Self sufficiency and food security are important themes today. Additionally, many people are choosing to take more active responsibility for the quality and management of the food they raise themselves. I remember being a youngster and hearing my grandmother say that store-bought chickens had no taste and frankly the situation hasn't improved in the intervening 40+ years since I was a kid.
This is an accessible and responsibly written guide to safely butcher and process chickens for home use. The introduction and first chapter cover safety, accessibility, tools, handling, maintenance (very important!), tool selection, etc. The following chapters provide step by step tutorials for food safety, setups for processing, actual slaughtering, butchering (preparing the slaughtered chickens safely and efficiently), and packaging and freezing.
The author does an admirable job of not pushing one brand of equipment over another. There is no obvious product placement involved and there are a wide variety of brands included. The photography is superlative and very clear and illustrates each step in the tutorials. There is no doubt that a determined reader, using only the illustrated tutorials in this book could successfully and safely process and butcher a chicken. I always recommend getting help (especially for beginners), but failing that, this book would provide sufficient instruction to perform the task humanely and well.
There's also a glossary, pretty solid resource links list, and good bibliography for further reading.
Five stars. This is a good book for the smallholder's library and will undoubtedly become a classic. It's short enough to be accessible and not overwhelming, and thorough enough to be safe and responsible.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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