Dressing Poultry - for beginners

If you are a bit squeemish do not read on.  

This post includes some disturbing information.  

However, it may also prove useful to you one day.

Here are a couple of sites to learn about dressing chickens for the table:

Poultry allotment

Backyard Poultry

Now for the Hazel Method 

for Dressing a Backyard Chicken.

Step 1:  Choose a bird with a death wish, evidenced by her unwillingness to go into the coop even after witnessing the murder of her rooster and two of her sisters, by a fox the night before.

Step 2: Ensure she roosts on a high branch but one that is accessible from the woodpile.

Step 3:  When you hear her screeching in the night, as she is being carried off by the fox, release the hound which will make the fox drop the chook.

Step 4: When you retrieve and examine the hen she will probably be bruised and have most of the skin torn from her breast.  If she is a well fed girl, there may also be globs of fat visible.

Step 5: Stop the Cook from commenting that her chest muscle looks just like a breast fillet - firstly because it is an oxymoronic comment and secondly it may make you feel ill.

Step 6:  Pull the skin flap, up over the breast and hold in place with a bandage. Light crepe bandages are no good, as she will just peck at it and make it unravel.  Heavier, wider bandages work better.

This first bandage was not successful because it slipped, we learned
to take the bandage up and around her neck as well as over her back.

Step 7:  Wrap the bandage around and around and fasten in a number of places to stop it from slipping.  It should be tight enough to do the job but not so tight as to make breathing difficult.

Step 8, 9 and 10:  Change the bandage on a daily basis, checking the wound for signs (and the smell) of infection.

Step 11:  Once you are sure the hen will recover, write a blog post with silly pictures to show the world what a Sooky La La you are and why you will never be a truly successful self sufficient homesteader.

This was the best - a heavier bandage, with edges held together with
lots of safety pins..punk style dressing.

Oh, and don't worry about PTSD...

Penny isn't the least bit traumatised and is 

eating, drinking, foraging and squabbling with her sisters as usual.  

It is helpful that chooks go all passive 

and lay still when you put them on their backs.