Farm to table: Participants at workshop in Olathe learned how chickens are processed

If your backyard chicken is destined to become a chicken dinner, the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop & Farm in Olathe can help you learn the skills to make that happen.

The farm recently held a chicken processing workshop where participants learned how to slaughter, pluck and extract the chicken’s internal organs.

Grace Fritz, stagecoach operations supervisor at Mahaffie, noticed that while there are a lot of classes around Johnson County about how to raise backyard chickens, there aren’t so many on going from the backyard to the kitchen table.

“I think Mahaffie has a really unique opportunity where we can teach people some of these skills they want to learn that nobody around here is teaching,” Fritz said. “It’s a skill that’s hard to learn, and a lot of people want to learn.”

Although the farm generally does demonstrations in a historically accurate way, relative to the 1860s, this particular program did require a more current method.

“We are doing everything from a modern animal welfare standpoint. We’re using what is now considered industry standard as far as dispatching chickens,” Fritz said.

Staff members raised the chickens at Mahaffie, and participants helped catch the ones they’d be using.

To start the process, teen volunteer Emily Kozlowski, 14, turned each chicken upside down and placed it in a metal cone attached to a fence. She then made a couple of quick cuts to the chicken’s neck.

“I feel like if you’re going to eat a chicken, you better be ready to kill it yourself,” said Olathe resident Ethan Priefert, 16.

Once that was finished, Fritz and education assistant Peggy Porter dipped the chickens in nearly boiling water for a minute or two before plunging them into ice water.

That’s when the real hands-on process began for the nine people in the class. Working quickly, they plucked all the feathers off each chicken. Olathe resident Robin Hazeslip likened it to pulling hair out of a brush.

“People need to know where their food comes from. Kids don’t know where their chicken nuggets came from,” Hazeslip said. “I’m not taking for granted the dispatch part. That’s not easy, and I don’t want it to be easy. Knowing how to do it right and humanely is why I’m here.”

She said appreciated having the experts on hand to ask when she had questions on any part of the process.

Next came the demonstration of how to extract everything from the chicken’s neck to its gizzards out of the cloaca. That’s the part of the chicken where both waste and eggs come out regularly.

After that, everyone bagged up their chickens for use in future Mahaffie demonstrations. The Kansas Department of Agriculture does not allow Mahaffie to distribute the chicken meat to anyone for consumption.

Both Ethan Priefert and 10-year-old Stella Bowles of Lenexa asked their parents to come to the workshop. Stella’s father, Levi Bowles, agreed to bring her.

“It feels like a good skill to have, and it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s a lot of work to get the feathers off.”

Whatever brought them to the workshop, Fritz said she was happy to provide a controlled environment where everyone could learn.

“This is to give people an opportunity to try it out before maybe they commit to do it themselves,” Fritz said. “Nobody wants to try this on their own for the first time.”