I spent Thurs, Fri, and Sat, killing, skinning, and dismembering 13 chickens. I went with skinning because the birds are going to be cooked and home canned as part of our food storage.
My wife had arranged for the husband of one of her friends to help me butcher chickens and I'm handicapped and don't have alot of stamina for lengthy chores.
The friend's husband came over at 10 am, I had the chopping block and hatch ready but he preferred to use his hold roffing hatchet for the job. I caught the chickens and he lopped off their heads. When that was down, he put his hatchet back in his vehicle and left. I was stunned. Some help...I still had 13 chickens (12 roosters and an egg eating hen) left to skin and butcher.
Well, I picked up the 1st dead chicken to find it still had the head attached, the job had only been half done. As I checked each chicken I found 11 with the heads partially attached and only 2 wher the heads had been completely severed.
Since I had a 50 gallon water trough I haven''t installed yet I used it for the water bath to soak out the blood that might remain in the chickens after I had skinned and gutted them.
That took all of the 1st day, Thursday, for me to complete. I finished the day with all the chickens soaking in said water bath.
The second day was spent dismembering the chickens into their various edible/cooking portions.
Day three was spent cleaning each part of the chicken to remove any internal organs, remaining pin feathers, dirt, etc so that each piece was totally free of forgein matter. They were then placed in 1 gallon freezer bags for temporaary storage and placed in one of the chest freezers.
Each day was grueling work for me, I hurt so bad at the end of each day that I could hardly walk. It's now monday and I'm setting here at the computer in by bare feet because my ankles are so swollen I can't put my shoes on.
What makes me upset was that the man had agreed to help me butcher the chickens, they when he left, what would have taken the 2 of use the remainder of the day to do, took me that day as well as the next two days to complete.
On the bright side I fielded 5 phone calls from 3 of the 5 beekeeping students I'm mentoring.