A More Realistic Way To Raise Meat Chickens

If you have watched any YouTube-r, TikTok-er, or other social media influencer, you’ve probably seen them butcher and process 50-100 chickens in one shot. Maybe you tried that and it didn’t work. Or maybe you are currently doing that but it’s just not working well for you, your family and your schedule. You are not alone. So how do we raise meat chickens?

How We Used To Raise Meat Chickens

Before we bought our property, we researched like crazy. We wanted to be as prepared as possible. Also, we knew that there was going to be a ton of trial and error. That was okay. We were learning as we went and are still learning. But one of the biggest lessons we learned on the homestead was that raising meat chickens 50-100 at a time, simply doesn’t work for us.

I talked about a lot of the things we did in our post about Raising Meat Chickens Humanely. There were somethings that I didn’t mention in that post though. The first is that butchering out 50 chickens in one shot is freaking hard. We only had 25 that made it out of our first batch, and I’m not going to lie, I won’t do that again.

Another thing that we learned was that the space that 25, 50 or 100 chickens take up is a lot. If you don’t have that space, then this may not be a good option. And it’s not just freezer space. If you aren’t going to free range them, you have to have a ton of tractors which means moving them a lot. If you do free range them and put them up at night? It’s still a lot of space for you to find.

Processing them is another issue when it comes to space. You’ve got to have a ton of coolers or other ways to store the meat until it’s ready for the freezer. If you’re going to freeze them whole? That’s another huge space taker. Parting the chicken out is good and will save space, but not a lot.

How Do We Raise Meat Chickens Now?

We purchase our chicks from McMurrary Hatchery and we’ve gone with their Big Red Broilers. We still purchase 100 chicks at a time and it can be a ton of work. But we have found that we don’t always get 100 chickens in our freezer. Sometimes that because of predators or sickness. Other times we recruit help or put on a class and give some of those chickens away.

When it comes to the decision on which chickens to raise for meat, it will always come down to your preference and your farm needs. I’ll dive more into that in a second.

On our farm, the best part about the Big Red Broilers is that they take longer to get to weight and they don’t all get to weight at the same time. This sounds counter productive, right? YouTube University says that you should get the Cornish Cross so that all the chickens are ready to go at 8 weeks. But this doesn’t work for us.

Because of our work schedules, we cannot devote an entire weekend to butchering 50-100 chickens. We just can’t. It would involve taking time off work and that’s more counter productive.

Our Butchering Day

Our butchering day isn’t an actual day… it’s weeks. Again, this may seem counter productive to some but if we can’t get time off work or if not all of our chickens are ready at the same time, we can’t do them all on one day.

So what we do is set up our butchering area (which is on our driveway) and leave it set up for a couple of weeks. We will find the chickens that are at butchering weight and we will butcher them that day. This is usually 5-10 depending on what all we have going on that day, how many chickens are ready, etc. We put them in coolers full of salt and ice water. Then we will part them out into thighs, breasts, legs, and wings. After we have gotten what we need, we take the chicken back and put it on the stove for bone broth.

Everything is cleaned up and “put away” in the butchering area until we have another 5-10 that are ready to go. This will go on until all the chickens are butchered. Usually, it only takes a couple weeks to get every chicken done and in the freezer.

While this may not seem ideal to many, it works well for us.

Why Does This Work So Well For Us?

The reason we love the Big Red Broilers is because the meat is much more tender and tastes better. Another reason is because they have more time to get to weight. Usually, they hit weight around 12-16wks. This gives us a whole month to butcher them.

Again, for someone (like myself) that will work themselves into the ground to get a job done, this isn’t ideal. But one of the lessons I have learned with homesteading is that you don’t have to do everything in one day, season or year. Working yourself into the ground is not ideal, especially when you are dealing with sharp knives and lives.

It’s okay for it to take weeks to butcher the chickens.

Have you ever tried to make 100 chickens worth of bone broth? Have you ever tried to pluck 100 chickens in one day? Do you know what to do with 100 chickens worth of blood? PS, that’s about 5 gallons of blood.

Because we have tried it, and it just doesn’t work for us.

Getting Help Or Giving A Class

Sometimes, you HAVE to butcher 20-50 in one day. There’s no way around it. Everyone is ready and you’ve got to get it done. When this happens, we recruit help or put on a class. Keep in mind the difference between the two things though.

Putting on a class means that you are teaching people how to butcher a chicken. This means that you have to walk people through the steps one by one. And it takes time! People have questions and they want to make sure they are dispatching animals as humanely as possible. I’m all about it! But when I have to get it done, the last thing I want to do is teach.

Recruiting help means that the people that are coming know how to butcher chickens and are going to help you do it. I don’t have to make sure they know what their doing.

Both of these things have their purpose and I love teaching people. But when we have 50 chickens that are ready to go and I need to get them in the freezer, that is not the right time to put on a class.

So make sure that when you are reaching out for help, you are getting help. And give them a couple chickens for their help!

Raise Meat Chickens The Way YOU Want To

Whether you raise a years worth of chickens and butcher them in one shot, or you spread it out like we do, the most important thing is that you do it humanely and in a way this is right for you. The greatest thing about homesteading is that there is no right or wrong way. You can have livestock or not. You could love cattle and not chickens.

If you dread processing day because it’s a multi day affair? Try doing smaller batches. Or raise two batches of meat chickens a year. Hell, do four batches if it make sense for you!

Regardless of how you do it, just know that you are feeding your family the best possible chicken you can.

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