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How to Host Your Very Own Chicken Caper

Step 1. Find a group of friends who are not easily grossed out, are not vegetarians, are hard workers, and have a penchant for the ridiculous.

Step 2. Find someone who is willing to raise 100 (or 175) baby chicks for slaughter.

Step 3. Wait 6 weeks or just until these heart-attack prone chickens keel over before setting the kill date.

Step 4. Provide coffee the morning of the kill.

Step 5. Nail two nails the diameter of a chicken neck apart in a stump and sharpen your machete. Next, assign someone with adequate upper arm strength and good aim* to free the chicken of his head. (*This point can be critical, as tested through trial and error.)

Step 6. Jam the chicken in an upside milk jug with the bottom lopped off to let "Chicken-with-its-head-cut-off Syndrome" subside and to keep the blood in a localized area.



Step 7. Dip the beheaded chicken in scalding water to help remove the feathers. Note that the temperature of this water is very important and workers further along the work line will complain if the temperature is not perfect. (I.e. If the water is too hot, the chickens will be scalded and red.)



Step 8. Pass the chicken to the Chicken Plucking machine with rubber fingers that will take the large feathers off very quickly.



Step 9. Hang the chicken and pluck some more of the larger feathers off of the now naked bird.



Step 10. Chop off the feet. This makes for a pretty display** or nice dancing puppets if so desired.



Step 11. Send the chicken to the gutting station where the inner organs will be removed. They should also be separated, saving the delicious organs such as the heart and liver and giblets (which must be cleansed of the grass that the chicken had recently consumed). Please be wary about perforating the gall bladder as bile is green and stinky. Also watch out for bowels since the chicken has not necessarily voided prior to surgery.



Step 12. The chicken will receive a rinse with the hose, an innards check and more detailed feather plucking.



Step 13. The chicken now moves inside the house to Quality Control. These dedicated workers will pluck the final hairs, feathers and hated pin feathers out of the chicken. (Imagine popping hundreds of black pimples in which the pin feathers shoot up into your hair and on your face. The chickens receive a final rinse and are placed into a two gallon ziplock bag.



Step 14. The chickens are weighed, marveled at and then placed in a respective freezer, refrigerator or cooler.



Step 15. Weights are recorded and speculation is made regarding various sizes and Chicken Caper Year comparisons.



Even though you can perform your very own Chicken Caper in 15 easy steps, it is important to remember some helpful hints before embarking on this adventure.

Hint 1. Take breaks.



Hint 2. Reward yourself.



Hint 3. Provide the group with their very own knife sharpener to ease the process along.



Now you've got it! Enjoy your Chicken Caper***. And remember that a happy worker is a singing worker, so here is your very own Chicken Caper song to get you started!
99 chickens with heads on their necks,
99 chickens with heads!
Cut one down
and pass it around.
98 chickens with heads on their necks!
(Repeat 98 more times.)
**


***The "Chicken Caper" Title is trademarked by the Jochim Estate.

Comments

Malealyn said…
Makes me wish I was there! Oh wait - no that's not true exactly. But I love the pictures!