Accessing your Chickens for Health
Quick Look
Learn how to perform a complete head-to-toe health assessment on your chickens.
Discover what healthy combs, wattles, eyes, feathers, legs, feet, and body condition should look like.
Understand how daily observation helps identify health problems before they become serious.
Learn how to check chickens for mites, lice, scaly leg mites, and bumblefoot during routine flock inspections.
Find out what healthy internal organs should look like during processing or a poultry necropsy.
Discover when an on-farm necropsy may provide useful information and when a veterinary diagnostic laboratory is the better choice.
Explore how careful observation and recordkeeping support better breeding decisions.
Hear an interesting breeding observation about how mature roosters may influence the development of young cockerels.
Download our free Poultry Necropsy Reference Guide for photographs and reference information to help evaluate flock health.
How to Assess Your Chicken's Health: What Every Poultry Keeper Should Know
Keeping chickens healthy starts long before you notice obvious signs of illness. Experienced poultry keepers learn to recognize subtle changes in appearance, behavior, and body condition that can signal a problem before it becomes an emergency. Regular flock observation is one of the most valuable management practices for backyard flocks, breeding programs, and small farms alike.
In this episode, Jennifer Bryant and Carey Blackmon discuss practical ways to evaluate a chicken's health, beginning with routine visual inspections and progressing to what can be learned from processing birds or performing a poultry necropsy. They explain what healthy combs, wattles, eyes, feathers, legs, feet, and internal organs should look like while sharing practical observations from years of raising and breeding poultry.
The conversation also explores the importance of recordkeeping and careful observation when making breeding decisions. Jennifer shares an interesting observation from her Orpington breeding program regarding the development of young cockerels housed with mature roosters. While this is a personal flock observation rather than established research, it highlights why documenting breeding results over multiple generations is an important part of improving any poultry breeding program.
Whether you raise a backyard flock for eggs, breed exhibition birds, or process your own poultry for the table, learning to recognize what is normal—and what is not—can help you make informed management decisions and respond more quickly when health concerns arise.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can you tell if a chicken is healthy?
A healthy chicken is alert, active, and behaves normally for its breed and age. Clear eyes, clean nostrils, a properly aligned beak, smooth feathers, healthy legs and feet, and good body condition are all indicators of good health. Regular observation allows you to recognize subtle changes before they develop into more serious problems.
What should you check during a routine chicken health inspection?
A complete health assessment includes examining the comb, wattles, eyes, nostrils, beak, feathers, skin, vent, legs, feet, and overall body condition. Watching how your chickens walk, eat, breathe, perch, and interact with the flock can also reveal early signs of illness.
What are the signs of mites or lice in chickens?
Mites and lice can cause feather damage, excessive scratching, irritation, decreased egg production, and poor feather quality. Check around the vent, under the wings, and at the base of the feathers for moving insects or clusters of eggs attached to the feather shafts.
What are scaly leg mites?
Scaly leg mites burrow beneath the scales on a chicken's legs, causing the scales to lift and appear rough or thickened. Early treatment can help prevent discomfort and permanent damage to the legs.
What is a poultry necropsy?
A poultry necropsy is the examination of a bird after death to help determine a possible cause of illness or death. Examining the internal organs, digestive tract, and body condition can provide valuable information about disease, parasites, nutritional problems, and overall flock health.
Can you perform a chicken necropsy yourself?
Many backyard poultry keepers perform basic necropsies to better understand what may have caused a bird's death. However, if an infectious disease is suspected or multiple birds are affected, submitting the bird to a veterinary diagnostic laboratory can provide a more definitive diagnosis.
What should healthy chicken organs look like?
Healthy organs should have a normal color, size, and texture. The liver is typically a smooth, dark reddish-brown, the lungs are pink, and the heart should feel firm. Significant discoloration, swelling, parasites, or unusual growths may indicate an underlying health problem.
Why is daily observation important for flock health?
Daily observation helps poultry keepers notice changes in appetite, posture, breathing, feather condition, droppings, body weight, and behavior before obvious illness develops. Learning what is normal for your flock is one of the most effective ways to identify potential health concerns early.
Additional Resources
Looking for a visual reference while examining your birds?
Download our Poultry Necropsy Reference Guide (PDF) for photographs of healthy internal organs, common abnormalities, and helpful reference information to use during processing or when performing a necropsy.
Related Topics
Bumblefoot in Chickens: Causes and Prevention
Keeping Better Breeding Records for Healthier Chickens
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Jennifer: 0:23
So I have a, I'm growing out all of these birds and taking like extreme amount of notes on them. Yeah. Per band number. Okay. So one of the things I have noticed, Observation wise is the
Carey: 0:41
so today we're gonna talk about assessing your chicken's health. And I called Jennifer and she didn't realize it until just now that she was fixing to tell me about her, assessing her Orpingtons. So let's talk about it.
Jennifer: 1:01
I wasn't prepared to talk about that on air though. I was just talking to you.
Carey: 1:07
You're notice, you're noticing some things and you're documenting a whole lot. I am. And that's important whether you're showing chickens or whether you're building a homestead.
Jennifer: 1:22
Okay, so what I was fixing to say was that an observation that I am making is I divide my Orpingtons when I take'em out of the barn, which is roughly eight-ish weeks. Kind of depends on the weather,'cause the time of the year, but. I divide'em by the sex at the eight weeks. So one end of the run, I have 12 runs, right? And so on one side I do all the cock rolls on the other side, I do all the pulls. So there is some separation.
Carey: 1:56
Why do you do that?
Jennifer: 1:57
Just because the boys grow bigger, more feed hog. I don't know. It just seems like the right thing to do, but I never, I just started doing it and I've always done it. I can't remember why I started doing it, but one thing I am observing this year, which I have never noticed before, is. I have done multiple M meetings and so I have several cock birds and you only need them for what, four to six weeks and then the rest of the year they're hanging out. They were in a run by themselves. Hanging out in between finding some girls and the young cock rolls migrated over to roost with them, like they went over the fence to roost with'em. And so I left them because they, the boys didn't care. And I was like, okay, as long as you don't kill'em, you can keep'em as like your children or whatever. I don't know, but they were fine. But my point being is I have more groups than I have cock birds and the cock rolls that have grown up with the cock birds are not maturing. As quickly, and they're putting all of their energy into growing size, and so even at six months, they look like Strangly teenagers, but the boys who were on their own or may have been mixed up with pulls just because I misgendered them when I moved them. Have bigger combs that are getting their hackle feathers and their sickle feathers at a younger age, and they don't seem to be growing as large as the ones that had that dominant cock bird in with them. And
Carey: 4:03
What's their temperament like?
Jennifer: 4:05
They're, or paintings, you can just, sit down and sit with them.
Carey: 4:10
So they're still pretty chill birds. Yeah. Nobody's acting stupid or nothing like that.
Jennifer: 4:16
No, but the obs it's at this point, just an observation. I would probably need to talk to one of my mentors, my old timers to see if that is really a thing. But. The massive size of these Ros that are with the cock birds, they, the cock birds are now the smallest birds in those runs. That's how much of a difference there is. And I don't have small birds.
Carey: 4:48
So what are you doing? What have you done this year versus last year different? And you don't have to like, give any names or nothing like that. What have you done?
Jennifer: 5:02
I did more controlled matings, like I didn't do, oh you're pretty, let's put you with this one. It was more. What family are you with? And I need to move you down this way. So like JC would've been my biggest bird and I bred him to his daughters. And so now the pullets off of him would be his. I was teasing with David last night. They would be his daughters slash granddaughters. Line breeding him. So that was one. And then I did an outcross to a different line because I liked the color on her bch. So I brought one of her cock birds over. And then those birds, that was one of the last matings. And so those birds are still young, so I haven't assessed them yet. And then I had one that one mating. The only reason I put the birds together was for the length of back, I mean his back. I probably need to put a tape measure on it if I'm not good with measurements off the top of my head. But if I just had to guess. From shoulder to base of his tail, 16, 17 inches.
Carey: 6:28
Wow.
Jennifer: 6:29
Yeah, he's a massive long bird, and so I went and found my longest backed hens. And put with him. And so that was actually my la they're actually still together today. I need to break'em up. But, so that was my actually last pairing. And so those chicks are still way too young to really assess how that worked. So
Carey: 6:57
I've been changing some of the stuff that I've done. Like this year,'cause I'm a fan of incubating in the wintertime. Because to me, keeping a chick warm is a lot easier than keeping a chick not too hot. And, semi-mature or at least a three, four month old bird, in my experience, can handle the extreme heat of the summer. Or even a year old, or six eight month old bird can handle the heat of the summer better than a chick. That's just my thing. But what I'm doing is I'm the taking the approach of why should I keep you instead of, oh, you're pretty like what you said, you ha you're pretty, let me put you here and let me put you there. I'm being, I've learned a whole lot. Over the last couple of years from a couple of different people, and I'm starting to purposefully select this for that to make it better, if that makes sense. Because the better we are as breeders and improving the birds that we look for. Health should be what? One of our deciding factors like vigor, health, survivability, what's some other words people use?
Jennifer: 8:35
I don't know. You totally got me all backwards the way we started today.
Carey: 8:40
Sorry. I was trying to like for once I was the one that was trying to be focused guys and. It just messed Jennifer up, which is, I guess why the other works better.
Jennifer: 8:53
It's fine. I needed to finish my train of thought and I did, and maybe somebody knows the answer. If you already know, if it's already a thing growing birds out with the cock birds, slows their maturity down then send us a message and say I knew that already, or. Hey, I'm gonna try it next time or whatever, but
Carey: 9:12
like for me, so I have a couple, I call'em grandma chickens. Great. They're really good at hen hatching. They will lay where they're supposed to, like clockwork. People say, how do you teach your birds how you're to lay in a nest box? I'm like, I don't, grandma does, because I'll take that hen out of the brood pen when I'm no longer brooding and when I've got, chicks in the grow out and when they're little grandma's in there with all of them before I separate boys and girls. They see her getting in the nest. And they'll do that. They see her doing chicken things and they do that. So for me, at least with the hint, it helps. And I've also had situations where grandpa has been in with the boys, and boys, sometimes they'll get stupid and wanna fight and act dumb. No matter how docile your chickens are when they're teenagers, let's be honest, all teenagers do stupid stuff. Especially on Carter Avenue. Grandpa will go over there and like pop right in the middle of him and start crowing like crazy y'all shut up. Get outta here.
Jennifer: 10:40
Kinda rip on Yellowstone if you wanna fight. Fight with me.
Carey: 10:42
Yeah, that's a really good example.
Jennifer: 10:47
You actually bring up Another thing that I noticed and didn't remember till just now is the birds that are with the cock birds are roosting and have roosted since they were like eight weeks old, whereas the ones that are without are still sleeping in mosh pits.
Carey: 11:06
Yeah. And see, so for what originally brought that to my attention is last winter. For the first time ever I let hand hatch happen. I have, I raised Game Foul and Large Foul and now I have a Birand just one. But Christie loved it. So my friend's you can take it home. She likes it'cause she just had a fit. But anyway, it was cold and I was like, these things are never hatching. I'm not, she is hell bent on setting on'em. I'll just wait a week or two or three. Not quite all of the three.'cause I don't want'em to smell. Wait a couple weeks I'll get'em out, fight with her and boom. Done. I lost track of time. They hatched. And within four weeks, those chicks was like five, six feet up in the air on a roof pole. And because I went out one night to check on'em and I'm looking around, I'm, oh they weren't as vigorous as I thought. And then I start hearing chirping sounds. I'm like, oh, okay, maybe they got outta the fence.'cause the fence that they're in is two by four wire, but the first. Can't remember if it's 18 or 24 inch hardware cloth, but that the first, that much all the way around it is hardware cloth. But that big, they would still get out from time to time, but they could also fly back in. And I'm looking around just dark. They're black. I think one of'em is like a dark brown, but for the rest they're black chickens and. I look up'cause I hear the hen making noise. I'm like they're on a roos pole right up under her. They're only a month old. What the crap? But, chickens they learn how to chicken a lot more when they're with that example.
Jennifer: 13:43
Yep. Do you want to move over to our actual subject for the day?
Carey: 13:49
All of that leads into assessing your chickens for health.
Jennifer: 13:54
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's not a big leap. So today, welcome poultry nerds. On today's episode, we're gonna talk about assessing your chicken's health. And we have, I have an outline and we're gonna follow it for the rest of the, for the rest of the time.
Carey: 14:19
Okay.
Jennifer: 14:21
The idea that I had behind the podcast was like assessing your live birds, but that, and that would be the first part, but then you might. Need to assess a dead bird, which is called a necropsy. Or when you're harvesting birds, then you also need to kinda pay attention to what's going on inside of'em to make sure, they're healthy for you to eat and it gives you insight into the rest of your flock also.
Carey: 14:53
Yeah. If you're gonna harvest 20 birds, I'm not gonna deep dive. All 20 of'em.
Jennifer: 15:02
No,
Carey: 15:03
I'm gonna probably go ahead and get it outta the way pretty quick, and I'm gonna look at a couple of them and I'm gonna take my time with those and if I'm satisfied with those, I'm ready for some chicken.
Jennifer: 15:19
Yeah, I have some in the cooler. I'm gonna bag'em up tomorrow. Okay. So let's just start at the top. So we have live birds. We're starting at the top. So you have the chicken's head. You wanna make sure it's free from scabs the eyes. The scabs would be fighting would be foul px being picked on.
Carey: 15:44
Yeah. Some kind of disease.
Jennifer: 15:47
Yeah, just you can
Carey: 15:48
Tell that they're a little sickly on the. At their comb and waddle around their head and stuff.
Jennifer: 15:54
Yeah, you wanna make sure they're bright red. They're firm. They're not real pale. Now I'm gonna say that I don't know if this is true for every breed. My orpington birds will, their combs will turn bluish on the blade. And then the next day they'll be fine. So I think it's a sign of hormones, a sign of heat or stress or something's going on with them. So if I see my orpingtons get blue on the blade I don't get concerned. I did it first, but it's. It's most of my birds, it's so it's not just a handful of them. So it's something, I don't know if it's in every bird or if it's just my line. Do your B birds do that at all?
Carey: 16:49
So like with mine, when they're young it'll be a little pale until somewhere around the six to 10 week mark. And that depends on whether it's my breasts, my reds. Or one of my game foul. And then they'll change. I call it puberty. It'll change and they'll get really red. And it is not uncommon for me to see a color variation, but when I'm walking the yard, I make note of that variation, and a day or two later, I'm gonna look again. Because what you said, yours changed color, but then they're back. If a bird changes color on their comb and waddles, that's not a panic. Let's go grab some antibiotics. Put tons of crap in their water. That's not that. I would say the most extreme you should go to is grab that bird, put it in a drop pin on the other side of your yard. And look at it again in a day or two.
Jennifer: 18:02
We're gonna have Dr. Morris on in a couple weeks and we're gonna talk to her about combs and Waddles. We need to put that on our list. Yeah, we can do that. Turn blue. But the bird in my mind when I was talking about it is five. My big cock bird in the back and he's five years old. That is not why he is called five, but that's, his name is five, but, and he is five. But his comb for his entire life will be red and then it'll be blue and it'll come back to red. And
Carey: 18:33
he's just, but I think that's neat.
Jennifer: 18:36
It is when you have observed your verge as hard as I have and know that it happens, but
Carey: 18:43
that first time,
Jennifer: 18:44
yeah. That first time you're like, oh my God, my bird's gonna die. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we've talked about combs and Waddles.
Carey: 18:55
Yeah.
Jennifer: 18:56
Eyes need to be clear. No discharge, no cloudiness. The pupils need to be round and the same color on both sides of their head. So it's funny because people like you're left-handed. I'm right-handed, so I carry my birds in my left hand. How do you carry? You carry yours in your right hand.
Carey: 19:14
No, I carry mine in my left hand. Like a football?
Jennifer: 19:17
Yeah. Okay. So their head's under your arm?
Carey: 19:21
No, like head forward.
Jennifer: 19:23
Oh, okay. I carry mine backwards sometimes because
Carey: 19:24
I'll probably pet'em with my right hand.
Jennifer: 19:27
Okay. So e either way you're looking at the eye closest to you, and if you always carry them in your left hand, you may never turn'em around to look at their other eye.
Carey: 19:38
No, but I'll grab their head and spin it, be like,
Jennifer: 19:40
but you gotta make a point to do it, is what I'm saying. Oh
Carey: 19:42
yeah. You gotta do that. Either do it while you're carrying them, or Jeff talks about, get your bucket, flip it upside down, and go sit in the run and watch your birds. But observing them is probably. The best way to figure out all of it. Really.
Jennifer: 20:01
Yep. Okay. So we've got clear eyes, same color, no discharge from the eyes and nostrils. If you do, you've got some kind of respiratory thing going on. And the best thing you can do, in my opinion, is throw'em outside in the grass, get'em some nice fresh air. But that's for another day. The beak should line up, not be cross beak, not be badly overhanging, not be broken and cracked.
Carey: 20:31
Yeah, you don't want your beak to look like your chicken needs braces.
Jennifer: 20:35
You can trim it. I have trimmed beaks for shows. I use the dog nail clippers. And you never go at it with, let me cut an inch and a half off of it. You want to cut off a blades whip? And then a blades width. And then a blades width.
Carey: 20:55
I think with that, the only thing you're really trying to do is get the point down.
Jennifer: 21:00
Yeah, and get'em to line up and a good solid Emory board or rasp or something to smooth it out a little bit.
Carey: 21:11
Yep. And then you give it a bath and a pedicure.
Jennifer: 21:17
Yes, you can do that too.
Carey: 21:18
If you're getting it ready for a show, might as well do it right.
Jennifer: 21:22
Feathers should be in good shape. You need to check'em for mites and lice. So a lot of people actually don't know how to check their birds for mice and lights might mites and lice and
Carey: 21:32
to me, that's a weird, that's a weird thing. Having, okay, so on my breasts, it's pretty easy. I'll grab it like this. With its legs on either side of my hand. I'll use my thumb and my pinky to wrap around its ankles, flip it upside down, pull the wing out, and if there's mites, it's a white bird. Boom, they're right there.
Jennifer: 22:00
Okay, so we're looking at the vent and we're looking for moving freckles. That's exactly how I do it. The caveat, if you are new to that, is it has to be done within seconds because Yeah.
Carey: 22:17
cause they'll jump.
Jennifer: 22:19
They leave the light. So once you separate the feathers, they're scattering. So when we say pick'em up, move the feathers, look at the vent. Six seconds.
Carey: 22:30
It's like cockroaches in the barn when you turn the light on,
Jennifer: 22:33
right? Lice is gonna look at the base of the feathers. Looks like a Q-tip wrapped around the feather shaft. And then they could be white freckles that are moving and you'll see them like on their comb or on their eyes or on their ear lobes. And if you are bathing them, the lice will go to their head, like fleas on a dog. Go away from the water and then you can really see them. So that's what you're looking for there?
Carey: 23:07
Yep.
Jennifer: 23:09
Okay. Scaly leg mites. The nemesis that I have in the backfield, I, they're in the backfield. I don't know where. So I have a problem with them back there. So a chicken's leg has scales and it should be very smooth. You should be able to run your fingers down it and really not even feel the scales so much. However, if you look at it, and it looks like a ladder that somebody could climb up, or a staircase that somebody could climb up, a little bitty tiny person could climb up. Those scales are lifted because the mites are under the scale, and as they engorge themselves, it causes the scale to lift. That is not a good thing. So I went to the a PA website a few years ago and it suggested VIX Vapo Rub. And basically what you're doing there is you're smothering them and, that will kill them. Having done that several times, I am of the opinion that would work better on like a banum that might be up in a cage. On clean bedding.
Carey: 24:29
Yeah.
Jennifer: 24:29
Not an orpington running the field. Yeah. It didn't work. So the next step I tried was washing with Dawn and then coding with the vix. That did work, but I had to repeat it like three times. Then I went to the box store and I bought some mite spray. The citric oil stuff that you, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Might as well have used the dawn. So there was that, and then last year I finally caved and bought some PSP and one squirt each leg threw'em back out in the field.
Carey: 25:15
It's funny you say caved.
Jennifer: 25:16
No more. That
Carey: 25:19
stuff is like stupid expensive.
Jennifer: 25:24
Oh my gosh. It's crazy, but I mean for how much? But it works. Birds I've got and how much time I was spending on fighting these stupid scaly leg mites and it's only one pen. Nothing else has them. Okay. So it's gotta be, they've gotta be in the field in the back somewhere. And that's six acres. How would I ever find them?
Carey: 25:50
So what you do is you take your tractor and get your spreader and put you about a ton of lime in there.
Jennifer: 25:59
Yeah. Or probably in your spare time.
Carey: 26:01
Yeah.
Jennifer: 26:03
So that's, I know that I say I never medicate and hospitalize and blah, blah, blah, and I really don't, but when it comes to leg scaly,
Carey: 26:11
You're killing bugs.
Jennifer: 26:12
Hang it up and put some PSP on it. And I wish I had bought a teaspoon off of somebody, because I think it's eight ounces is a hundred and. 70 bucks or something like that. And I've literally used one squirt bottle of it in two years.
Carey: 26:30
Yeah. Like the eight ounce, is it eight or 32?
Jennifer: 26:35
No, I got the little tiny one that you can lose really easily. Yeah. Another good way to lose$170 is to lose the little bottle,
Carey: 26:43
but I know it's probably in your barn somewhere.
Jennifer: 26:46
No, I know where it is. It's oh, you
Carey: 26:48
found it.
Jennifer: 26:49
I know exactly where it is.
Carey: 26:50
Okay. Yep.
Jennifer: 26:52
Okay. Feet. We talked about the legs. We're down to the feet. We wanna make sure they don't have bumblefoot. They're not bruised in any way. The nails are trimmed and in good shape. I have seen chickens, usually it's the ones with the leg m they get really long toenails, that kind of curl. Like that guy that you see on the Guinness World Records, oh, stop. You had to go
Carey: 27:18
there.
Jennifer: 27:19
It's nasty. That is
Carey: 27:20
gross.
Jennifer: 27:21
But those chickens, their nails will go crook like that.
Carey: 27:24
That's why you get some really good sandpaper and staple it to your roofs poles somewhere.
Jennifer: 27:32
That's not nice.
Carey: 27:34
Just on one end. It's not like they're all having to do it. You'd be surprised. Freaking chickens will go over there and rub on it. I've seen beaks rubbed on it and I've seen feet rubbed on it.
Jennifer: 27:47
I think Gina uses a cinder block, doesn't she?
Carey: 27:50
I know she has a cinder block in her run because she has grit in one side and oyster shells in the other. But
Jennifer: 27:58
on that block,
Carey: 28:00
yeah. Something like that. It's just, it's no different than a dog. A dog's toenails are not gonna get excessively long if they're outside walking around on rocks and dirt and stuff.
Jennifer: 28:16
Yeah, we've never turned ladies. Okay. So at this point in our outline, the bird could be alive or not.
Carey: 28:27
Yep.
Jennifer: 28:28
You can still do all of those things with a dead bird, but live would be great.
Carey: 28:33
Yeah.
Jennifer: 28:34
So now at this point, if you walk out into your coop, you have a dead bird and you really need to know. What happened to it? You have a couple choices. One, you could bag it, freeze it, and take it to your state lab for a necropsy. Here in Tennessee, it was$20. The last time I did it, which was probably 15 years ago,
Carey: 28:58
35 in Alabama.
Jennifer: 28:59
35. Okay. So you just have to call your state lab and ask them. And I have seen a lot of the reports, people post them online and you have to almost have a PhD or read between the lines to assess the the report. So just keep
Carey: 29:17
or they're not detailed for crap. Nope.
Jennifer: 29:22
We think it could be this.
Carey: 29:23
I've seen'em vary. Very direct. And have words that were like two and three inches long. And I've seen them say essentially inconclusive. I ain't paying$30 to figure that out. I'll just look at it myself.
Jennifer: 29:39
Well,$30 plus your time to take it up there and back.
Carey: 29:43
We can actually ship'em in Alabama.
Jennifer: 29:45
Oh, okay.
Carey: 29:46
If you freeze it and send it with dry ice. Oh
Jennifer: 29:49
Yeah.
Carey: 29:50
Which, you're gonna have to ship it frozen with about 10 bucks worth of dry ice in it.
Jennifer: 29:58
And over in
Carey: 29:58
a cooler, so yeah.
Jennifer: 30:01
Okay. Or you could do it yourself. And you don't really need to be a doctor to do it because we're just kinda looking at the main things. So you're going to lay the bird on its back and you're gonna basically undress it. So to expose the breast meat and. In order to make it lay flat, if you've never done it, you're going to put it on its back and then you're gonna put, its your hands on its haw joints and press down and that will dislocate the hips and cause it to lay flat for you. And that's a good trick to do. If you are cleaning one for the oven too, you can dislocate'em.
Carey: 30:49
And I wanna say. That people, this probably brings up the question of how or what, or there's a lot of videos on how to cut up a chicken. There's necropsy videos that have been done by veterinarians that show you things to look for, but I wanna say, make sure you have scissors. And a sharp knife. Now Cutco is a brand that I like. I was turned onto those by my Oh, who turned me onto those?
Jennifer: 31:33
I have a pair,
Carey: 31:35
but it wasn't you.
Jennifer: 31:37
It's a long time ago. See, we're getting old.
Carey: 31:39
Yeah, it's, it is been a while because at first I was like. A hundred. A hundred what?
Jennifer: 31:46
A hundred dollars?
Carey: 31:48
Like these scissors for a hundred to 150 bucks. These scissors should cut it up for me. But having used 15 and$20 pair of poultry shears and using cut coats, you get what you pay for. And if you want it to be a quick process and less taxing on your hands, if you do a lot of them. Get the Cutco and get you a good knife.
Jennifer: 32:16
Or after you buy six pairs of the$15 ones, you end up buying Cutco. You spent twice as much money.
Carey: 32:23
Yeah, you spent double.
Jennifer: 32:26
So anyway, you're going to undress them and expose the breast meat, dislocate the hips so they kinda lay flat. You are going to pull the skin back. You're looking for bruising. Discoloration is the keel Bone straight. Is it scrawny for its age and what you were expecting, like a sign of nutrition and that won't necess, it could mean that you're not feeding correctly, but it could also mean internal parasites or bullying or not in a feeder space, which we need to talk about one day. Yeah,
Carey: 33:06
that's like a whole episode in itself.
Jennifer: 33:09
Yep. And lots of reasons for malnutrition, but this particular episode we're talking about right now is just the highlights of things you can be looking for, and then you can dig deeper into what might cause those.
Carey: 33:23
Yeah.
Jennifer: 33:23
Excessive fat in the body cavity. That was actually brought to my attention from like my best friend in Michigan. She butchers her Americana's, she sends me a picture, which I sent to you and you sent to Jeff and we're like, what in the world? This chicken was like half fat.
Carey: 33:41
Yeah,
Jennifer: 33:41
you had four pounds of meat and four pounds of fat. And I'm like, what in the world are you feeding this thing? And come to find out when I asked her that, but she listens to me and so she was feeding the KBA off lock, but she didn't tell me was, she was sitting out there in the laundry giving'em mealworms and black soldier flies and salad and yogurt and
Carey: 34:06
Oh wow.
Jennifer: 34:08
So you're like feeding your chickens to death.
Carey: 34:14
So she, yeah, if you see I'm gonna say a dime sized golden piece of fat, you're good. If you're talking silver dollars, large quarters, even, unless they're like really thin, like hunks. That bird's overweight.
Jennifer: 34:38
Yep. So just, keep your in mind. And an older bird's gonna have more fat than a younger bird. A sedentary bird, it was like kept in a small cage, might have more. So just keep that in mind. Like these are just things to look for. And then step back and look at the big picture that you have going on in your farm. The next thing you're gonna look at is the liver. That should be like a, it's like a maroonish red color. It's not supposed to have green spots or yellow spots or white spots, or be like a pale whiteish color. It should be a nice, clean. What you think of when you think of beef liver, that maroon color. So yeah. The gallbladder is gonna be like this little tiny thing, maybe the size of your pinky nail behind the liver. And if you break it, it will leak this lime green fluorescent goo on everything completely normal. Don't let that freak you out. The heart should be pink and firm. Jeff told me the other day when I was talking to him that mushy is a sign of heat stress if you have a mushy heart.
Carey: 35:55
We are in the south.
Jennifer: 35:57
Yeah, that's true. The lungs should be nice and pink. Kinda uni. We're looking for uniformity and color. Anything that's not uniform is a sign of an issue. The colon, the intestines, you can actually just slice those open. They're just, they're hollow. They're like a host. A water hose, just slice'em open and look in'em. And you're looking for worms? Blood. Yeah. You can along,
Carey: 36:28
but me, they're semi like, not, they're not transparent, but I guess you'd call it opaque. And if you see something in a moving. Or if you see more red than the guts, you know there's a problem. I don't need to cut it open and look and see exactly what it is.
Jennifer: 36:54
See, I'm all up in there. I'm like, what is that? Lemme look. Just don't see
Carey: 36:59
Okay. In high school I was almost 19 when I graduated'cause my birthday's late, blah, blah, blah. So my senior year in high school, I worked in the meat market and grocery store. So going through all that, hey, no problem. I would cut up steaks like the whole chunk on the saw, standing in that red stuff. No problem. Checking out the inside of the intestines. No boy, not happy. Like you into a chitlin supper, you're saying? No. And even as an adult I have enough kids to have a football team that I've been responsible for, but like that kind of diaper I can't do I will lose my most recent meal if it was yesterday even. It gets me that bad. Everything else, I'm good. Pinky hanging off bleeding. Bone popped out. Whatever. I'm good. That, Nope.
Jennifer: 38:02
See, I'm good. Vomit. I'm out. Out.
Carey: 38:05
Oh yeah that's the, no, can't do that.
Jennifer: 38:08
All right. So the most common question about this kind of stuff that I get in my messages is what kind of, tools do I use and I'm pretty crude. We have an old piece of granite that I lay either on a fish cleaning table or on the tailgate of the gator. We use the Cutco scissors. I have a sharp knife. I do have a Cutco knife, but actually you brought a set up and I bought a set just like it, it's like a$30 set off of Amazon and that knife. Will like slice tea look
Carey: 38:43
That meat cleaver is probably an eighth of an inch thick. Yeah. And it is. It's serious.
Jennifer: 38:50
Yeah. And 30 bucks.
Carey: 38:52
Yeah.
Jennifer: 38:53
And so we have a couple knives, just whatever floats your boat. David insists that I wear cut proof gloves. I think they have glass fibers or something in them. You can bleach'em in the washing machine afterwards or run'em through dishwasher. But you can take the knife and that, that knife and go across your fingers and it will not cut you. But because I'm accident prone, he insists if I'm going to butcher chickens to do that. As far as the actual dispatching is concerned we have a couple of methods. We have the old school hatchet method. The broomstick method is my new favorite because I can do it by myself. And I don't need him to come help me. Because again, the whole hatchet cutting the arm off thing, he's not a fan. And then the the cutting of the jugular. I tried that with a Turkey actually Saturday and it worked really nice.
Carey: 39:52
Really?
Jennifer: 39:52
Yes. Again, it was like
Carey: 39:54
turkeys or they're two people.
Jennifer: 39:58
Yeah, but I could have done, Taylor was with me, but I could have done it by myself, I think.
Carey: 40:03
I gotta see this.
Jennifer: 40:04
Yeah, because
Carey: 40:06
that's, that'll be something.
Jennifer: 40:07
So you don't really need a whole lot of stuff. We did have a scalar going. I did have my, I have a pluck. So we had the pluck her out. Scalar needs to be at 155 degrees. It's very important it be at 155.'cause you don't wanna cook the bird and you don't want it too cool. You need to switch them with their feet to get that water and everything wet. And put'em in the pluck. We've tried it with the hose and without the hose. Taylor, my son was doing it and he likes to do it without the hose, so we did it without the hose.
Carey: 40:41
Less of a mess.
Jennifer: 40:43
Yeah. We just laid old feedback underneath the pluck. When we were done, we just rolled the feathers right up into the feedback. So there wasn't even a mess when we were done. So we did 10 chickens and one Turkey in, I don't know, about an hour and a half.
Carey: 41:02
That's pretty good. Yeah. So long story short, when you're looking at this stuff, if you go to poultry nerds podcast.com, there's some reference papers that we've gotten from Dr. Morida that has pictures. Talks about different diseases and what you may find. So if you wanna go there to help identify, no problem. It's not uncommon for either one of us to get pictures of that or poop. Our Facebook messenger. Good morning. Hey. Yeah, good morning. My chicken's poop looks like this. What's wrong with it? We're, use us as a resource. That's why we're here. We have fun. Yes. But we like to teach people and like to be a resource so
Jennifer: 41:52
we don't give us a
Carey: 41:53
shout.
Jennifer: 41:53
The answer.
Carey: 41:55
If you want to, you can email info@poultrynerds.com. Poultry nerds podcast.com. That comes to us. So yeah, we'll help you out.
Jennifer: 42:06
All right. Till next time,
Carey: 42:08
have a good one.