How to Butcher a Turkey

Autumn makes me think of vibrant leaves, warm soups, pumpkins, comfy sweaters, and harvesting the bounty that I have nurtured for the last 6 months. Autumn is harvest season on our homestead. I harvest my garden, fruit trees and because I choose to be an omnivore, I harvest my animals.

We have been raising turkeys for about 6 years now. I started with heirloom varieties but with their slower growth rate and charming personalities, I realized I wanted to keep them every year and was reluctant to butcher them. So now we raise broad breasted turkeys, which have a finish time of usually 12-16 weeks, which is a fairly quick turn around in my opinion. By 16 weeks the expense of keeping broad-breasted turkeys are not worth it, they eat a lot!

I have always raised the bronzes but this year the feed store made a mistake in shipping and we went home with Broad-Breasted Whites instead.  Broad-breasted turkeys are big birds, anywhere from 20-30lbs when fully grown, actually, they just might keep growing forever, but we’ve never kept them past 5 months (truthfully 5-month-old turkeys are often too big to roast).

 

Now poultry processing is not my favorite part of homesteading.  Processing is a messy, stinky (imagine hot wet feathers), and usually, an all-day affair, followed by a massive cleanup.  I dislike processing poultry so much that I  usually don’t process my old laying hens either. When my older 2-3-year-old layers start slowing down their egg production, I find them new homes with people who want to have a few backyard layers but do not want to mess with chicks.  To me, laying hens are not worth the effort of processing, but turkeys, on the other hand, are. Turkeys are large and meaty animals who have a decent feed conversion rate. A 4 lb chicken versus a 30lb turkey, for 30lb turkey I will brave the feathers and ick of poultry processing.

To process our 5 turkeys we had a team; my husband Greg is the organizer and hatchet wielder, my mom is the feather plucker (she is really good), and I do the evisceration and final cleaning. Make sure you have all of your essential tools ready and waiting before you start.  I also like to wait until the weather cools down it helps keep the yellowjackets and flies away.

We try and minimalize the trauma and stress of butchering day for the animals. Sounds a bit like an oxymoron but I value all of the animals’ lives, no matter how short they are, by making sure they are cared for and that they live out their lives doing the innate animal thing that is unique to each species. To my way of thinking why should their death be any different. We process the birds away from the other animals. We remain calm when handling them and keep movements slow and deliberate.

Needed Equipment:

Knives – Sharp knives are essential, make sure you have several.

Heat Resistant Rubber Gloves – The kind your grandmother wears when washing dishes.

Scalding Tank – We use a 25 gallon Army stock pot that my mother found in a flea market years ago, but a galvanized washtub will also do the trick.

Large Table – It is very helpful to have a table to process on, your back will thank you.

Rubbermaid Containers – we use Rubbermaid containers to collect the entrails and feathers, you could also use buckets or garbage bags.

Large Cooler – This is for chilling the turkeys after processing, we fill it with ice and water.

Cutting Board – Helps with chopping the feet off.

Hatchet – For cutting off the head.

Ice –  5 bags.

The Process:

 

We lock out turkeys in the chicken house the night before processing, our turkeys are raised with the chickens and we’ve never had any problems with blackhead or any other disease.  When we are ready to butcher, I open the door to the chicken house and called out and the turkeys come running, eagerly expecting something good to eat. We let one out at a time, and keep the others in the house. Because the birds are so strong, and we may have once had an incident of a turkey wing to the nose that my husband did not appreciate, we now use the feedbag method.

 

 

 

• Restraining the turkey – cut one corner of a feed bag, making a small hole that only the head can fit through. Slip the bag over the turkey guiding its head through the hole, this confines their movement and prevents flailing wings and the possibility of a broken nose (see above). As soon as the head is through the hole, grab the feet through the bag and hold the bird upside down. There is no struggle at this point, holding a bird upside down seems to send them into a trance.
• KIlling the turkey – Gently but quickly lay the head on the butcher block and swiftly cuts off the head with a very sharp hatchet. The spinal column is severed quickly and death is instantaneous. At this point, reflexes take over and the headless bird kicks and twitches. Try and hold the carcass in place so the blood does not make such a mess.
• Scald and pluck the turkey –  As part of the prepping process, fill a large pot or cauldron full of water. Heat the tub of water over a small fire made out of cinder blocks or ideally a Turkey Fryer ( I am buying this next time) to about 150F. Once the carcass is bled out and done twitching, plunge the turkey into the scalding tank, holding the legs and feet. Swirl the bird in the water for about 1 minute.  Remove the bird and pluck the feathers in a downward, or against the feather growth direction (think of it like petting a cat backward.  Don’t forget to wear rubber gloves.
• Evisceration –  After plucking the turkey, rinse the bird well with fresh water to remove loose feathers. Remove the feet by cutting between the joints, and set aside the feet for making broth. Insert the knife about one inch above the vent, slitting the skin carefully up to the breastbone. Cut around either side of the vent and remove it. Reach your hand into the bird and run your hand along the ribs to free the entrails. and pull the entrails gently and remove them completely. Slit the neck skin, loosen the trachea and esophagus all the way down to where they enter the body. Loosen the crop and pull it free from the body.
• Chilling –  Rinse the bird thoroughly, inside and out. Place the bird into a cooler filled with water and ice. Make sure the turkey is completely submerged. After chilling for at least 12 hours, remove the turkey and pat dry. You can then package the bird however you like, whether a large zip-close bag, a heat-shrink bag, or vacuum sealer.

 

 

This blog exists mainly in part so you can learn from my mistakes, so here are just a few turkey processing mistakes that I made this time!

• Make sure the bag is heavy duty or the turkey will fall through the hole in the bag
• Try not to throw the headless turkey at your husband, turns out having his face liberally splattered with turkey blood makes him grumpy. Big baby….(It was a little toss, I didn’t want to splattered)
• Don’t leave your turkey in the boiling water more than a minute or two, par-boiled turkey isn’t actually the desired outcome.
• Swatting yellowjackets just makes them mad…….

 

 For more information here are my book suggestions for butchering animals at home.

 

Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, and Pork: The Comprehensive Photographic Guide to Humane Slaughtering and Butchering by Adam Danforth

 

 

 

 

The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making: How to Harvest Your Livestock & Wild Game by Philip Hasher