Slaughterhouse and processing specialisation
Design, run and make a small poultry slaughterhouse pay
Introduction
Turning a live chicken into a clean, cold, labelled and sold product: that is the trade of the poultry slaughterhouse, and it is what NEXTEKCI does in Agnibilékrou at the end of its complete chain, from day-old chick to frozen chicken. This specialisation extends level 12 of the NEXTEKCI School, which described the steps of slaughter, and goes into the detail of designing and running a small slaughterhouse of 300 to 500 chickens a day, the size of a town unit in Côte d'Ivoire. Ten lessons follow the logic of the building and of the day: drawing the forward-flow plan with its floor areas in square metres, its dirty and clean zones, its water in litres per chicken and its drainage; choosing the scalder, the plucker, the cones, the tables and the cold with criteria that do not mislead; organising a day of 400 chickens with six people, hour by hour; holding the critical hygiene points and the cold chain all the way to the customer; knowing carcass and cutting yields; cleaning and disinfecting in the right order; selling with a complete label, traceability by lot and a brand. Every notion is explained simply, with a worked numerical example, then the action in the field. The last two lessons are a timing exercise and a case study: a slaughterhouse that loses chicken between the crate and the freezer. No prices are given: you put in your own figures. Open from free registration, after or alongside the 15 levels.
By the end of this specialisation, you will be able to
- ✓Design a small poultry slaughterhouse: floor areas, clean and dirty zones, flow direction, water and drainage, and choose its equipment without mistakes
- ✓Organise a slaughter day with its pace, its team, its registers and its critical hygiene points
- ✓Keep the cold chain from the iced water to the customer, and know carcass and cutting yields to know what you sell
- ✓Clean, trace, label and sell processed chicken, and find every kilo lost between the crate and the freezer
10 lessons · a 5-question quiz after each lesson · an exam (20 questions, 80%) · verifiable specialisation certificate. Specialisation open to every registered student, in any order.
- 1Designing a small poultry slaughterhouse: floor areas, clean and dirty zones, flow direction, water, drainage
A badly designed slaughterhouse costs money every day: carcasses crossing paths with feathers, a floor that holds water, a cold room stuck against a wall that takes the sun, a waste bin next to the packing table. Level 12 gave the steps of slaughter; this lesson teaches you to put those steps on a plan. You will learn to calculate the floor areas of a unit that processes 300 to 500 chickens a day, separate the dirty zone from the clean zone, trace the flow direction, plan water in litres and the disposal of waste, before laying the first brick.
What you will learn- ✓Size the floor areas of a small poultry slaughterhouse (300 to 500 chickens a day) zone by zone, in m²
- ✓Draw a forward-flow plan with a dirty zone and a clean zone that are really separated
- ✓Calculate daily water needs and plan the tank, the floor slope, the drains and the pre-cleaning of waste water
- ✓Plan the handling of solid waste (blood, feathers, viscera) and the compulsory annexes (changing room, toilets, waste room)
Lesson outline- Before drawing: capacity and product
- The zones and the flow direction
- Floor areas, zone by zone: worked example for 400 chickens a day
- Water: how much, from where, at what temperature
- Drainage: waste water and solid waste
- Drawing your plan: step by step
- Going further
Key points- •Capacity from sales; product (fresh, frozen, cut) from the customers: these two choices decide the floor areas and the cold.
- •Five zones in forward-flow order: reception, dirty zone, clean zone, packing-cold, annexes; full wall between dirty and clean, three arrows that never cross in the clean zone.
- •For 400 chickens a day: about 130 m² built (8 m × 16 m), floor sloping 1.5 to 2 %, walls washable to 2 m, rounded corners, fly screens.
- •Potable water 15 to 25 L per chicken (8 m³ a day for 400), tank of a day and a half, ice 0.7 to 1 kg per kilo of carcass, hands-free basins.
- •Waste water: grates, fat trap, septic tank; blood apart; solid waste 25 to 30 % of live weight in closed bins, removed the same day, never given raw to the farm animals.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 2The equipment: plucker, scalder, cones, tables, cold room, and how to choose them without mistakes
Slaughterhouse equipment is chosen once and endured for ten years. A plucker that is too small forces a second pass and tears the skins; a scalder without a thermostat cooks the 10 o'clock carcasses; a cold room sized "by eye" no longer goes below 4 °C when the day's lot enters warm. This lesson reviews each piece of equipment of a unit of 300 to 500 chickens a day: what it is for, what capacity it needs, what settings, and above all the criteria that let you choose without mistakes, without talking about prices: you will put in your own.
What you will learn- ✓Size each piece of equipment (cones, scalder, plucker, tables, chilling tubs, cold) for 300 to 500 chickens a day
- ✓Give the settings of a scalder (52 to 60 °C depending on the product) and of a plucker, and check them
- ✓Calculate the cold room and freezing volume needed from the day's carcass weight
- ✓Apply a grid of selection criteria (material, capacity, cleanability, spare parts, service, consumption) to any equipment purchase
Lesson outline- The rule of five criteria
- Dirty zone: cones, scalder, plucker
- Clean zone: tables, tubs, measuring tools
- The cold: cold room, freezing, storage
- The complete list and the power balance
- Going further
Key points- •Five selection criteria: material (food-grade stainless steel), peak capacity + 30 %, cleanability, parts and service in Côte d'Ivoire, consumption; the price is yours.
- •Dirty zone for 130 chickens an hour: 8 to 12 cones, 200 to 300 L scalder with thermostat (52 to 60 °C depending on the product, water renewed every 100 to 150 chickens), plucker of 6 to 8 chickens per cycle with spare fingers.
- •Clean zone: stainless tables at 85-90 cm with a water point per station, two chilling tubs of 200 to 300 L (8-10 °C then 0-2 °C), ice 0.7 to 1 kg per kilo of carcass, probe thermometer, checked scale, timer, colour-coded knives and 82 °C steriliser.
- •Cold for 400 chickens a day: positive room 6 m³ (150 to 200 kg/m³), freezing 250 kg a day (blast cell or chest freezers loaded to one third), negative room 8 m³ (300 to 400 kg/m³), condensing unit in the shade and ventilated.
- •Power balance 15 to 25 kW all-electric, 8 to 12 kW with gas scalding; generator for the cold and lighting; try the equipment before buying.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 3The slaughter day: planning, pace, team, from the arrival of the crates to the packed product
A slaughterhouse is not judged by its equipment but by its day: at what time the first chicken enters the cone, at what time the last carcass goes below 4 °C, how many people waited in front of a full plucker or an empty table. This lesson builds the typical day of a unit of 400 chickens with 6 people: the hour by hour, the pace of each station, the station that slows the whole line (the bottleneck), the distribution of the team and the sheets filled in as you go. By the end, you will know how to write the schedule of your own session and say, before starting, at what time it will finish.
What you will learn- ✓Draw up the hour-by-hour schedule of a slaughter day of 400 chickens, from the day before to the end-of-session cleaning
- ✓Calculate the pace of each station, spot the bottleneck and balance the team accordingly
- ✓Distribute 6 people over the stations while respecting the dirty zone / clean zone separation
- ✓Keep the three documents of the day: lot sheet, pace sheet, temperature register
Lesson outline- The day before: everything that is not done in the morning
- Pace: the slowest station rules
- The team: 6 people, 6 roles, two zones
- Hour by hour: the typical day of 400 chickens
- The three documents of the day
- Going further
Key points- •The day before: fast 8 to 12 h checked, ice (450 to 600 kg for 400 chickens), water, energy, scalder, knives, labels, order book.
- •Pace = chickens per hour of a station; the line moves at the rhythm of the slowest (bottleneck), almost always evisceration: 25 to 40 per person per hour; 6 people → 90 an hour → 400 chickens in 4 h 30.
- •Team by zone: bleeder and plucker operator in the dirty zone; 2 eviscerators and 1 packer (who eviscerates for the first 45 minutes) in the clean zone; manager who inspects, measures and records; going down to the dirty zone is possible, never back up without washing, apron and knife changed.
- •Typical day: crates at 5:15, first cone at 6:00, cruising from 7:00 to 10:30, last carcass in iced water at 11:00, below 4 °C around 11:45, cleaning until 13:00; you do not slaughter in full heat with a tired team.
- •Three documents during the session: lot sheet (traceability), pace sheet (bottleneck, stoppages, scalder), temperature register (cold chain); day summary in three lines.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 4The critical hygiene points: temperature, time, contact, cross-contamination, and how to control them
In a slaughterhouse, the danger cannot be seen: a contaminated carcass has the same colour and the same smell as a healthy carcass for hours. So you cannot "look whether it is clean"; you have to master the four things that decide everything: temperature, time, contact and crossings. Level 12 named the critical points; this lesson takes them up one by one for a unit of 400 chickens, with the numbered limits, the way to measure them without slowing the line, the control sheets and the analyses to have done to prove that the method works.
What you will learn- ✓Explain the four levers of hygiene (temperature, time, contact, crossing) and say what each does to microbes
- ✓Write the control plan of a small slaughterhouse: for each critical point, hazard, limit, monitoring, action, record
- ✓Organise monitoring during the session (30-minute round, sampling points, sheets) without slowing the line
- ✓Plan external checks: water analyses, surface swabs, product analyses, and know how to read a result
Lesson outline- Four levers, one goal
- The control plan on one page
- Monitoring without slowing down: the 30-minute round
- Staff: the rule of hands and clothing
- Proving it works: the analyses
- Going further
Key points- •Four levers: temperature (below 4 °C, microbes slow down; 20 to 45 °C, they double every 20 to 30 min), time (bleeding → iced water in under 45 min, washing → tub in under 15 min, below 4 °C at the core in 2 to 4 h), contact (hands, knives, surfaces), crossing (zones, tools, people, waste); one that fails cancels the other three.
- •One-page control plan: nine critical points, for each hazard, limit, monitoring, action, record; posted in the clean zone, reread every month, read by every new worker.
- •Manager's round every 30 min, 5 minutes, from the cold to the scalder, with thermometer and pencil; probe in two carcasses per tub; free chlorine 0.2 to 0.5 mg/L every morning.
- •Staff: clean clothing per zone, hands washed 20 s with soap at every change of action, injury covered, sick person out of the clean zone (paid), no phone or food, visitors accompanied.
- •Analyses: water once a year, surfaces after cleaning (target fewer than 10 bacteria per cm²) and product (total flora, salmonella absent in 25 g) every quarter; they verify the method, they do not drive the day.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 5The cold: chilling, freezing, deep-freezing, storage, delivery to the customer, a chain never broken
Level 12 explained why the cold is the only barrier against microbes and how to calculate the ice. This lesson runs the cold of a slaughterhouse day after day: how to load a cold room so that it really chills, how to organise deep-freezing in cycles, how long to keep each product, how to deliver to a customer 40 km away without the bag going above 4 °C, what to do during a six-hour power cut, and how to decide, figures in hand, whether a lot whose chain has broken can still be sold or must go to waste.
What you will learn- ✓Run a positive and a negative cold room: loading, air circulation, door, defrosting, readings
- ✓Organise the freezing or deep-freezing of the day's lot in cycles, and measure the core temperature of a frozen product
- ✓Set storage times and manage stock by lot (first in, first out)
- ✓Deliver cold and decide, with a time-temperature grid, the fate of a product whose cold chain has broken
Lesson outline- The three temperatures and what they do
- Running the positive cold room
- Freezing or deep-freezing the day's lot
- Stock: first in, first out
- Delivering cold: from the dock to the customer
- The break: the decision grid
- Going further
Key points- •Three temperatures: 0-4 °C (fresh, a few days), −18 °C (frozen, months), 4-60 °C (danger zone); always measure at the core, in the thigh, probe pushed in 4 to 5 cm.
- •Positive room: product already cold, circulating air, door closed, defrosting, readings morning and evening; negative room stable at −18 °C (variation of less than 3 °C), thick insulation, condenser clean and in the shade.
- •Deep-freezing in a cell: air −30/−40 °C, −18 °C at the core in less than 4 h, carcasses not touching; freezing in a chest: one third of the volume per day, bags flat, 24 to 48 h; times: whole 3-5 days fresh, 6-9 months frozen, 9-12 months deep-frozen; offal 1-2 days fresh.
- •FIFO stock: one carton per lot, arranged by date, stock sheet on the door, inventory every Saturday, difference of more than 0.5 % to explain.
- •Delivery: product measured at departure and on arrival (signed note), full cooler with 1 kg of ice for 4 kg of fresh product, 4 to 6 hours; break: grid of degrees × hours, thawed product never refrozen, unknown = thrown away; power cut: generator or rooms kept closed (full negative 12 to 24 h, positive 4 to 6 h).
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 6Cutting and products: whole chicken, cuts, offal, carcass and cutting yields
A live 2.2 kg chicken does not give 2.2 kg of meat to sell: it gives about 1.55 kg of carcass, of which 30 % thighs, 31 % breast, 11 % wings and 20 % back and neck, plus 100 g of offal. Whoever does not know these figures does not know what he sells, does not see when the unit loses meat, and sets his rates at random. This lesson gives the reference yields, the way to measure them in your own unit, the range of products a small slaughterhouse can offer, the cutting actions and the conditions (temperature, time, tools) to cut without breaking the cold chain.
What you will learn- ✓Calculate the carcass yield of a lot and compare it with the references (70 to 75 % depending on the type of chicken and the calculation method)
- ✓Know the cutting yields (thighs, breast, wings, back, offal) and measure them in your own unit
- ✓Decide on a range of products (whole, half, quarters, cuts, offal) suited to your customers and your cold capacity
- ✓Cut by the rules: cool room, limited time, tools, order of cuts, sorting and packing of the pieces
Lesson outline- Carcass yield: definition and calculation pitfalls
- Cutting yields
- The range: what a small slaughterhouse can sell
- Cutting by the rules
- Reading yields as a dashboard
- Going further
Key points- •Carcass yield = ready-to-cook carcass ÷ live weight; 70-72 % on house weight, 72-75 % on post-fast weight, for a white broiler; 68-71 % for a coloured chicken; 63-67 % for a spent hen; set the method (arrival weight, 20 min draining, no neck or offal).
- •Cutting yields on the carcass: legs 30-33 %, bone-in breast 30-34 % (fillets 20-23 %), wings 10-12 %, back and neck 18-22 %, fat 1-2 %, losses 1-2 %; offal on live weight: liver 2-2.5 %, gizzard 1.5-2 %, heart 0.5 %, feet 3.5-4 %.
- •Downgraded = healthy carcass with an appearance defect (torn skin, bruise, burn, red carcass) → cutting the same day; less than 3 % good, more than 8 % to correct.
- •Range built from customers and cold: whole fresh and frozen first, then legs, wings, breasts, offal, feet; you cut the demand, not the unsold.
- •Cutting cold (12 °C), fast (back in the cold in under 30 min, 10 carcasses at a time), clean (plastic board, dedicated knives, steriliser); 2 to 3 minutes per chicken in six actions; scale checked every morning.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 7Cleaning and disinfecting a slaughterhouse: plan, products, frequency, visual check and register
At 11:45, the last carcasses are in the cold and the unit looks like what it is: blood on the cones, fat on the tables, feathers in the drains, 30 °C and flies arriving. What happens in the following hour and a half decides the cleanliness of tomorrow's first chicken. This lesson gives the complete method: the seven steps in the right order, the families of products and what each one does, the four settings that make a cleaning work or fail, the frequency of each task, the visual check and the register that proves it was done.
What you will learn- ✓Explain the difference between cleaning and disinfecting, and why the order is never reversed
- ✓Apply the seven steps of cleaning-disinfection and the four settings (temperature, mechanical action, concentration, time)
- ✓Choose the families of products (detergent, disinfectant) without mistakes, dilute them according to the manufacturer, store and rotate them
- ✓Draw up the unit's cleaning plan (what, who, when, how, check) and keep the register
Lesson outline- Clean, then disinfect: two actions, one order
- The seven steps and the four settings
- Products: families, dilution, storage
- The cleaning plan: what, who, when, how
- Checking and proving: eye, finger, swab, register
- Going further
Key points- •Clean (remove what can be seen) then disinfect (kill what cannot be seen), never the other way round; biofilm forms when you clean badly for several days and resists disinfectant.
- •Seven steps: tidying and dry, warm pre-rinse, detergent, mechanical action, rinse, disinfection with contact time, final rinse and drying; four T.A.C.T. settings: temperature 45-55 °C, action, manufacturer's concentration, time 10-15 min.
- •Product families: alkaline detergent (fat, blood), acid (scale), chlorinated (cheap, inactivated by dirt, fresh solution every day, rinse stainless steel), quaternary ammonium, oxidisers, alcohol; dilution with a measuring device, rotation every 4 to 8 weeks, separate storage, never mixed.
- •Posted cleaning plan: what, frequency, method, who, check; clean zone first, then dirty, then outside; colour-coded brushes; crates washed at every return; pests kept out by doors, covered bins and waste out the same day.
- •Checking: visual with torch, finger, smell before signing; chlorine strips and thermometer every day; swabs after cleaning (fewer than 10 bacteria per cm²); weekly register signed (done / checked), kept for a year.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 8Selling processed chicken: customers, labelling, traceability, complaints, brand image
A live chicken is sold at the market by looking at it; a processed chicken is sold on trust: the customer sees only a cold bag and a label, and he must believe that what is inside is safe, of the stated weight and of the written date. This lesson teaches how to build that trust: know your customers and what each one demands, write a complete label, link every bag to its lot and its farmer, handle a complaint without losing the customer or denying the problem, and make a unit a brand that people ask for by name, like the frozen chicken of NEXTEKCI in Agnibilékrou.
What you will learn- ✓Describe the six types of customers of a small slaughterhouse, what each buys, demands and complains about
- ✓Write a complete and compliant label for a fresh or frozen chicken, and set the use-by date
- ✓Set up upstream (farmer) and downstream (customer) traceability from the lot number, and know how to withdraw a lot
- ✓Handle a complaint in five steps and build the brand image on regularity, cleanliness and keeping one's word
Lesson outline- Knowing your customers: six profiles
- The label: what it must say
- Traceability: from the bag to the farmer, and back
- The complaint: five steps
- Brand image: what people say about you
- Going further
Key points- •Six customer profiles (maquis, restaurants, shops, households, institutions, resellers), each with its products, rhythm, demands and complaints; a card per customer; calibrate on the scale so that "all the legs are the same".
- •Label on every bag: product and state, net weight, slaughter date and lot, use-by date (fresh: slaughter + 3 to 5 days minus one; frozen: + 9 months in a cell, 6 in a chest), storage temperature, contact details and licence; paper and glue that hold in the cold.
- •Traceability: lot = date reversed + farmer's initial; on the lot sheet, the tubs, the stock sheet, the signed delivery notes, the customer cards; it allows a specific lot to be withdrawn within an hour.
- •Complaint in five steps: listen and record, secure, replace fast, look for the cause in the registers, correct and reply; complaints register reread every month; never deny or disappear.
- •Brand = what customers say about the unit: regularity, visible cleanliness, keeping one's word, identity and legible origin; visits, real photos, recommendation; less than 2 % complaints per delivery; never a word against another unit.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
- 9Field exercise: time and record a slaughter day on the pace sheet
You always think you know where the unit loses its time: "it is the plucker", "it is the evisceration guy", "it is the ice arriving late". Until you have timed it, these are opinions. This exercise has you spend a whole day with a watch, a notebook and the pace sheet: you will count the chickens at each station hour by hour, record every stoppage with its cause and duration, measure the waiting times between steps, then read the result to find the real bottleneck and decide on a quantified correction. It is the exercise you redo every month, and it is what takes a unit from 70 to 100 chickens an hour without buying a machine.
What you will learn- ✓Prepare the equipment and the pace sheet, and choose the counting points of a slaughter day
- ✓Record hour by hour the chickens passed at each point, the stoppages and their causes, the waiting times and the temperatures
- ✓Calculate the real pace of each station, the total time of the day and the time lost, and name the bottleneck
- ✓Draw from the sheet a concrete, measurable correction, to be checked at the next recording
Lesson outline- Why time it, and when
- Equipment and preparation
- The complete pace sheet
- Reading the result: paces, bottleneck, time lost
- Deciding the correction and checking it
- Going further
Key points- •The complete pace sheet is done once a month and at every change, on an ordinary day, without warning; the manager does nothing else.
- •Five cumulative counters (bled, plucked, pass-through, iced water, bagged) read at every hour on the hour in the same order, plus the waiting stocks between the points and the temperatures; a table of stoppages (time, station, duration, cause); the day's totals.
- •Reading: hourly pace = difference of cumulatives; day's pace = chickens ÷ (last cone − first cone); bottleneck = where the waiting stock is the largest and most constant; time lost = stoppages of the bottleneck; quality incidents go to the control plan.
- •Correction small, precise, measurable, written with who does it and how it is checked at the next recording; reread the correction to check that it respects the forward flow.
- •Three pitfalls: counting twice, reading the counters at different times, looking for a culprit instead of recording the cause.
14 min read · 5-question quiz
- 10Case study: a slaughterhouse that loses chicken between the crate and the freezer, find where
A slaughterhouse owner from the East calls in November: "My chicken is being stolen. I buy 2,000 chickens a week, I should get 3,100 kg of carcasses out, I sell 2,870. There are 230 kilos missing every week and I am going to dismiss the team." He is right about one thing: chicken is missing. He is wrong about the rest, and this lesson shows why, by going back over his week weighing by weighing, from the reception scale to the freezer count. We apply the methods of the specialisation one by one, quantify each loss, rank them, and write the correction plan. It is the typical exercise of the specialisation exam.
What you will learn- ✓Reconstruct the mass balance of a slaughterhouse week (live weight in, carcasses out, gap) and situate it against the reference yields
- ✓Go through the chain point by point (reception, fast, scalding, evisceration, cutting, cold, stock, scale) to quantify each loss
- ✓Rank the losses by weight and by ease of correction, and distinguish technical loss, organisational loss and unexplained shortfall
- ✓Write the correction plan with its monitoring indicators, and say what the registers would have shown beforehand
Lesson outline- The situation and the mass balance
- The chain point by point: where the chicken goes
- Ranking the losses and naming the causes
- The correction plan
- What should have been done before
- Going further
Key points- •Mass balance first: 4,400 kg live, 2,870 kg of carcasses, 254 kg gap (8.1 %), yield 65.2 % instead of 71 % → several losses of 1 to 3 % that add up, not theft alone.
- •Going through the chain: scale +2 % (88 kg live paid for nothing), 50 dead on arrival (78 kg), 18 h fast (51 kg), torn intestines 4.5 % (41 kg), 24 unrecorded bags (36 kg), 15 rejects (23 kg), trimmings of the downgraded at 62 °C (15 kg): 244 kg explained out of 254.
- •Root cause: the late pick-up and the afternoon slaughter explain four lines out of six (167 kg); a single decision (slaughter in the morning, crates at 8-10, pick-up 4:30) corrects them.
- •One-page plan: scale, thermostat, written exits and inventory in week 1; morning schedule and refrigeration unit in week 2; eviscerator training in weeks 2 to 4; mass balance every Saturday; six weeks later, yield 69.9 % and 3 kg unexplained.
- •What should have been done before: lot sheet every day, scale checked every morning, pace sheet every day, scalder read every 30 min, inventory every Saturday, weekly mass balance; count before accusing.
15 min read · 5-question quiz
Frequently asked questions
How do you set up a small poultry slaughterhouse in Côte d'Ivoire?
You start with the sales, not with the building: how many chickens a week do your customers buy, fresh or frozen? For 300 to 500 chickens a day, you need about 120 to 150 m² built in forward flow (reception, dirty zone, clean zone, packing and cold, annexes), 15 to 25 litres of potable water per chicken, a tank for a day and a half, a screen and fat trap for waste water and daily removal of waste, which weighs 25 to 30 % of live weight. Slaughtering for sale is done in a slaughterhouse licensed by the veterinary services. The 'Slaughterhouse and processing' specialisation of the NEXTEKCI School (Agnibilékrou) details each step with worked examples.
What is the carcass yield of a broiler chicken?
A white broiler gives 70 to 72 % ready-to-cook carcass if you start from the live weight weighed in the house before the fast, and 72 to 75 % if you start from the weight on arrival at the slaughterhouse, after the fast, which removes 3 to 4 %. An older coloured chicken gives 68 to 71 %, a spent hen 63 to 67 %. The carcass is counted without feathers, blood, head, neck, feet or viscera, weighed after 20 minutes of draining. You must set your method and never change it. A yield below 70 % is a signal: fast too long, excessive bleeding, torn carcasses, wrong scale. The NEXTEKCI School explains these calculations with worked examples.
At what temperature do you scald a chicken?
Between 52 and 60 °C depending on the product wanted: 52 to 54 °C for 2.5 to 3 minutes for a whole fresh chicken with yellow skin and a farm look; 54 to 58 °C for 1.5 to 2.5 minutes, the usual setting of small units; 58 to 60 °C for 1 to 2 minutes for a chicken intended for freezing or cutting. Below 50 °C the feathers hold; above 60 °C the skin cooks and tears during plucking. The temperature is read on a thermometer every 30 minutes, never by hand, and the water is renewed every 100 to 150 chickens. The NEXTEKCI School (Agnibilékrou) gives these settings lesson by lesson.
How many chickens an hour can a small unit slaughter?
A manual unit of 4 people processes 60 to 100 chickens an hour; with 6 people, a plucker and bleeding cones, 90 to 120. The slowest station rules the whole line: it is almost always evisceration, at 25 to 40 chickens per person per hour. Three eviscerators therefore make 90 chickens an hour, and 400 chickens need 4 h 30 of effective slaughter, from 6:00 to 10:30, so that the last carcass is below 4 °C before the midday heat. Adding an eviscerator gains more than a bigger plucker. The NEXTEKCI School teaches how to time a day on a pace sheet to find the real bottleneck.
How do you keep chicken after slaughter: fresh, frozen or deep-frozen?
The carcass must go below 4 °C at the core within 2 to 4 hours, in iced water at 0-2 °C with 0.7 to 1 kg of ice per kilo of carcass. Fresh, at 0-4 °C, a whole chicken keeps 3 to 5 days, offal 1 to 2. Slow-frozen in a chest freezer at −18 °C, it keeps 6 to 9 months; deep-frozen in a blast cell in less than 4 hours, 9 to 12 months. You never freeze a warm carcass, you never refreeze a thawed product, and when you do not know how long the cold chain has been broken, you throw it away. The decision grid is in the specialisation of the NEXTEKCI School.
What is the difference between frozen and deep-frozen chicken?
Speed. Freezing in an ordinary freezer takes 24 to 48 hours to bring the core to −18 °C: the water in the meat forms large crystals that tear the fibres, and the chicken releases water on thawing. Deep-freezing uses forced air at −30 or −40 °C and brings the core to −18 °C in less than 4 hours: the crystals stay small, the meat keeps its water and its texture. A domestic chest freezer freezes, it does not deep-freeze; you only write 'deep-frozen' if the equipment and the temperature record prove it, as the NEXTEKCI slaughterhouse in Agnibilékrou does. The NEXTEKCI School explains how to size that cold.
What are the hygiene rules in a poultry slaughterhouse?
Four measurable levers: temperature (below 4 °C microbes slow down, between 20 and 45 °C they double every 20 to 30 minutes), time (less than 45 minutes between bleeding and iced water), contact (hands washed with soap at every change of action, knife sterilised at 82 °C, carcass never on the floor) and crossing (dirty zone and clean zone separated by a wall, staff who never go back up from dirty to clean without changing). They are written into a one-page control plan: hazard, limit, monitoring, action, record for each critical point, with controlled potable water. The NEXTEKCI School (Agnibilékrou) gives this complete plan.
What should be on the label of a chicken sold in a bag?
The name and state of the product (whole or cut; fresh, frozen or deep-frozen), the net weight, the slaughter date and the lot number, the use-by date (fresh: slaughter plus 3 to 5 days minus one day for the customer; frozen: plus 9 months in a cell, 6 in a chest freezer), the storage temperature, the name, address, telephone and licence number of the unit, and thawing advice. The lot number links every bag to the farmer and the customer delivered: it is what allows a specific lot to be withdrawn within an hour instead of blocking the whole stock. The specialisation of the NEXTEKCI School details the label, traceability and the handling of a complaint.
In conclusion
By the end, you will know how to draw, equip and run a small slaughterhouse that loses no chicken between the crate and the freezer, prove its hygiene through its registers and analyses, and sell a product customers come back for because it is always the same, always cold and always traced. The exam covers the ten lessons with worked calculations and justified decisions; it awards the 'Slaughterhouse and processing' specialisation certificate, issued privately by NEXTEKCI. The NEXTEKCI Academy shows the Agnibilékrou slaughterhouse on video and Maria, the online assistant, answers your questions.