How to Butcher ALL the Poultry | Chicken, Turkey, Duck + Goose

So I take my chicken. I have a— this, this, this rope is tied in a loop. You can put your chicken's legs in there and let that catch. Upside down sedates them a little bit. It calms them down. You want to turn them around, grab their feathers. You hold their head right here and you cut right above their jawbone. Where's my bucket? Obviously I would hold the string up a little higher so I'm not bending over, but you can do it. Hey, this is a minimus. Butchering. It's going to take about 3-ish minutes to bleed out. You need to hold them because you don't— that's one reason you would have a killing cone, is to keep them secure, keep them comforted, keep them sedated. That's why we hung them upside down. With this string, it's going to be multi-purpose. We'll dip our bird in our scalder. We'll also hang it back up to pluck it. If you're not doing 200 birds a year for inevitable, you're doing 15, a dozen a year, you got some friends, do this way. We've heated it up with propane, but you could do it on a kitchen— why couldn't you do it in your kitchen? Unless the missus don't want you in there, then you're gonna have to get a camping stove. But anyway, we dip this, we have that string. It's best if you can dip those legs, but this is a minimal chicken butchering. That's really hot water, you can feel it. So it might not take long to do this. The way we know that it's done, we're dipping it with our I'm not having to touch that hot water with this. Is we can't— normally if you're dipping the legs, you can try to peel the legs, but the legs aren't— we aren't even really dipping the legs and these legs are already starting to peel. The one way you can really test for sure is pull the wing feathers, and they came out. Okay, they came out real easy, so it's ready to be plucked. So guess what, guys? There ain't no machine in the minimalist world. Just hang it somewhere. It could be back on the barn. Y'all, I got friends. Start plucking. Oh, it is warm. Yeah, come on guys, jump in. You've gotten the easy part. The hard part about hand plucking is these little feathers. We're going to eviscerate this the minimalist way. We pull the head off. In that case, it was pretty easy because they cut into the neck a little bit. We want to get rid of this neck, neck skin. Just slice, never poke. Put it on each side. Slice the neck skin as we go, put it back on its back, grab between. We're just pulling that skin right off. I just pulled that skin right off there. At this point, while it's on its belly, we can cut along the chest here to not pierce the bag. We want to cut it with the groove, so we would cut this way. Maximus, minimus, we would leave that neck on there. Still on its back, let's get its legs. Let's bend our legs up against the way it naturally bends. Do a little slit until I can see in there. You can cut the cartilage, but don't cut the bone. Pinch right above those keel bones. Cut right above the vent. Slide it till you see air. Put it over the edge here. Pull it up. That— see, that way there's some manure coming out. Open up this cavity real good. Now you want to reach in on either side. There's connective tissue. See that connective tissue on either side up against the rib cage? We're breaking that. We're breaking that on top. We're breaking that on the left side. We're breaking that connective tissue, and then we can reach up in there and pull all the guts out along with our windpipe. We left our heart in there. We can grab our heart out. Lungs that hang on to the ribs right there. Somehow we got lucky and got that one out. This one, the lungs are right here, so you kind of just crawl in there, get it in one piece if you can, which I was able to do. You just kind of— they even make a tool to get those lungs out, but that seems to be Enough. I hang it over the edge of the table so all my stuff is hanging out. This is where I could cut the liver. Here's your liver. You hang it, you use gravity for your advantage. Hold the liver up, let the guts hang. Don't hit that, that's the bile, that'll make it taste terrible. You'd want to rinse it if you accidentally hit that. Sacrifice some of the liver to get around the bile. There's the liver. You can cut the gizzard off if you want at this point. Right now we're going to feed it to the pigs. Hanging the guts over the edge, you want to cut on either side. Of this intestine to the right, all the way down to the bone. You don't have to hit the bone, but go to where you think the bone is. Go to the left and then cut straight across. That gets your intestines out without having to cut your intestines. Wow, so there we go. Now I'm going to rinse this off.

So, um, you probably noticed about like a duck, they have very tender feet. And so like with a chicken, I usually grab them by the foot But with a duck, if you grab them by the foot and hold them too hard, you tend to break the feet. So I like to grab it by the neck and then kind of hold it down. Big wingspan compared to chicken, but the wings just kind of go fold right in. You have a knife you want me to use?

You can use your knife.

All right. And then they got a lot more fur here. A lot more feather. Um, so it's good just to kind of push that back a little bit and then a little more force than you would with a chick.

So with or without soap?

Um, yeah, I think that was special.

Extra special for ducks?

I think so.

We get away with it without the chick— with chickens you do.

Um, but yeah, you definitely get a better I think especially with ducks, remember that a duck is waterproof by its very nature.

Yeah.

And so it needs to be, um, you know, the soap helps to penetrate those waterproof feathers. Now we're getting it, um, in between a molt, so they're not as waterproof as they would be, say, in 10 days or so. But you can actually see here, um, oh, sorry. The— see the, you know, that it's going through a molt right now on their breast. So, okay, should be good timing.

Um, and a molt means they're growing in?

Yeah, it means that they're growing in, um, their pin feathers. On ducks, we do 2 minutes and 40 seconds. In our system, we stall for 2 minutes and 40 seconds, and then we pluck for 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

Oh, okay.

So it's just a long time in the plucker.

So they can take a beating in the plucker?

They can really take a beating.

Chicken would be torn to bits right now.

Oh, it would totally be torn to bits. The duck, you just keep going.

It looks like it worked.

Oh yeah.

Oh, who smokes? Who said ducks are hard to pluck? Little bit on the belly.

Yeah, and so like there's always going to be some of this coming right off. Yeah, there's always going to be some of this stuff. Um, rarely do they ever come out fully clean like a chicken.

Okay.

Um, underside of the, of the wings, that's usually a tough spot. And so what we do is we actually have a table that we just have 2 or 3 people just sitting there plucking ducks all day, just doing this. I brought a couple tools. So this one is an oyster knife, um, and what you can do is if you slide it under the feathers, um, on this one I think this— the hand is just best. But if you slide it under the feathers and then use your thumb, you can kind of lift feathers out.

But that would be if there were maybe more feathers.

Yeah, if there were more feathers. And they don't always come out as clean. You know, every time you do ducks is a little different. And then this is more for like if you're trying to get a single feather, there's a really stubborn pinch feather over here, I guess. I mean, I'll show you an example how this is used. It might be a better example later, but if you've got a stubborn pin feather, we'll just pretend this is more stubborn than it is. You just grab it and pull it out.

Oh, nice.

Especially like on a chicken or even on duck, you'll see you'll have a pin feather here on the, on the tail.

Yeah.

And then yeah, if you want to grab that feather.

What's that tool called?

These are called catfish pliers.

Okay. Yeah, I think they're like for something else or for this.

I think they're for, um, for like taking off scales on catfish. Oh, but they work really well for this purpose. So, but I think in general the best way, like once you have a duck like this, is just to go and get it by hand. You cut around the neck, I make a cut around the neck, um, and then with the duck it's kind of the skin right off. Yeah, you can pull the skin just right off of it and the head, it just comes off like a t-shirt. Okay, um, and then you just can just twist the neck usually, or you could use—

or use those shears, stainless steel shears.

Perfect.

Wow, that was a pretty tough neck. Yeah, um, just like a chicken, just like a chicken cutting at the joint.

I broke my neck. And then the oil gland.

Oh, you cut backwards on it. That's neat. You cut up from the tail on the oil gland and then out. Boy, it's fatty. Look at that. It looks like that's like a— so much fattier.

Yeah, it's a lot fattier. You can feel the fat in here. It's just like a chicken from here. Um, I think the ducks in a lot of ways are easier than a chicken.

Um, so you reached up under, just pulled it all out. Yeah. All right. And then you left the intestines hanging. I'm just narrating for people. Yep, you went to the right of the intestines, under it, and then up out.

Yep. And then I just, you know, clean out that, uh, the butthole. Now one thing about a duck you got to go back for is—

so you're going through the top now?

Yeah, there's a little knob. This isn't a great example, um, but there's a little knob right here. We call it the quacker, um, you know, the thing that makes the quack sound. It might not be, but that's what we call it. And so that usually gets stuck right here, so we just go back for it.

Now you're getting the lungs, you're digging the rums out of the back rib cage.

Can you— are your hands clean? And then I don't know how clean you guys do, but, um, that's generally— I usually just rinse it out from here and then send it on down the line.

Ice pack. First of all, we've got them in their cage here. We put cage over the trailer so they can't jump out. I like to, you know, lift up the cage real quick Grab them by the tail. And what you got to watch out for— turkeys grab a snack, and then you gotta watch for the feet. Look at, look at my wrist. Cut my wrist, cut my arm. So I've learned that— grab it by your wrist, grab it by your— see that, that kick? Grab with your other hand and go down until you grab those feet, and grab both those feet. You got neck in one hand? Never. I'm learning. We're only going to take our hands off these feet one more time. That's it. We're going to hold these feet the whole killing time. We're going to go a little longer than with chickens, 30-45 seconds. I'm agitating it because I want to keep the feet— I want them to get good and scalded so I can skin them later. Okay, so I'm going to test it by pulling out the wings. See, that, that needs a little more. I can't even pull that off. Key is a good scald to getting these feathers off nicely. 45 seconds. Okay, that came out much better that time. Let's give it a few more seconds. See how easy that came out? I let it sit there and drain the water back in so we don't lose our water, our hot water. We're going right into the scald or plucker. So it's not plucking it when it's doing that, so I'm just gonna hold it up. There we go. All right, okay, so I got my turkey on a stainless steel table here. Just have my— just have the water hose rigged up hanging from my tent. I'm just cleaning it up a little bit from what the plucker missed. It— now we're looking at food. Now we're looking at what's going in our oven, our smoker, on our plates, on our Thanksgiving table. So it's gonna start looking good. The feet didn't get all the way plucked. So you actually peel skin off the feet, and look, you actually peel off the nail too. And I just go backwards and it pops right off. Sometimes it pops off in the skull, the skull, the skull. They're like there and there and there. Just double check. That one's off. I'm getting that clean because I'm going to use it for, uh, broth. But if you don't use it for broth, you don't have to worry about cleaning that. Just kind of spraying it, keeping it clean as I go. First thing you can do so you don't forget is the oil duct. Come down, don't quite hit the bone, almost hit the bone, come straight down and then come over, pinch— it's a little tricky— and then out. And we've cut off that oil. Don't cut the head off with knife, it's going to dull your knife. These are some Felco pruners. You can also get some kitchen grade stainless steel. We have some of those, we like those, but we just don't have enough. Get down to the skin, then you can cut it. We're gonna set the head aside for broth. Okay, then we want to cut the neck skin off, do the top of it. Try not to cut any of the muscle. You always want to slit, you never want to poke when you're butchering because you don't want to accidentally hit guts, muscle, anything like that. And you grab in between the esophagus with your thumb. You want to get in between this, the windpipes there, and the, uh, the neck, and pull the skin off like that. Nice, right? Any remainder gook here, then you want to cut at an angle this way because your bag's going to be going around it. You don't want to cut that way because this bone could pierce your bag. So cut through that neck, then cut the skin to save that for your broth. You got your esophagus hanging out. We're going to get that from the other end in just one second. For your legs, I've been fine— you could go this way. I've been finding it's easier to turn it on its belly. Let's go this way, right where it flattens out there. You can kind of see between the two bones. Just give yourself a little cut. It's kind of a flat area, and then you can bend it and kind of see in there. You don't want to cut the bones, so it's, it's a little tricky. You gotta kind of, kind of got to work it a little bit to make sure you don't cut the bones. It's time to go inside. Just like a chicken, guys, you pinch right here, belly, cut right above these two bones sticking out right there, right below the— and remember, just slit. We're just getting enough to set. Don't poke in there, it's tempting. Now I'm going to pull the cavity apart, but I'm going to back up a hair, Jason. I'm going to pull it apart over the edge in case there's any manure in there. That's when it would be squeezed out, and you don't want it on a carcass, you want it in your grass. So now here's all my guts. You kind of just go to the outside, working your way. I start over on this side, going up against the rib cage, just There's membranes and stuff just holding the guts on there. I'm just breaking those off and then just grab a bunch of guts, pull them out, and then I let it hang over. I'm gonna let gravity do the work for me. If you want to save your liver, there it is. You want to save your heart, there it is. And then you got to get your lungs. This is impossible to show you on camera because it's deep in there, but it's up against that back rib cage and you kind of got to claw at it. Is it the end of the world if you don't get it out? Actually, no, because you're not going to eat that part of the bird anyway. You don't eat the inside of the bird. And if you ate along, it wouldn't matter. Grab the crop out of there. It's kind of a bubbly— oh, I accidentally popped it. That's why it's good to not have— to, to not give them food. See, it's just kind of a You really just got to get your hands dirty to find out some stuff. That's all it is. And I just pulled that out. Would that have been in the world if I would have not pulled it out this way and would pulled it out this way? No, you're just gonna not— like, you're not gonna break it as likely. Okay, I'll clean out— we've got the guts. Whoops, looks like the guts broke off. So to not pop the intestines, you go just to the right of it and down to the tail. And then you just go to the— just to the left. And then you just go on the bottom across and put it in there. And, uh, just get some of your remaining stuff off. Guys, we're, we're getting close to what you would see at the grocery store, except this is not what you see at the grocery store because this is absolutely 100% so much better. Like, I've been scratched in the eye so many times. That would be a really good idea. On all of my kill cone boards, I'll put like a little staple nail and have a wire, and I'll just wire their feet up. So good. And then it saves your eye every time. Who thought of this, Nick? I did, after I almost lost my eye. Just grabbing his head. Calm down. Got him calmed down. He's looking for the jawbone. Just— whoa, it cut really easy. Or did you Did you cut really hard? You want to cut nice and firm. You don't want to have to sit there and saw it. Yeah, it's a nice firm clean cut. It's like, that's like an inch of— that's the exact opposite. Oh, I know, I don't even have skin though. Putting a little more soap in there. You found the fracture, Nick. So the soap counteracts smaller scalders, so getting the wings and everything to open up. Thank you. To open up. Yeah, that's true. I've just been on pasture. They don't— that's right. Yeah, so their oils are pretty like dense.

Ah.

Now you need rubber gloves, or you can use that tool that Casey's got there for you. We want to do the feet too. Yeah, that came out pretty easy. It's still bone dry. I still think it needs more. Oh yeah, it's a lot more. It's nice to have that classic roar of the, uh, okay, that was a minute and a half then. He's gonna have to keep it moving because it's a big, it's a big bird.

Starting to cool off, so We're just gonna hand pluck these little guys.

But we don't have a lot of pin feathers, do we? Now you got it at the right time.

Yay!

Look at those lungs. That's how they get them honks out.

Holy moly!