How To Process A Chicken At Home

Best step by step I've found yet! Thank you for this. Hope you realize your excellent instructions are still helping people almost 13 years later!

Very informative. Makes processing a chicken not so scary. Thank you.

Best documented step-by-step process I've ever seen for chicken processing. (My husband was watching the video of the gal with the low cut top instead. Wrong focus, eh ladies?) You gals have done us newcomers a great service! Appreciate your help!

I have plucked a few by hand and my buddy has a wiz bang plucker he built I've used a few times. When I don't want to bother him, I have just been skinning them lately. Sure a lot cleaner and quicker.

Great article. I will bookmark this one.

Great tutorial. I did a bird this way today. I've only ever skinned a bird. At 145 degrees with one bird. I plucked and didn't remove any fat. We did however remove the head instead of slitting the throat. Still went great. I had issues understanding the butt part..but hubby jumped in with that cut. I hated removing the crop. But i got it all. I love this tutorial..I feel confident I can do it again. Amazing job...you are awesome also never thought of doing a bird inside. I prefer this!

I love the step by step pictures.
Very helpful to see.

We completed our first flock processing yesterday following this guide.
We jumped in feet first with 30 Cornish cross. We lost 2 early on, but were expecting to lose at least 5 based on our research, so we were happily surprised.
Helpful hands joined us, and we were blessed to rent a plucker from a local family.
This article was a huge help! I found videos on YouTube, etc, but this step by step was by far the most valuable.
Thank you so much posting!!

Great tutorial!

Really appreciated your demo. We bought 30 Cornish cross chicks to process in June..did this a lot growing up but your refresher course, with all the great pictures, was a real help. Thx again

Thank you for this guide. I am wondering why can you not cut off the head at the beginning? If I'm only going to sever the artery, how will I know if I've gone deep enough? What if I accidentally go too deep?

Fantastic tutorial. I really am pleased with the detail and showing what the actual internal organs were, along with the process.

Quite detailed and with pictures. Thank you.

Thank you so much for this article. I know it is old, but I had to leave a review. I read it first to prepare myself for our 16 week mark harvest date, then desperately tried to find it yesterday when the actual day came. I followed along (with messy hands scrolling on my laptop) and am so appreciative of the detailed instructions.
I only processed two of my Delaware roosters (husband pled for the life of the third), but as a pregnant mama with a toddler cruising around in the yard doing this for the first time, I think this went really well. I'm excited to cook these birds to finally taste a heritage bird and feed them to my family.
Bless you for your help,
Jennie

Excellent educational photos! Thank you.

Awesome article. I will use this as a reference if I ever grow the gizard to process my own birds. Thanks!

Such a great article! I'm getting ready to process my first bird today after reading this in detail so many times. I'm a bit nervous as it is my first time, but with this article by my side I know I'll be successful.

What a great article. Really well written and beautifully presented. Factual without any fluff. A+

Very nicely done. Pictures of the process were great.

Gives me courage to try this myself soon. Thank you for taking the fear and mystery out of it!