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Ummmm no goats or chickens here.....:o) I get a Mulie and a Elk each year and trade work for beef, poultry and pork already butchered. Fishing every chance we get.......:o)

Goats are hiredhand’s subject matter expertise. I am off to bed, thanks again .......:o) Nite !

There are TWO glands behind the horns on a buck goat that you really, REALLY want to avoid. This isn't usually an issue since he's most likely hanging upside down anyway when you skin him. The hide will peel OVER his head, and we always cut the head off as close to behind the ears as we can so as not to waste meat. Then again, I can't recall the last time we butchered a larger intact male goat. Usually, they only get big around here if they display good dairy characteristics (the females get their dairy characteristics from their sire). Because it's bad to interbreed, we can't keep many males that we birth here. We band them when they're less than a week old and then butcher them when they're about 50 lbs. You end up with "about" 25 lbs of meat and my family of five will eat for "about" a week on that. My daughter "thinks" that goats have scent glands on their hind quarters as with deer, but we're not sure because we only ever butcher wethers (castrated males).

Can you explain about the bitter meat ruining spot [gland] on the liver.

I "think" this is the bile sack on the liver...yes...it's pretty nasty IF you manage to get it ON any of the meat. We just cut around it and it's never been a problem. It's pretty much at the center of the liver where it's all held together so just cut around it and things should be just fine.

As for chickens... we whack em with a hatchet, or machete on the neck and while it doesn't necessarily sever the head, they bleed out well. Be sure that either you or somebody else is holding on tightly to the birds feet when this happens, or they'll bruise themselves flopping around and bruised chicken is "different" after it's cooked. But we whack em, and then tie them upside down on a board in the shed by their feet with bailing twine and then skin them from the bottom end down toward their heads. We don't keep the little wing tip ends because they're just TOO much trouble to skin out so you can either nip them off with a stout pair of scissors, or cut the wing joint with a knife. BUT...if things were "leaner", we'd definitely keep these parts and just go to the trouble, because food is FOOD. After the bird is skinned, we cut its head off and gut it. If it hadn't bled out well enough by this time, it does after its head comes off during during the time we're cleaning its insides out.

I'll say this for chicken though.... I have a friend with a degree in poultry science who told me these things. These tips are in the interest of keeping pathogens OUT of your food! You want to get the bird DEAD and cold as quick as possible. So you want to work fast if you are able. Do NOT cut a major muscle group (such as the breast) and breach the gut cavity PRIOR to taking the guts out. Remove the guts by cutting a slit from just under the anus, down to the bottom of the breast bone on the underbelly of the chicken. You pretty much just reach in, tear the diaphram off the inside of the back with your finger tips, and PULL it all out! Then cut AROUND the anus. If you do this correctly, it's all very clean and won't leave any excrement on the meat. Cut the feet off above the knee joint BEFORE bringing them to your meat prep area in the house. Once they're skinned and gutted and ready to cut otherwise, put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes and drop the temperature to "about" 40F as quick as you can. This is in order to STOP pathogen multiplication. If there's NO power, then I suppose you'll just have to cut it up and cook it, or smoke it. We've taken them from the yard to the pot before without going to the freezer first, but my buddy recommended that we NOT skip the freezer step IF we don't have to.

The nice thing about skinning chickens as opposed to scalding and plucking is that it doesn't leave you with a distaste for chicken. We found that when we scalded, they ones who were doing the scalding and plucking didn't want to get NEAR chicken for the next 90 days! It's NASTY, and even good chicken soup will remind you of the nastiness of scalding them! Skinning them doesn't do this to a person...at least not to us.