Cleaning a Chicken Skull and Body

In order to get down to the beautiful clean chicken skull you can use a multitude of different techniques to get the bones cleaned and to your liking. You can either clean them by mastication and let nature takes its course in your favor take a more hands on approach and clean the chicken us. Today, in this article, we will be looking mostly at the later option and follow the steps of cleaning the chicken bones and rooster skeletons yourself.

Let’s read the step-by-step process on how to clean a chicken and get to its beautiful skeleton and skull.

Cleaning the Body of Your Chicken

Removing the feathers from your chicken:

When we are talking removing feathers from your chicken, we simply grip and rip. This is probably the easiest step in the entire process as there is not much in the way of skill or technique. You just grab feathers and pull the from the body of the bird. Be sure to keep your workspace tidy as this step can easily get messy on you in a hurry.

Getting into your chicken’s inner workings:

The best way to find out what is going on inside of your bird is to firmly hold down the legs and lower portion with one hand while you grab the bottom of the breastbone with your other hand. Carefully and slowly pull up on the breastbone until it raises all the way up, exposing the entire inside of the bird. Once you are on the inside of the bird you can see all of its organs and such that you will need to remove during the next step of the process.

Removing the innards from the chicken:

While you have the breastbone of your chicken pulled back and you have fully exposed the inside of your bird you will see a heart, lungs, spleen, pancreas, intestines, liver, and more. These can be removed from the body of your chicken easily step by step and used in wet specimen jars or discarded as your please. The heart and lungs are easily found and can be grabbed with your fingers and removed with little effort or worry. Once you get the lungs and heart out of the inside of your bird you can grab what is left from under them and pull up to get a better view of the intestines. Once you have the intestinal tract pulled up and are grasping everything in your hand you can go ahead and remove the rest of it together at once.

Removing the breastbone completely from the chicken:

Now that you have the insides removed from the bird you can take a firm grasp onto the breastbone of the chicken once again, except this time we will be grabbing on the inside right at the base of the top of the chest bone. Making sure we hold down the rest of the bird’s body with our other hand, as we did before, we will remove the breastbone the rest of the way. The wings of the bird should be removed with the breastbone, and it should all come off in one piece during this process.

Removing the legs from your chicken:

You have removed the breastbone and wings as well as the innards of the chicken, and now it’s time to remove the bird’s legs from the body. To do this you can take a knife or scissors to help you easily remove the chicken leg from the bird’s body. Usually, starting from the top of the bird right at the base of the leg where it meets the body, you can start cutting down towards the rear end of the animal. Around mid-way through cutting down the leg you will reach the ball and socket joint that connects the leg to the hip of the animal in order to allow it to run and walk. This can be separated either by pulling a little bit and/or cutting through it with your scissors or knife. It shouldn’t hold up your process very much, but if it is your first time cleaning a chicken it may seem as if this step is not supposed to be done this way. I assure you that it is supposed to be done this way, however. Finish down the leg until it is separated completely from the rest of the body, and then repeat the process on the other side of the bird to have two chicken legs as your product.

I recommend these scissors, because they are cheap and sturdy. (Amazon.com)

Removing the wings:

In a similar set up to a shoulder joint, the wings on your bird will be attached to the breastbone by another ball and socket joint. You should be a little bit used to this process by now having dealt with the bird’s legs prior to this. In a comparable fashion, find the base of the wing where it connects the breastbone and run your scissors or knife through the meat until you find and separate the joint that connects the wing to the rest of the chest. Once you have completely cut through and removed this wing you can easily repeat this step on the other side in order to finally have two chicken wings separated from the rest of the bird.

Quick Short Cut to Cleaning Your Chicken:

If you want a quicker version of this cleaning process, but you still want to go hands on in cleaning your chicken, you can take the chicken and lay it on its back with its wings outstretched. Placing the bird on its back with its head away from you, you can then step on the wings of the chicken as close as possible to the body of the bird. Once you are standing on the wings of the bird up against the body, you should then take both feet into your hands and carefully, in a slow and steady manner, pull the feet upwards towards you while holding the wings down with your feet. When you are nearly halfway down pulling the bird apart, you stop pulling and retrieve the bird with both hands. You then remove the breastbone from the rest of the bird with both hands in a similar fashion mentioned earlier in this article. This is a quick short cut to cleaning a chicken and/or rooster without all of the step-by-step processes and tools involved.

Cleaning the Head of Your Chicken:

Skinning:

With a delicate skinning knife, take the chicken skull and remove the skin and feathers from around the head. Make sure you are careful not to break any of the delicate chicken skull bones, as these are incredibly fragile bones. You don’t need to worry so much about the tiny little bits of meat and tissue that are still on the skull of the chicken as the next step will take care of this problem.

Peroxide:

Take a large enough container to fill with hydrogen peroxide that will completely cover the chicken skull(s) and place the skull(s) into the peroxide. You can leave the chicken skull in the peroxide for around 15-20 minutes and check on it to see how well the process has worked at releasing some of the tissue from the head. This should help the next stage in the process go smoothly and soften up any meat and tissue still left on the chicken’s skull.

Washing it off:

Take the chicken skull and wash off any meat and tissue you can under a considerable force of water. You don’t want the force of the water to be too high, like a pressure washer, because it will break the delicate bones in the skull. If you want to use an old toothbrush or something, that may help during this stage of the process as well.

Back to the Peroxide:

Now that you have the skull mostly cleaned, there is still a little bit to go until you have your finished product. Take a smaller container, maybe a mason jar, and fill it most of the way with your peroxide. Carefully place your chicken skulls inside of the jar with the peroxide and let it sit for at least a couple of hours. This should help finish releasing any small amounts of flesh, meat, and tissue left on the skull during this time.

Wash again:

Now we can take the skull back to the sink and finish up the cleaning process. Now that we have left it in the peroxide for several hours, anything that was left on it should be nice and easy to remove with a small tool.

Glue it Up:

This is the last step in the process, and if you were careful enough there is a small chance that you can avoid having to do this step all together. Any parts of the skull that broke off or fell off during the cleaning process can now be glue back on in the correct locations. Simply follow a chicken skull diagram or take a picture of its structure before the middle steps are completed and glue the parts back to where they belong. Now you have a clean and completed chicken skull!

Recap & Summary

This cleaning process for a chicken and/or rooster is easily doable inside of 20 minutes and it has a difficulty level of very low to low. It is great for anyone to learn how to clean a bird and get their hands dirty at least a time or two to know how the process works. Whether you are hunting or not, it is an incredibly fascinating subject, and you can learn a lot about the world around you from participating in this activity.

You found out how to clean a chicken and/or rooster from start to finish if you want to take the more hands-on approach instead of just letting the bugs eat it up. This way you can save the meat from the kill, if it is still fresh, and you can use it for food and more. If the scenario calls for going hands on and cleaning the chicken at home or in the field; these step-by-step instructions will afford you the capabilities to properly handle your game from start to finish. You also found a quicker short cut to the entire process of cleaning the chicken’s body if you are strapped for time.

If you came here just for the skull cleaning portion, you found a step-by-step guide to completing this as well. We went over exactly how to clean a chicken’s skull every step of the way and found out that these delicate little bones need to be handled with a soft hand and care or they can easily be broken. Don’t worry too much though because we also found out that if they do break, which they most likely will, we can easily glue the parts back together and it will look good as new.

Whatever you choose to do with this information, we hope you have fun and learn a lot at the same time. There is so much fascinating information out there in the world and things to see and do that will amaze you. From the delicate art of cleaning chicken skulls to hunting and cleaning the entire animal, there are entire concepts that you can easily get lost in for days at a time in a seemingly never-ending matrix of fun. Knowledge is power, and now you have a little bit more of both.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this article! : )