needed more room to roam. They had outgrown the storage bins and I had them all separated into baby pools with chicken wire that I somehow managed to zip tie together. Zip ties in this household are gold. My husband always knows I have a zip tie in my pocket.

Frank loves to lay close to his chickens! Here are the wheels I mentioned earlier. My husband found them at Harbor Freight on sale for a couple of dollars. I do not recommend buying them from Home Depot or Lowe’s, they can run $20+ dollars for one tire. I do however recommend adding the tires to your chicken run, they are 100% worth it.
At first I set up 30 pound feeder and big waterer. By the time the birds got a little bigger, the feeder wasn’t big enough for them all to eat around it. We ended up cutting a PVC pipe down the middle and screwing chains for it to attach to the top of the chicken tractor, sort of a similar style to a feed trough. You can see pictures of this later on.
The birds were happy to get more room! Once they transitioned to grass, they were so easy to raise! I would come outside, move their tractor everyday morning and feed them. Some mornings it would take me less than 5 minutes to take care of them.
Feeding them
I chose to do my research and weigh my feed each day in accordance to their age. From what I have read, you *can’t* freely feed Cornish Cross chickens - they simply will overeat themselves to death. They are highly motivated by food and are bred to have a short life. Over feeding them can lead to death, legs breaking, and illness in this type of bird. Again, I watched a lot of other farmers and used their ratios for getting the correct amount of food for each bird per day. If you guys are trying this, you will have to research the percentages for the amount birds you intend on raising.
I bought all of my feed from Azure Standard. I used the Joel Salatin Chicken feed mix method and also incorporated fermentation to yield the best feed. I wanted to raise a bird with everything I can never get from the grocery store and also things I wish I could get from a high volume local chicken farm. I chose to feed these birds an organic, non-gmo, corn free, and soy free feed mixture. There are some conflicting things out there about soy and you can look these up for yourself. For my family, I chose not to do soy or any feeds with added folic acid. There are ingredients in organic feed from Tractor Supply that I don’t love, so decided to use Azure Standard. This also helped me to cut my chicken feed cost by $50 a month. Not a huge difference, but it higher quality at a lower price and you can't beat that. I also did not do a “starter” chick feed for these chickens. I put them on grower feed from the beginning with their magic water supplement.
**What I ordered from Azure Standard:**
Scratch & Pack Feeds, Poultry Grower Feed
Organic Whole Barley
Organic Whole Field Peas
Organic Whole Oats
Organic Chicken Wheat
Organic Black Sunflower Seeds
Organic Kelp
I used crushed eggs shells for a source of calcium and soaked portions of their mixed feeds in water to ferment it. I won’t go into detail, but fermenting chicken feed has so many benefits! I ordered bags of soy free and corn free feed to mix into my homemade pile. I love Scratch & Peck Feeds! I use this brand for my layer chickens as well. Since this was my first time, I wanted to make sure the chickens were properly nourished. Going forward, I know now exactly how to measure all the portions for their feed. I used this table as a basis for my weekly calculations broken into daily pounds and ounces for the amount of chicken feed to give them. I bought a large trash can to mix everything in.
The feed part was overwhelming at first, but the chart above really helped to break everything down!
I simply moved the chicken tractor around the yard each and everyday, weighed their feed, gave them water and that was it. This did not take any special talents other than battling the cold in your pajamas to move a chicken tractor before you’ve had your first cup of coffee.
I did all of my research on how to humanly butcher a chicken in the days leading up to processing. We chose to process at 9 weeks old and I believe this was perfect timing.

Processing Morning

Large stock pots can get pretty pricey, so we bought this turkey frying pot from Facebook marketplace for $30. We used our grill to heat the water to dunk the chickens after the kill. Dunking the chickens helps to remove the feathers. You want the temperature of your water to be between 145-150 degrees. We had some troubles getting our temperature right, but eventually got it down. If you get the temperature too hot, you will begin to boil the skin if your chicken. You want to dunk your chicken for 3 second at a time, check the feathers, then dunk again for 3 seconds and so on. Your feathers should pull out like butter. I say they pull out like butter, but it is still a time consuming task.

We set this up around the back of our barn. This is called a ‘kill cone’ to hug the chicken as you butcher. ***I am not going to include images of the actual kill itself***. We made this setup with little to no cost at all. My husband found all of these items laying around the barn and we assembled it the morning of processing day.

We took 2-3 chickens at a time from the chicken tractor to the back of the barn.

In the front of the barn we had the cooler set up with water and ice to put the freshly plucked and cleaned chicken. For the tables, we used the old countertop from our kitchen remodel. I bought stainless steel bowls from IKEA to separate the liver, miscellaneous organs, necks, and heads. I chose to remove the chicken ness instead of keeping them on. The necks have tons of gelatin and minerals. I like to use these to make bone broths, so I save them to add with my bones. I also saved the hearts and liver to make dehydrate and make into capsules.

We chose not to shield the process from our daughter. We understand the Lord has provided these chickens for us and that He's made it possible for us to raise them, care for them, and end their lives as best as we can. But other than in the provision for our family, it’s not something we take lightly.
**Plucking**
We chose to hand pluck our 21 chickens. We went back and forth whether to buy or rent a chicken plucker and I will 100% see one in our future. Plucking chickens is hard labor when you have two people doing all the plucking. If we would have had more people it would have been a faster process. I wanted as little hands as possible on the chickens, so we decided to do it ourselves. We started our first chicken around 8am and did not finish processing the last chicken until 7pm. We are so grateful for the opportunity to use our hands to create food for our family.
**Cleaning**

If you look closely, you can see one of our layers behind me in the background. She came out for the party, but maintained her distanced.
First I removed the feet. Halfway up their legs there's a joint that connects the leg to the foot – cut right in the middle of the joint and the feet will easily be removed. On my the first chicken I cleaned, I messed this up and that’s ok! As you go it’ll get easier I used a filet knife for this. Second, I removed the oil sac on the back of the chicken.
Next, the head. This you may need a pair of pruners for – it can be a bit tricky to remove. Once the neck bone is broken though it's easy enough to cut through the remaining skin. I had some trouble removing the head, so sometimes I would need my husbands help.
I used Joel Salatin’s method of chicken cleaning for the remainder of the steps. I don’t won’t to bore you with all the steps, but I started you with some just so you can get a feel for how to start once you have plucked. Watch the video and you will learn everything you need to know!

I am so full of joy that our hands and labor did this. As we go to the grocery store, we can feel vulnerable looking at the empty shelves. We raised this chickens as best as possible knowing that we are going to have food for the next 9-12 months no matter what happens outside of our control.

Freezing Chickens

I read a lot of blogs and watched a lot of Justin Rhodes family as you know and I saw most farmers don’t freeze right away. After butchering and cleaning all the chickens we put them into a giant cooler with ice. That night, we looked over each chicken again and placed them into their vacuum freezer bag. We let the chickens refrigerator for 1-2 days in their open, not sealed bag. This will allow the chickens to ‘air-chill' – an incredibly important step in the process. Without this, the chicken tends to be stiff and chewy. During the air-chilling, the meat has a chance to rest and relax, resulting in a much more tender bird.

I placed them in our refrigerator just like this!

How to Grow Backyard Meat Chickens

Feeding them

Processing Morning

Plucking

Cleaning

Freezing Chickens

Homemade Bone Broth