Processing poultry for meat is becoming more common for some backyard-poultry enthusiasts. Small commercial poultry businesses, too, may offer poultry meat at a local farmers market or via a community supported agriculture mechanism. 

Some excellent online resources exists that are largely applicable for backyard processors and small commercial producers alike. The Cornell Small Farms Program has a webinar program that includes a section on poultry processing. 

A second good resource is the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network. This service of the Oregon State University Extension Service provides relevant info for small meat processors. Available resources include regulations, webinars and case studies, fact sheets and a video series.

You can also read through this website for videos and information. 

Read more: Check out this video on butchering a chicken carcass.

Basics of Poultry Processing

The two most important things to remember when processing poultry are:

• keep things cold
• always err on the side of caution with respect to discarding or condemning the birds

“When in doubt, throw it out” is a good approach in poultry processing. This helps reduce the potential risk of food poisoning. 

During processing, your goal should be to identify and remove carcasses that show evidence of pathological (i.e., disease conditions) and nonpathological (i.e., bruises, breast blisters) lesions.

Most of the abnormal conditions you can visually observe typically relate to meat quality as opposed to food safety. But quality is (of course) important!

This is basically what the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service does in large commercial broiler and turkey facilities. Most of what the FSIS does is visual inspection. But they also collect samples for microbiological testing of salmonella and campylobacter (the two most common pathogenic bacteria associated with food-borne outbreaks in poultry).

The practicality of doing this for small producers and backyard enthusiasts is probably not possible. However, you can reasonably focus on visual inspection and the general health of the birds while they’re alive. Just make sure you practice good hygiene. 

Read more: When you raise and process your own chicken, you don’t need to worry at the meat counter.

Using Your Eyes

There is no replacement for a thorough visual inspection of the outside of the carcass, inside of the cavity and visceral organs for evidence of pathological and nonpathological lesions.

The best way to get good at identifying abnormal conditions? Get good at observing what a normal healthy carcass looks like. The more you train your eyes to look at normal muscle, organs and tissues, the more obvious it’ll be when you see abnormal.

Therefore, take lots of high-resolution photos and notes and work with experts. For example, the University of Minnesota Extension has some excellent information on home processing poultry. 

In general, when inspecting the outside, inside cavity and viscera, if you do find something abnormal you can oftentimes just trim or remove that specific part. However, remember “when in doubt, throw it out” if you’re unsure. 

During your visual inspection, look for the following relatively common occurrences. 

Bruises

Broken bones accompanied by (green) hemorrhages indicate that the injury occurred long before slaughter. What you should do: Condemn the entire carcass.

Localized Bruises

A reddish purple bruise indicates that the bruise happened during slaughter. Trim and condemn only affected part.

When doing inspection of the carcasses inside and out, look for any type of contamination such as crop and intestinal contents and feces. If you can’t trimming can’t be done, condemn the entire carcass. 

You can try to wash out contaminated carcasses. But it’s important to appreciate that bacteria such as salmonella are very “sticky.” They form biofilms that make removing them entirely impossible. 

As a reference, the approximate condemnation rate of commercial broilers is approximately 2 percent. Keep track of your condemnation rate. And identify what diseases and other abnormalities you observe. This is an excellent way to evaluate your husbandry program.

Don’t eat dead birds that died before slaughter. And if you notice significant problems during processing, consider alternatives and mitigations to your husbandry, biosecurity, welfare and other relevant practices. 

While all that gives some more specific details, another way to approach your visual inspection is to not use birds that have any of the following:

• lumps or spots of any size on the surface of the liver or other organs
• any measurable quantity of fluid in the body cavity
• fat in a poorly fleshed bird, which is orange rather than yellow or white
• any internal organs that are roughly two or more times greater than the normal size of that organ (you can ignore changes in size of the gall bladder)
• breast meat with the same coloration as meat of the thighs and legs
• meat showing white streaks or an area of abnormal enlargement when compared to the same area on the opposite side of the bird

Read more: Want to raise your own broiler chickens? Here’s what you need to know.

Common Diseases & Other Abnormalities 

It’s important to realize that many poultry diseases are “epi-
zoonotic.” This means they only affect the birds and don’t affect humans.

However, if the bird has a disease, it’s most likely more susceptible to other diseases including some salmonella species, which are zoonotic (i.e., they can make us sick). Just because your birds “look healthy” doesn’t mean they aren’t carrying zoonotic diseases. 

For example, Salmonella heidelberg and Salmonella enteritidis for the most part don’t make the birds sick but do make humans sick. Consequently, when we see abnormalities, the recommendation is, at minimum, to condemn affected tissues. In many cases, including when in doubt, you should just condemn the entire carcass.

However, many zoonotic diseases show no apparent pathology via visual inspection. Hence the reason the FSIS and often the companies themselves do microbiological testing. 

The following is a non-exhaustive list of relatively common diseases and other abnormalities to watch out for during your visual inspection: 

Leukosis & Other Tumors

Unless the tumor has only affected one visceral organ, the whole carcass should be condemned. Lymphoid leucosis is a tumor-producing epizootic viral disease usually of chickens that are 16 weeks or older.

Due to the age, it’s a more common disease in laying hens. It can, however, affect some younger broiler birds. Look for whitish gray masses in the liver, spleen, ovaries, testes, eyes or muscles. You’ll also see the appearance of nodular enlargement of feather follicles in skin leucosis.

Septicemia-Toxemia (Sep-Tox)

Septicemia refers to the presence of bacteria in the blood stream. When birds become septicemic, their organs begin to malfunction and the cells within their body deteriorate. A bird is only septic for a brief period. Then it either recovers or dies. 

However, even if the infection subsides, the carcasses are typically not aesthetically desirable and therefore often condemned. If the bird has septicemia when it is processed, the following may be visualized: petechial (pinpoint) hemorrhages (i.e., bleeding) on the heart, liver, kidneys and muscles.

Unaffected portions of the carcass may be salvaged.

Air Saculitis

This is an infection of one or more of the nine air sacs found in a chicken’s chest and abdomen. The air sacs are normally clear, thin membranes. If they are cloudy or “cheesy,” it can be a sign of infection including E. coli. For our purposes, it’s best to condemn the entire carcass if observed. 

The best way to ensure healthy birds for processing is to keep your flock healthy. “Garbage in, garbage out” is an accurate statement when it comes to poultry husbandry. It is much more difficult to address disease issues during processing (as opposed to when the birds are alive) through proper husbandry and biosecurity. 

Simply put: If your birds are healthy, processing them into healthy broiler meat is much easier than raising your birds under unhealthy conditions (contact with rodents, poor ventilation, etc.) and then trying to clean the meat. 

More Information

Cold Is Your Friend

To keep bacterial growth down, always maintain a “cold chain” with your processed bird. Keeping the carcasses at refrigeration temperatures and below is essential for proper handling.

For commercial poultry, chilling the carcasses within four hours, and the giblets within two hours, to 40 degrees or lower is required. In modern commercial poultry plants, this usually happens within one hour. 

Non DIYers

If you want to process your birds but are uncomfortable with slaughter and evisceration and/or you don’t want to pay for all the necessary equipment, a handful of entrepreneurs who specialize in mobile slaughter and processing of poultry for smaller flocks exists. Mobile Poultry Processing Units (MPPUs) can offer a safe option for processing a few birds without having to “get dirty.” 

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2021 issue of Chickens magazine.