Home Grown Chicken Really Tastes Better

The ginormous 6.5 pound organic pastured chicken from processing day.
(it's on a 10 inch plate)

I've often heard about the difference in taste and appearance of veggies from the kitchen garden compared to store vegetables. They taste better and look better. In fact, I experienced it myself; I never liked strawberries until I started shopping at a farmer's market. I had no idea there would be the same noticeable difference between farm raised fresh meat and boughten meat. I recently had the opportunity to eat that chicken pictured above. Let me sum up this entire blog post in one word: yum.

We are starting to raise our own animals for meat, and we may sell them at some point. I have no qualms about raising and caring for the animals that will end up on our dinner table. Our chickens are free-range and our cows are pastured. They don't live in cramped dirty conditions. We know what they've been fed, and what their living conditions are. They are happy and healthy. 

However, I'm not sure I can handle the actual process of changing them from live animal into meat. Butchering fees are costly, and most folks round here do it themselves. So when I heard that our friends the Deakynes were going to have a chicken butchering day I asked if we could help. They were happy to have us, so the girls and I got up early one October morning to try our hands at processing chickens.

Carter and Tracy taking chickens to the freezer

Lesleigh dove right in and handled the "whiz-bang," which is a machine that removes the feathers from the chicken after it's been killed and dunked it hot water. Carter didn't want to deal with the processing part, so she helped with packaging and weighing the birds after they were cleaned and chilled. I worked at the evisceration table cleaning the gizzards. It was a little icky, but I survived.

Here's the video I made detailing the process:

It was an interesting experience, and I think I might be able to help should we decide to process our own meat. 

Sunday we ate one of the chickens that we helped butcher. It was honestly the juiciest chicken I've ever cooked. At first I thought I might just be enjoying it that much because I had worked so hard that day. But everyone at the table commented that they could actually taste a difference between that chicken and the store bought chicken we normally eat.

Have you ever butchered your own meat? Can you taste a difference in store meat and home-grown?