nobody calls me 'chicken'

[rone]

My brother-in-law has been raising chickens for about a year now (starting with some neighborhood strays, if i recall correctly), and my mother-in-law had wondered for some time how we'd end up having the ones who weren't laying eggs turned into food.  So i volunteered to learn how to process chickens, because i've felt for some time that, as a meat-eater, i should be able to look at my prey in the eye and lick my lips.  Or something.

The result was that my MiL signed me up for a slaughtering class at TLC Ranch last Sunday, and 2wanda was able to join me at the last minute due to a cancellation.  There were about 10 of us there, ready to get with the cuttin' and the guttin'.  It's a fairly straightforward procedure: catch the chicken; put it upside down into a metal cone with no point, so that its head sticks out; grab the head, and sever the jugular below the jawline; let it bleed out; throw the body into the scalder; when it's ready, throw the body into the plucker; pull the body out and clean it.

Of course, there's nothing straightforward about any of those individual steps, but that's where the actual learning comes in: grab the chickens low by the legs; keep it upside down for a while so it doesn't thrash while you put it in the cone; sometimes the head refuses to be within fingers' reach, so you have to raise and lower it again; you want to make the cut just right to avoid various complications; the chickens will sometimes manage to climb themselves right side up in the slick metal cone, somehow, so you have to grab them and turn them over; don't scald them too long or too hot, or the plucker will break the skin; do not cut into the intestines or you will get chicken crap everywhere and nobody wants that.

One guy couldn't handle giving a good swift cut so he instead ended up slicing the chicken's neck like he was trying to get it to confess to a crime, and one woman insisted on naming her chickens.  She also had one of her chickens killed by having its head severed (by boltcutters) so that its body, well, ran around like a chicken with its head cut off.  It was weird to see how accurate the cliché is, but i don't think i want to see that particularly barbaric act again (besides, the chicken might break its wings while thrashing about).

Then we came home and Kim made coq au vin and it was delicious the end.