FUN IN THE SHOP: MEET THE CHICKEN PROCESSING TEAM

We have a day off in the shop today.  The chicken processing shop is usually humming on Fridays, which is when we do custom chicken processing.  The weekly routine is that people who have scheduled their birds (chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, guinea hens) or rabbits bring them in on Thursday evening.  Everyone fills out a tag with identifying that they brought a certain number of birds (roughly, because sometimes it really is hard to count chickens when they are running around) and how they want us to package them.  Friday is a busy day getting everyone’s birds through and into the cooler to be picked up in the evening.  A full day is 200 birds, and a minimum is about 30.

The work of processing chickens is a family affair.  Everyone pitches in to their age appropriate level.  The older ones grow into the job of training and managing the younger ones.  This provides layers of skills for every age level. After all, if you can manage your younger brother, you can manage anyone, right? In addition to knowing how to butcher a chicken (which is valuable in itself), how to use the internal organs, and how to cut up a chicken any number of ways, the kids learn how to teach, mangement skills, how to calculate a bill, and customer service skills.  This year they get paid by percent, so they use their algebra and basic math skills to know how much they get for the day.  This is why, as parents, we have a custom chicken processing shop.

Here’s a video from last year where the kids share their motivation for working in the shop: