This year my wife and I decided to raise some organic chickens. It wasn't a difficult task because my parents have 30-50 of their own birds, so what was an additional 12. We bought 15 chicks 3 months ago and we lost 3 in the natural order of life due to one or another illness.
Three months later these meat birds were ready to be slaughtered or butchered whatever is the nicer word for killing chickens. It turned out to be a great cool day in July, high 60's/low 70's and cloudy. My father and I started nice and early butchering 4 at time. Then plucking the feathers by hand, then gutting them and eventually I cut up and packaged the meat. I though since I had only 12 chickens that it would only take a total of 3-4 hrs for process. But I was in for a surprise. It turned out to be an 8 hr ordeal. The cutting up and packaging process did take up more time because it was my first time doing it.
Overall the it was a good experience. We will have to see how long it will take to eat all the meat for a family of 4. And we will also have to wait and see if this is something that we will do again in the future.
Overall expenses were about $3-5 per chicken, chicken food for 3 months (unless you grow your own; my parents have their own corn), and time to feed them then butcher.
I am excited that I have plenty of organic meat to smoke and enjoy eating in the months to come.
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