Everything You Need to Butcher Chickens

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Look, I’m writing this post for you just as much as I’m writing it for myself! Honestly, that’s one of my favorite parts of blogging, too. Not only is it a resource for other people but it’s a place for me to hold all of my information too. I reference this blog so often to make my own recipes and especially when we need to remember the canning process. The top posts that I look at are bread machine bread, homemade tortillas, jam cake, and canning tomato sauce. I should probably write it all down just in case but for now I’ll keep using this just as much as you all are! So, as we just finished up chicken butchering day for 2024, this post is essential. Today I’m making a list of everything you need to butcher chickens and I promise it will make your life easier. 

In Order?

Most of these will be listed in the order that we used them but it’s not going to walk you through the process really. A lot is also used multiple times too. Maybe someday I’ll walk you through the whole thing but for now, your best bet is to watch some YouTube videos on it. The purpose of this post is to make sure that you don’t get halfway through the process and realize you don’t have something that you need to finish. We’ve run into situations where we’re finding things on the fly to get it done and I want it to be as easy as possible for you and for us the next time we do this. 

Bleach

I’m normally not a bleach person, but for this situation I absolutely recommend it. With the germs and delicacy of having raw meat around, it needs to be as clean as possible. Bleach is the only thing that we know of that will verify that everything is clean enough. A lot of our equipment is stored in garages and barns for the rest of the year so it’s imperative that we make sure there are no mouse droppings or anything else left behind that could contaminate our chicken.

Paper Towel

Possibly one of the most obvious on our list of everything you need to butcher chickens but that doesn’t make it less important. Use it for cleaning equipment or your hands.

Rags

We use both paper towel and rags. There seems to be a natural place and time for both. We typically use rags to clean up the equipment both before and after butchering. Then we grab paper towel when we’re in the thick of it and just need a quick clean. Rags are great for the bleach process.

Water

I debated putting this on the list but it’s important that you realize you’ll need a lot of water. Water for cleaning, water for dunking the chickens, water for holding the chickens until you’re ready to gut them, water for washing your hands, etc. Make sure you have a source nearby, not just jugs of water.

Knives

Everyone has their own opinion on what knives work best. We started with a kit of knives like this one and then decided to invest in some sharper better working knives. Depending on how many birds you are doing and how much you want to invest, you can choose which works best for you. I do recommend you make sure they aren’t just normal kitchen knives because those don’t really work great for this purpose. Having some true harvest knives are best. 

Thermometer

You’ll need a thermometer for the water a couple of times. Make sure it sits on the edge of your pot well and reaches far enough in to get a good reading on the temperature. 

Camp Chef

This one is debatable but it’s one of our best pieces of equipment honestly. You can do the process with just a one burner stand, like a turkey fryer. However, you end up bending over a lot more and that makes it much more difficult if you are doing a lot of birds or already prone to back problems. The Camp Chef makes it so you can stand up straight and move around more easily. 

Pot

We had a friend custom make us a pot for dipping our chickens but a lot of people don’t have that. The best pot we found before our custom one was a turkey frying pot. We still use it to seal the bags as well and that works really well for us too. 

Kill Cones

You need to have a good way to kill the birds. My father in law still talks about the first time he saw them butcher chickens on the farm because they didn’t use kill cones. They literally just ripped the heads off the chickens. My dad talks about using an ax and a stump and then letting them run around with their heads off. We like to do it more humanely than that. The upside down cones keep them calm and make the process quick and easy. We bought cones like this but we refashioned them because they suck. 

Seriously, if you buy these you need to make them shorter. Be prepared to take some off of the bottom of them! This makes it so that the chicken’s heads stick out further and they don’t go down as far into the cones. The first year we used them as we bought them and my husband almost cut his finger off because the heads barely stuck out of the bottom of the cones. Not sure if our birds were too big or if it was a cone issue but they work tons better now that we’ve modified them. 

Barrel / Catch Basin

We use a barrel that has been cut in half underneath the kill cones to catch all of the heads and the blood. You want to let them drain out quite a bit. If you don’t mind having blood all over then you can do this on the ground but if you want to be able to clean it all up it’s nice to have something to catch it all.

Table

You’ll need something to cut on. As you can see above, we have a large table to work with. We’ve previously used the plastic tables and cutting boards, and those work just fine too.

Non-Stick Spray

This was something I never anticipated putting on a list of everything you need to butcher chickens but here we are! It’s a tip I learned on Instagram and we are so thankful. Spray down your cones and your barrel before starting the killing. When the blood dries on the equipment it is very difficult to get off. If you spray it with non-stick spray, it makes it much easier to clean them up. 

Disposable Gloves

Get some black gloves for the kill station. It’s important to have black because then you can easily see if there is a hole or if you cut through them. You want to make sure that you are safe because mixing your blood and chicken blood can potentially cause an infection and illness so it’s best to have black gloves and be extra observant at this station. 

Plucker

I genuinely don’t understand how people used to pluck chickens without a plucker and I think there are probably still people out there that do it! It’s so much more work to pluck by hand. We know this because we need to perfect our dunking station each year. We’ve landed on 175 degrees for 45 sec to 1 minute but before we get that just right, it’s hard to get the birds clean and we end up doing a lot by hand. Save yourself and invest in the plucker. There are also people around us that rent them so that’s an option if you don’t want to invest. 

Needle Nose Pliers

Another rather odd one on our list of everything you need to butcher chickens but here we go! We make sure to clean up a couple pairs of pliers before getting started. As I mentioned before, sometimes there are feathers that don’t come out in those first birds. Even as we go through the process the plucker tends to miss a few feathers here and there. It’s nice to have these on hand to easily pull out feathers that are stubborn. 

Ice

We typically freeze empty milk jugs, cottage cheese cartons, water bottles, etc to make sure we have enough ice. You want to keep the meat as cool as possible! Make sure you have enough ice to be able to do so. We also like to keep some bags of ice cubes on hand to cool down the water if needed. Sometimes the dunking tank gets a little out of hand if we don’t keep a close enough eye on it. To cool it down quickly, we dump some ice cubes in it and get it back to the right temperature. 

Lung Scrapers

I’m so thankful we got the opportunity to watch someone butcher chickens before we did it because this is a step we had no idea existed. The lung scrapers help make sure you get all of the innards out of the birds. Pull out the guts and then scrape out the ribs. We got one of these with our plucker but purchased the other on its own. Unfortunately, there’s just nothing like it so you’ll need to invest in this one. 

Bags, Zip Ties, & Labels

We love this little package of materials to store the chickens. The bags work really well and are a good size, the zip ties work great, and the labels are awesome. We don’t even fill out the labels most of the time! We do use them for sealing up the chicken bags because we don’t use the tubes to get the air out. That’s a whole different story to get into which is why someday. It’s why I’ll probably also need to post about the whole process someday. For now, just grab one of these kits to make it easy. You will know that you have everything you need to get your chickens from alive to put into the freezer. 

Coolers/Sinks/Barrels

You’ll need something to put the birds in once they are plucked and then again once they are gutted. We have a couple of stainless steel sinks that we fill with water and ice to hold the birds.  There are others we know that use barrels because they do a ton of birds. We did 30 this year and they fit into our sinks really well. You can also use coolers but it may cause more cleaning and bending down and such. It’s up to you what you use for this step. I just include it so you know that you’ll need something that can hold a lot of water, ice, and chicken. 

Dawn Dish Soap

This is another thing that I never thought I’d put on the list of everything you need to butcher chickens. I don’t keep it in the house because there are a lot of ingredients I don’t like. This is a situation that needs to fall under the 80/20 lifestyle. To put it simply- you’ll need something that can cut through the grease. None of the non-toxic cleaners we know of or have used get the job done. If you have hot water, you may be able to get by with a non-toxic dish soap. We only have cold water (so far) so we need something that works with that. The chickens will leave a layer of grease on everything! To clean it up effectively it’s important to have the right tools. 

In Summary: Everything You Need to Butcher Chickens

There are a couple tips and tricks thrown in here if you were able to actually read through some of it. I want to emphasize that we are not professionals. We are learning through this constantly and so this list will probably change and grow with us. It’s our third time through this though and I think this list will definitely make it so you can get through the butchering process, at least. It might not be the most fancy or most efficient but you’ll be able to get it done, just like us. I’m actually kind of looking forward to the next batch now that we’re getting better and better at it. 

What are your favorite butchering tips & tricks? Anything else that your family uses for butchering that I didn’t include? Let us know in the comments.