In this episode of the Joyfully Prepared Podcast, Wendi pulls back the curtain on why her family chose to raise and process their own meat chickens. This is not a how-to guide. It’s a conversation. Wendi answers real questions she’s been asked over the last ten years. Questions about food quality, self-reliance, animal care, cost, emotions, and whether this skill is actually within reach for ordinary families. She shares what she’s learned the hard way. What she would do differently. And why learning even one small food skill can change how you think about what’s in your freezer, how you cook, and how much you waste. If you’ve ever been curious about raising your own meat but felt overwhelmed or unsure where to start, this episode is for you.
If you’d like a more in-depth, step-by-step series on raising and processing meat chickens, let me know. I’m happy to go deeper if that would be helpful.
You can reach me through my website or by email.
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I want to pull back the curtain a little today and talk about why we raise our own meat chickens. This isn't a how-to episode. I'm just answering real questions that have been asked over the. I'm just answering real questions we've been asked over the years. This is the Joyfully Prepared podcast.
I want to pull back. You can do this, Wendi Gale. You can do this. You can do it. 📍 📍 I wanna pull back the curtain today and talk about why we raise our own meat chickens. This isn't a how-to episode, I'm just answering real questions that we've been asked over the years. This is the Joyfully Prepared Podcast, and I'm your host, Wendi Bergin.
Thank you so much for listening. Um, I'm excited to share this. I've been asked, we've been, um, raising and processing our ome chickens for at least 10 years now, and we've been asked a lot of questions and so I thought I would go over that. Today the best place to start is probably why we chose to do this in the first place.
It kind of couples with another question of why we thought we could do it. Like why did you think we could actually pull this off? Well, I would have to say that I, I got inspiration from my sister. I've mentioned her before, how she is just a fantastic homesteader. She is an animal whisperer. She just lives homesteading.
She's such a farmer and I respect her dearly, and I don't remember, obviously it's been at least 10 years ago, I don't remember exactly what the catalyst was that made her try. Raising and processing meat chickens. But she did it and I was like, oh my gosh. She did it. And I asked her a ton of questions and that's how, that's why I thought we could do it, is because my sister did it.
And, and we did it. We did it. But why? So a couple reasons why we started to raise and process our own meat chickens. Number one, I'm always in for a homesteading adventure, to be honest. I'm like, I can do that. I am, I'm always been a do it yourselfer. I can do that. My kids drives my kids. Bonkers. They'll be like, let's buy this thing.
I'm like, no, we can go home and make it. So it's in the same vein as that. And once I convinced my husband he was on board, um, that's, that was is one of the reasons. The other reason is that even 10 years ago, it's even worse today quality of food is just deteriorating and. I'll probably talk about this a little bit later, but I just wanted healthier, cleaner food for my family, for myself, and for my family, and I figured why not do it, try and do it myself, so that those are the, that those are the reasons why I thought I could do it and why we decided to do it.
Okay. I get another question about, do you need land special equipment or a farm set up to do this?
The answer to that is yes and no. Yes, you need, you don't have to have land necessarily, but we do raise our chickens on the pasture. So that means that when they're about four weeks old, we take them from, we do have a barn, um, but we've raised them in a shed before and, and other kinds of, um. Shelters, and we didn't have a pasture to raise them on.
So we have raised them like in a pen, an outside pen with a shelter of sorts. But pasture raising is much easier. And pasture raising includes a chicken tractor. It's called a chicken tractor. And it's basically this box that sits low to the ground so that the chickens can be in it and it has wheels on it, and it's strengthened so that predators can't get into it.
You roll this chicken tractor down your field or your yard, whatever it is, and you move it along every day you move it one more, you know, chicken, tractor length, length, one more one every day you move it. The length of a chicken tractor, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So the bigger the box that holds the chickens in it, it's on bare ground.
So it's an empty shoot. I'm not doing this very well. So one of the questions I get asked is, do you need land special equipment or a farm set up to do this? The answer is yes and no. There are lots of different ways to raise your own meat chickens. When we first started, we were in New Jersey, and although we did have three acres, we didn't know anything about pasture raising the chickens, and I'll get to that in a minute.
So what we did is we converted an old shed into a shelter for the chickens and they quickly outgrew it. We didn't know what we were getting into, quite frankly, and we had to adjust the pen so they could go outside and the shelter. So yes, you can absolutely raise chickens a according to whatever your city lo local guidelines are, regulations, you can certainly raise them.
In a smaller area. In a smaller yard, like if you have, if you live in an apartment building, I don't think this one's gonna work for you. Just saying, unless you have a friend who has some property, you're going to have to have some land to be able to do this. Do you need special equipment? Yes and no.
Again, it's easier with the special equipment than it is without. People have been harvesting chickens for centuries, right? And they didn't have special equipment. They had their hands and a knife and that's about it. And some water probably. But other than that, so you don't have to. But, um, some of the equipment that we have, we have a scalder, well, we have what's called, they're called killing cones.
And I'm, I hope that does not offend your sensibilities. I don't mean that, that's just what they're called. Some people call them. What do they call them? Hugging cones. Because you put the birds in these cones. We've done traffic cones, we've done, we have the, the stainless steel ones, and you take the chickens, you put them in upside down and it's a very, um, humane way to do this.
And then that's when I. That's when you dispatch them. That's the, that's the word we use. We don't say kill them, we dispatch them. That's, there's some chicken language that's a little bit more, um, pleasant to hear. So we have those, the cones we have the. The scalder. So then after we have dispatched the chickens, we take them and we put them in the very, very hot water, which helps to loosen the um, feathers.
And then we put, then we have a plucker, which is an automatic or electronic. Not an electronic, it's a, it's a electric plucker and we put two birds in a time and this plucker and the plucker is kind of like a washing machine basin, the round like tub. And it has these rubber fingers that stick into the tub and you put the birds in there and they kind of, um, roll around inside there and the rubber fingers pull off the feathers and so they're not in there.
30 seconds maybe, maybe 45 max. I don't even think it's that long. And then when they're done, you spray 'em with water and they come out a clean bird. They're just as clean as they can be, like what you find in the grocery store. So we do have that special equipment. You don't have to have that. You can. You will have to dispatch them.
You can dry plucker them or you can put them in, you know, find a, a Turkey rot, uh, what are they called? A Turkey fryer. Those big, um, tubs. What are they called? Pots, those big pots. Turkey, fryer, pot. Fill it with water, and you can use that as your scalder. It does make it easier. To pull the feathers out. If you have a way to scald them, you can dry pluck as well.
And then, so you don't necessarily need the scalder, but it's helpful and you, and then you would just pull the feathers out by hand. It just is going to take longer. That's all. But you don't have to have special equipment having a good knife, a good sharp knife. Um, we learned about, let's see. Okay, there are different knives.
You're like, you're not gonna use a bread knife for this. Let's put it that way. There are special knives. You might want a filet knife, but something good and sharp to be able to then eviscerate the chicken. So I would recommend that I use gloves my husband does not 'cause he is a manly man and I have got to have the gloves on.
But that's, I, I wear gloves if I'm just cooking with chicken in the, in the kitchen. So it has nothing to do with the processing. It just, I don't wanna, I, I'm weird about the things that I touch, you know? Um, so no, you don't necessarily have to have any special equipment. You will have to have some sort of a yard to be able to, to keep them and raise them. Another question. The next question. Is this something you recommend for beginners or should people start with eggs first? So, that's a great question because something that a lot of people don't know is that meat chickens and laying chickens are different breeds. Okay, so let me just, they're all chickens, but they're, they're purpose is different.
You typically will not get eggs from a meat chicken. That's bred to be a meat chicken, and let me define that. There are lots of different breeds of chickens. The one that we have always used, the ones that we have always raised, is called Cornish Rock Cross, Cornish Rock, cross Breed, and these are bred chickens to be able to grow really fast.
Now, these are the same types of chickens. These are the same types of chickens that are being raised in the big, giant chicken buildings, these massive chicken structures that grow thousands of birds at a time. More than likely, it's the same breed that we grow on our farm.
They are bred to grow quickly in, in the commercial. Um. In commercial breeding of, sorry. In commercial. Oh, shoot. Why can't, I think in commercial setups for raising these meat chickens, they, they are feeding them and feeding them and feeding them. And, um, they grow really fast. Some as quick as, less than, uh, seven weeks.
I've seen some at four weeks. Some statistics say, I guess with, those are the little, little ones, obviously. Um. But usually right around seven to eight weeks, they grow that fast. So you go from a day, a little chick to a chicken in your freezer in two months, and that's very typical. We, um, we went nine weeks this last time with the chickens that we just finished a processing, um, about a month ago.
So that's very typical. Okay, so there are other breeds of chickens that grow slower and have the same kind of functionality, but they just grow slower. Now, some people say it's really bad that they grow fast. I don't know that I agree with that. What I don't agree with. No, what I do agree with is the conditions chickens are raised in.
As far as commercial setups, my setup is not, uh, they're not jammed in anywhere. They have a big, we have a giant chicken tractor, too big almost. But we raised, we, um, but they could fit in their. Very easily and they have lots of movement. They have plenty of food and constant water. Um, they have shelter from any rain or sun.
And for us personally, we only raise our chickens in the wintertime in Florida because I don't, it's hot in Florida. There are some operations here and bless their hearts that they raise their chickens, um, throughout the year, and I think that's great. I just don't wanna be out there. It's, it's hot. So I, we raise our chickens in the wintertime.
Commercial setups, they are trying, they're trying to grow their chickens as fast as possible so that they can turn a profit. That's the whole point of these massive chicken structures. Grow them, bring them in, grow them as fast as possible and get them out. Um, growing them as fast as possible and as big as possible usually requires them to be fed.
Constantly. And we made that mistake in the beginning and that I'm gonna, I'll talk about that in in a minute. So what I want, so I stopped there. So meat chickens are bred to be meat chickens. Laying chickens are breeds that lay eggs like on purpose. They can also be meat chickens. You've heard of stewing chickens and that chicken doesn't lay anymore.
And so we put her in the stew pot, that type of thing. And I don't have a problem with that either. We've done the same, same as well because they're, they can be dual purpose birds laying hens really are dual purpose, depending on the breed of hen a, a nice standard size, um, hen yes, but they're not gonna be meaty at all, like a meat chicken.
They'll be very, those feathers, they are fluffy and they have little skinny bodies underneath there. There's not a lot of meat in there. So they really are about as good for stew as anything but laying hens lay eggs, that's what they're br to do. Uh, laying hens don't start to lay until they. Between six and eight months old.
So if you buy a little chick at Tractor Supply this spring, you won't that. So let's say April, may, you won't start getting eggs until November probably. So I always recommend for people to buy chickens that are. Are more mature that they're closer to laying than they're called pulls. P-U-L-L-E-T-T. Nope.
P-U-L-L-E-T-S pulls. But that's a, I can talk about laying hens another time. We're talking about meat chickens. Come on, Wendi So that's the difference. Meat chickens are bread. To most of them are bred to grow quickly. Those are the ones that we buy. The little chicks are meant to grow quickly and, but there are other, many other breeds that grow slower if you want to do it that way as well.
It really just depends. Um, I don't think there's anything wrong with growing them quickly. Personally, I have done it wrong and I have done it better and, um, I wouldn't say wrong, I would say I. I grew the first few, first couple times we grew chickens. We didn't know what we were doing. Uh, like we knew how to, like, we just didn't know.
And my, I asked my sister and she was still learning too, and tried to read things. There's just not as much out, uh, there was not as much out there as there is now as far as growing a very healthy flock. So. One of the things that, um, we made the mistake. I I, if you don't know something, I don't know if it's a mistake.
That's where I'm I'm at with in my life right now. If you're ignorant, is it a mistake or is it just something you learn from, you know, I guess it's all the same, but we thought that they had to be fed. They had to have feed all the time, like their buckets had to be full all the time. And that is what we learned this last time, is that that's not true and that's not healthy for the bird to have access to food 24 7 because these birds will literally glut themselves on food.
They lay there and they'll just peck and the food, well, the face will just be in the food, and they'll just eat it and eat it and eat it, and they grow too big. Too fast. Their heart and their legs cannot support their bodies, and then they die right before they're gonna be processed, they die. We had that happen a lot in New Jersey when we were raising them because we didn't know this.
In fact, I didn't know this until. Last fall when I went to speak at that homesteading convention in Tennessee and I met a man who raises meat chickens regularly. It's part of his income. We don't sell our chickens. Not yet. This is just for our family. But he was telling me that he knows exactly how much food goes into every one of his birds and he knows how much food he has to buy in order to be profitable.
And I was like, wait a minute. You don't just feed them until they, they're stuffed. He goes, no, no, they don't. They get fed what I give them. I'm like, oh, I didn't know you could do that.
And so I tried it this, this last time that we just did, and so I figured out. How much each, uh, each stage of a chicken, how much feed they needed at each stage and multiplied it by, we had, we started with 50 chickens and we ended up processing 43 chickens. One of the chickens that we processed, when I opened it up to part it out, it didn't look healthy inside.
So we, that went back to nature, the circle of life there. So we ended up with 42 chickens that we pro, that we processed and kept. And so I figured out per bird how much each one of them needed every, every week of their life, if you will. Like week one, week two, week three, on on. And so I only fed them that much per day.
And these were much healthier chickens. They were out on the chicken tractor. So it rolls along like every day it gets moved. One length of the chicken tractor, like I said. And so, and we fed them once a day. We gave them the amount that they're supposed to get and that was all they got for the day. And then they could move around and their legs were strong and their hearts were strong.
And they could pick at the ground, they could forage and eat the grass and eat the little bugs, whatever it was. But they were much healthier. Birds and I didn't have a huge fluctuating, um, weight. Like some, I've had some birds. In the past that were 10, 11 pounds, that's too big for a chicken. So I, you know, I learned that.
And then I had smaller chickens, but we had these massive giant chickens, and you think that's really good. And it is, and they're still, they're healthy as far as like the way they're raised, but they, they were, it was hard on their bodies. And so now that I've learned to give them. Measured out food, this will go much better every time.
And I was able to figure out how much per pound I spent. So with the, I'll just share that with you. Okay. So we, I think I paid, I, I don't remember the numbers exactly, but I know I paid like $2 and 65 cents per chicke from the place where I ordered them. And I don't remember how many bags of food it was that I bought, but I think I spent a little over.
500, 500, $600, somewhere in there for nine weeks of food. Um, 40, we lost a couple in the middle of there. So 45 chickens, kind of like that, but 42 chickens, um, at the end of it. And per pound, I got, um, 170. Pounds of meat, including breasts, quarters, wings. Um, I have the feet, I have the carcasses. Um. That totaled.
So with just, not the feet, but the meat, we, it was $3 and 50 cents a pound of meat. I can't, I can't find that kind of a deal anywhere in the store. There's no place you're finding that pasture raised non GMO Fed, um. Food, a meat chicken. Get it out. Wendi Chicken for $3 and 50 cents a pound. Sure, I had to work for it, but that was in nine weeks, two months.
I can do that for two months. And then a couple, it took us two days. Usually only takes us one day. It's a long story, but it took us two days, two half days to get the the processing done. So I can't beat that price. I cannot beat that price at all in any place you go to any of these farm places to buy chicken that is non GMO organic or pasture raised, all these, you know, held with love.
I loved on those little chickies, that's for sure. Um, handled with care, humanely treated, humanely processed, you are looking at 10 to $20 a pound depending on the part period. So I'm just, that's all I'm saying is that it's cost effective to raise your own meat. Chickens, hands down. Um, I, the question, original question was, is this a good thing for beginners or should you start with eggs?
It's the same. It, it doesn't really matter. I it. Egg laying hens are a great gateway into homesteading. A hundred percent. When it comes to livestock, I highly re recommend you getting a few, you need to have two or three hens. Don't get one, three, or four hens. Um, get a few. Make it worth your while. Have four or five.
Look at me. I'm up to five. So, but, you know, it's nice to get to know chickens, so I can see why, why you might wanna start with layers. Just that you know, what a chicken looks like and how it acts, but at the same time, you're done in eight weeks when you, if you choose this particular breed.
And there's plenty of research out there for the different breeds. This is just the one I use. But in nine weeks, eight weeks, you can have however many, you know, we have freezer full of meat now and you can have the same kind of experience. So I think you can figure it out. There's so much information on the internet, on YouTube books.
Um, I'm happy to do a longer series on the actual how to, like. This is how we raised it step by step. This is how we process them step by step, how we, we learned this, this, and this. You know all that. If you are interested in knowing more, let me know in comments or send me an email or whatever. Let me know.
If you want more information, you can go to my website, joyfully prepared.com and send me an email through there. Or my email address is Wendi WEND i@joyfulprep.com. So anyway, okay, so that hopefully settles or explains that a little bit. I kind of went. A tangented. I went on tangents on either direction, I think.
Anyway, so hopefully that helps. Okay. What's another, another question that's asked is what does raising meat chickens well actually mean to you? I alluded it, I, I alluded to it earlier, the fact that these chickens are cared for. We get them and they get mailed to us. We go pick them up at the post office.
We bring them home. We have a little brooder box ready for them. So that's a box. We have a wooden box that has a heat lamp water inside wood shavings. It's nice and clean and warm, and we put these sweet little chickies and I hold them and I look at them and I, I just. I'm like, I'm so glad you're here.
And they're just super cute. They're these little yellow fluff balls and they're super sweet and super cute, and we raise them well. We give them good food, we give them plenty of clean water. Their coop gets scooped out. They're not living in a mess. These big giant commercial setups where most, most of our chicken comes from.
Quite frankly, these little chickens are put on top of other the previous and the previous, and the previous, and the previous chickens droppings. So all their manure is still on the ground when they bring in a fresh. Fresh batch of chickens. That's disgusting. They're nasty. It's chicken poo is nasty. I'm just gonna say that.
Homesteading, it's so, there's a lot of poo in homesteading. That's all I'm gonna say. But we take care of that. We clean things out. We keep them clean because we want their meat to be as clean. We want them to be healthy. We want them to be comfortable and not stressed out. We want them to have plenty of good food.
We want them to have good clean water and good living. I mean, we want them to be happy. God gave us chickens to eat. He did. He gave us laying. He gave us eggs. He gave us chickens. Chickens are on earth to serve our our need for food. Now, not everybody eats chicken and or will agree with that, and that's okay.
My personal opinion and my belief is that chickens are. Our, given our gifts from God to serve us, to feed our bodies and, but we need to treat them well and so is, if I treat them well, they're going to be happier Little chickens, they're going to be healthier chickens and they're going to do my body better when I, you know, when I cook it.
So it means. All of those things. And then when we put 'em on the pasture, they get to act like real chickens. They're not in a coop, they're not in a stall. Even once they're old enough to go out, um, and they need to feather out, they need to lose their fluff and have feathers before they go out on the pasture.
It needs to be warm enough for them to go out. Um, they, their feathers help keep them warm. So that's why I say that they're on the pasture. They get to act like chickens. They get to peck at the ground, eat grass, eat bugs. They're out there feeling in the dirt. It's good for them. They're out in the sunshine.
So that's what that means is raising meat chickens well, is that I'm treating them the best I can. I'm not, you know, they're not getting like I'm treating them the best I can. I want them to be treated humanely. I care for them. I don't want them to suffer. I want them to be healthy and safe. All of those things.
We, we do end up losing probably about 10, 10%. So if we get 50, we'll lose five. In this case, we lost 7, 7, 7 altogether. So a little over 10%. Um, sometimes they just are, they just don't make it sometimes when they're little chicks. Um, it just, it just happens. Uh, it's, and it's, it's heartbreaking to be honest with you.
Um. Because you do everything you can and then when something doesn't go right and you don't know why, or you do know why, you're kind of like, Ugh, that's not okay. So, um. I, we raise them very well. And I know the majority of these, um, small family farms who are raising chickens, whether for their own families or to sell to you so that you have healthier chicken.
They are very loving people. They're not just shoving them in a dark room and. Feeding them food. They're, they're carefully taking care and being good stewards over these animals. Okay. I've said enough about that. What mistakes did you make early on that you wouldn't repeat? Now? I've kind of mentioned a couple over feeding them is the, probably the very biggest one.
Um, and I just learned that, you know, a after 10 years of doing this, I haven't done it. We haven't done it every single year. Um. Uh, we had enough in the freezer actually that we didn't need to do it for three years because my family got smaller After we moved to Florida. I'm like, oh, I only really have one at home now.
So, um, but probably overfeeding them. They don't need to eat nearly as much as you think they do. There is an easy way to figure out how much they need per week of their life. Per bird, and then you just multiply. So if they need a half a pound and you have 50 birds, you would multiply. So it'd be 25 pounds a day is what they're eating for 50 birds is what I mean.
So if you only have two or three birds that you're raising, obviously it's gonna be a lot less. And you can do that. You don't have to raise 50, a hundred birds. 20 birds. You can raise 3, 4, 5 birds and get the hang of it. It doesn't have to be a mass production. I tend to be a mass production person because I only wanna do it once, once a year or something like that.
I really just don't wanna do it all the time. So that's why I go, I go big when I do it. I go big. It kills me for a couple days, but I go big. Um, um, was the, another question, was the emotional side harder than you expected? So, when we first started doing this, we were all a little bit, um. Somber, uh, and sober about the fact that we would be taking the life of an animal on purpose.
And we recognized that the animal has a purpose and that it was giving itself to us. And so we're very respectful of its life. Um, and in the, in the beginning it was not, um. Just don't like that. You don't like that feeling of, of doing that? I'm not even gonna say, but I don't wanna say it like that. I will say that once you move through the first three or four.
Five for us at least. And I'll be honest, my husband has done all of the dispatching, my husband and my sons, I have yet to do one. I had pro promised myself I was going to do it this last batch. And my boy, I was too busy, um, eviscerating them, you know, taking the guts out and parting them out. I was too busy to go back there and do the other, so.
It was just a crazy day. But there is a, there you. You don't like it. You don't like it. It's not anything that we find entertaining or joyful, but it is something that has to be done and there is humane ways of doing it. So, and there are people out there who can explain the science about it as well.
There's actually some science to how to dispatch these chickens. Um. Did your kids see or participate and how did you handle that? Yes. We had all our kids out there helping us, especially in New Jersey when they were all still living at home. They were all out there helping, um, the boys. Did a lot of the dispatching with their dad.
My daughters did. One of my daughters, um, did too, and they all learned the skill of doing this. They didn't necessarily like it, but we were out there as a family and we did this thing and they saw. They know where chicken comes from. Do you realize that there are, there are people in this, I'm gonna say the United States, I don't know if it's the case for around the world, but I know for sure in the United States there are literally people who think that chicken comes from the grocery store, period.
They don't know what a chicken is. Like they see the chicken and they can name a chicken like it looks like this. That's a chicken. But they don't know. They don't. Correlate the package of chicken breasts in the grocery store to that chicken that's out in the farm. They don't under. There literally are people who don't understand where food comes from.
I don't know if you know that or not. I'm telling you, this is the doggone truth. There are literally people who do not know where their food comes from at all. And my children know where their food comes from, whether they choose to live this lifestyle as they grow older. That's none of my business. But they do know where their food comes from.
They know that we respect it, and they know that it's hard, um, hard work, and that we, and we care for our animals. We cared for our gardens. All of the land that we have, we do our best to respect it and be good stewards over it, and we don't. Um.
And so that's part of, and we homeschooled as well. You know, there, they were all homeschooled. So that was part of the curriculum was learning how to be steward over the livestock over the, over the property, over the gardens. That's just part of it. So I, I think they handled everything fine. I don't. I haven't heard otherwise.
Um, this last time my, I have only one teenager left at home and um, and then my two older, my two sons, they're both in their twenties. My one son lives with us, but, um, my other son flew down from Virginia to help us with processing and which made it so much easier to have another. Strong human being doing this thing.
And it was, it was fun. It was like having the whole family together again. It was super fun. So they came back, they helped us and, and it was so much easier on our, on our bodies to have our, our boys there to help. Um, a question people get, this is the way, it's not phrased like this every time, but essentially how do you stay respectful and calm during processing day?
There's a lot that goes on in processing day. On processing day, there's a lot of set you have to set up, set up the cones. You have to set up the scalder. With lots of water, you have to get that heated up. That takes the longest, get the plucker in place, um, your tables. In fact, we found out that our stainless table, stainless steel table that we had used the last time it was broken.
And so I had to get on Facebook marketplace at the last minute and find a stainless steel table, which worked out perfectly. And so it would just, it took couple hours just to get ourselves set up. We have to learn to do some of that in the night before. It's okay. It just is how we roll around here at the Bergin Farm.
But um. We just, we just are very matter of fact. And I think the first time you do this, it's, it's a learning curve for sure. Um, but you can do it and it might take time. This time. What we did is, um, we, we dispatched 30 of the 43 chickens. It was just, we started too late in the day for one. That's our mistake.
But, um. It's okay, everything's fine. But, um, we got to about eight o'clock at night, we had dispatched 30 of them. And once they're killed and plucked, you have to eviscerate means you have to take their guts out is what that means. And because they can't sit overnight like that. So we had to do all that that night.
And then I think we had like nine whole chickens. We were just too tired to part. You know, um, take apart, put like part out into breasts and legs and wings and stuff. So we just put them in a cooler with tons of ice and they were fine. And then, um, 13 of that original 40 chicken, 43 chickens we just left in, we had a stall and we put them in there and.
We just, we finished that the next day. Um, some people talk about the fact that it's inhumane not to feed chickens hours before they're processed. That's not true. They have to be, you want them to not have food in their system for their, for everybody's health because the less there's in their system, the less the meat can get all icky and it, it doesn't.
It's not inhumane to keep them off of food before they're processed. Let me just say it that way. It, it just isn't, it's the right thing to do. So as far as staying respectful and calm, we are respectful. We are, matter of fact, we're not. There's no joy in, in the, in the dispatching of the chickens. There's no joy in it.
There's a lot of gratitude. As I was sitting there working with these chickens, I was very grateful for them. And for us it's a, it's a matter of, it's matter of fact, the day is matter of fact. It is a day of gratitude and for, for the chickens, but for the abundance that goes back into our food storage.
And to know that, that we have clean, healthy meat that we can eat. I rhymed. Um, another question. Does raising your own meat affect how you cook or waste food? Yes, a hundred percent. I think it was, I, I'll go into this another, on another, another episode, but one of the cool things that I learned, I did not know this.
The first time we ever processed chickens, we parted most of them out, so into breasts and legs and wings. And I think I kept the feet, maybe I had a livestock guardian dog at the time, and she and I would save the gizzards for her and certain things like that for her. She loved raw meat. I fed her raw. So this was actually really helpful on my dog food budget, but um, I didn't know the first time that what you part everything out, right?
So the breasts, the legs, the wings, everything's out and you're left with the carcass. So this middle piece, right, that kind of hold the bird together. Well, there's still a good amount of meat on that carcass.
I didn't know. I just didn't know that you could use the carcass to make soup, to make broth, to make bone broth, um, because there's still a nice amount of meat on there that you could use. And so that first time I. I had all these, um, I think we did 25 that first time I had all these carcasses and I didn't have anything.
I didn't know what to do with them. And so I just posted, I don't know, Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or something. At the time. I said, I have all these carcasses if anybody wants 'em, and this lady's like, I'll take 'em. I'm like, okay. And then I was like, oh. I didn't realize I could use those. And so now I save all my carcasses because then I do use them to make bone broth, chicken broth, whatever.
I save the chicken feet for the dogs for um, 'cause you can dehydrate them and they're good for dog treats. I could sell them if I wanted to. Um, and they're also chicken feet are really good to put in the broths because they have a lot of collagen in them and that's very good. Healthy for your joints, your hair, your nails, all that kind of stuff.
So I don't waste anything. Um. We usually collect all the gizzards and stuff, and somehow that did not happen this last time. That's okay. But usually I save all the inside the heart and the gizzards, the um, the kidneys and the liver. I usually save that, but I didn't this time. It's just, it's. Just too many hands going.
It was just too much. We just were like, well, so, um, it wasn't, uh, anyway, it was just, I was not organized enough, but I am much more aware of the effort that I put in to raising the chickens and processing them and saving, freezing them. And I'm also. Aware that this is very healthy, like why would I waste this food?
So yeah, I'm very careful with the way I, um. Eat the, not cook the food, not waste the food. I'll tell you, I'll do an episode about steam juicers and how I use steam juicers to make my chicken broth. So maybe I'll do that. That's a good, that's a really good tool. A gadget you need to have in your home is a steam juicer.
I'll do an episode about that and tell you how I use my chicken carcasses with that. Um, you know, if there's one thing, uh, it. So, you know, if there's one thing I hope you take from this episode, it's that learning one small food skill can change how you think about a lot of things. You don't have to do everything, and you just have to start somewhere, and it's not gonna be perfect the first time.
It's, you're not gonna know a lot. You'll, if you start doing this now, you'll have a lot more information out there than what we did. When we started 10 years ago, but we still end up with good, healthy chicken. Every time we've been rai My kids have basically been raised on this kind of meat, which is so good for them.
It's, it's disgusting how they're raising chickens and the chemicals and the hygiene and the, the deplorable conditions these little animals are being raised in. So I highly recommend that you give it a try. If you think you can. If you think you have the area, the, you will have to have some yard, some land to be able to do this.
That is. That is a something you have to have. You can't do this in an apartment building, unfortunately. But, um, if you think you can, I highly recommend that you do it. I, I'm gonna give you high fives and kudos and if you need information. Please reach out to me if you're interested on the hatchery where I get my chickens, or if you want more in depth a podcast about this, about how, how did I do everything?
How did we do this? How do we set up that? I can absolutely do that. Um, but I, I don't wanna bore other people. But I, it's fascinating. I mean, it's such a fantastic skill to know. I had a couple young women, not young women, teenagers, but young women, like in their twenties, come over. They're like, we wanna learn how to do this.
I'm like, okay. So they came over. And they were a little skived out at first, but as they were doing this and I taught them how to part out the chicken, I said, I just want you, they're not married yet. I said, I want you to see this is a vital skill for you because buying a whole chicken at the store is way less expensive than buying it already cut up into parts.
If you can buy a whole chicken at the store and know how to part it out and how to use the parts, you are going to save a lot of money. So it's essential. These skills are so essential to have, I would even say go to the store, buy a whole chicken and learn how to part and cook this chicken, part it out and cook it.
Start there maybe even before you start raising your own meat chicken. Start learning how to use a whole chicken part, that thing out part, out the breast part out the. The wings and the legs, the thighs, all of these different parts and learn how to use them. That's what I'm gonna say. Do that. That's the easy way to start.
But I can help with anything that you might need. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it. I love you. Enjoy your day.