Gallbladder Removal

In honor of two relatives who had their gallbladders removed this week, we decided to remove the gallbladders of our broilers.

Well, actually, we removed all their internal organs, after we had bled them out, scalded, and plucked them.

The day didn't start off well. I woke, for some reason, at 4:30am, and couldn't go back to sleep, which meant I got in good work time on notes for Macbeth, but it also meant that, by the time Phil got up (after going to bed at 2am), I was feeling tired.

The expensive scalder we bought back in Boulder, that we used there to process two batches of chickens, simply would not light. We tried playing with that thing for an hour: hold down the "lighter" switch. Run inside to check the online trouble-shooting guide. Call the company (which never called back). It could be that, if it were less windy, it would have worked, but it showed no signs of life, and gave off only very intermittent smell of propane.

By that time, I was about frantic. The birds run out of food today, and Phil has a solidly scheduled two weeks ahead of him. This really was the only day to process chickens. And we own no cooking pots big enough to hold a large meat bird.

Phil had a breakthrough moment, though. His parents had brought us an ancient galvanized tub. We propped that on the cookstove, lit the two burners, and had a very functional scalder. (So, if you're in the market for a scalder, let me offer a suggestion that will save you $1000. Buy a large galvanized tub, and the Costco propane camp cookstove instead of the name brand scalder. And both stove and tub are dual-purpose!)

All afternoon Phil got the birds ready for me to process. By the end, I was completely physically spent. Pulling out guts is a lot of effort after the first twenty! And the stress of wondering if the gallbladder will break and spill its bile all over, spoiling the meat, or if the vent will shoot out some dung as I tug on the intestines ... yuck!

What's worse, with the trouble over the scalder, I was worried that the chickens would not get enough to eat and would start losing body condition. So I gave them some feed.

A few hours later we started processing. Chickens have an organ called a crop, right up above the breast. In the past, when we processed birds with empty stomachs, the crop was like a flattened balloon, easy to tug, and very clean.

Today, it was the size of a raquetball, filled with slightly moistened feed, liable to break in my hand at any moment. Yuck again!

It took us about five hours to process 25 birds. I have no idea how this could possibly be financially feasible as a farm income. My records show we spent $500 on chicks and feed, and probably have about 25 birds total, weighting, I expect, an average of just under 5 pounds. So we have $4/pound for whole chickens, not counting any labor or infrastructure.

I am happy to have soy-free, organic chicken, but, honestly, the meat was a bit tough, not terribly flavorful, and really just all-around disappointing. We didn't even finish our chicken dinner!