Small Business: Rural poultry processor does the dirty work of ...

Life is short, about eight weeks for these Cornish cross hens, and it ends with one swift slice. Scott Ogle grabs the chickens and stuffs them upside down one by one in a row of metal funnels. "Some call it a kill cone, I call it a funnel," he says.

The birds' heads emerge at the bottom of the funnels. They squawked when Ogle grabbed them from their cage but now they're strangely quiet. Ogle works his way down the line, pulling heads to extend the necks and quickly cutting the jugulars. Pierce and twist with a sharp, slender blade. Blood drains into a trough below.

"It's instant, lights out in 20 seconds," Ogle says. "They don't know what hit them."

He's a self-described "third-generation chicken killer," and he's been doing it for the family business, Harrington Poultry Processing, since he was 11. When Ogle was in high school, he says he once killed 300 chickens a day for 90 days straight.

"I can do this blindfolded," he says, turning his head as he expertly dispatches another bird. "See, not even looking."

The rest of the process is equally quick. Dead birds go into the scalder, where a few turns in 138-degree water loosens the feathers. From there it's into the picker, a rotating metal drum with rubber knobs that plucks the birds clean.

Ogle removes the heads and feet with quick chops and shoves the carcasses down a chute, where Mary Sue Shuler and her daughter, Stephanie Morse, clean out the innards. The birds are rinsed, chilled and packaged whole for customer pickup. Elapsed time from slit to chilling bath? Maybe 10 minutes.

Ogle, 49, is a stocky man with a mustache and the thick shoulders of a former wrestler. He goes about his task with a running stream of quips and asides. He claims his high school wrestling opponents feared him for his strong "chicken killer" hands.

It's an unusual business, catering to people who own backyard birds or tend a small flock and need their chickens processed for eating. They make appointments, deliver their birds in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon.

Customers find him on the Internet, or through word of mouth at places that sell chicken feed. He's approved under state and federal agriculture regulations, doesn't advertise and charges $3.50 to $5.50 per bird.

Thanksgiving is busy with turkeys, sometimes 100 a day, but then business slacks off until spring, when rapidly growing chickens are turned into meals.

This day, Todd Flightner arrives from Maupin with about 50 barred rock chickens caged in the back of his pickup. Flightner, who has a farm and is a Deschutes River rafting guide, says the chickens will feed his family for a year. The thought of killing and cleaning them, however, sent him on an Internet search.

"It's a big task," he says, "and a mess."

Another customer, Todd Jay, a backyard coop owner from Washougal, drops off four large, colorful roosters.

"It was their time," he says. "I didn't want them to mix in with my (egg) laying hens."

Both are first-time customers. Sometimes, like today, Ogle will process dozens of chickens. Other days, none.

"It's only part time. It's not a full-day, everyday grind," Ogle says.

His grandparents, Lester and Verna Harrington, began raising and slaughtering chickens on the farm outside Boring in 1949. Eight years later they founded the Pink Feather restaurant in east Portland. His folks, Claude and Shirley Ogle, took over the businesses from his grandparents.

The chicken business faded over time, however, and a long, white chicken house now shelters Ogle's car collection, including his grandmother's pink 1957 Thunderbird and pink 1976 Cadillac El Dorado.

The Pink Feather, still operating, got its name from her cars and the chickens supplied to the restaurant from the farm.

Scott Ogle handles things day to day, but he's not raking it in. The restaurant business is tough, he says. "There's too much month left at the end of the money," he says.

He does other things on the side: landscaping, tractor work, raising some ornamental nursery plants. His older sisters have "real jobs," he says, his mom died and his dad just turned 80. So poultry processing falls to him.

"I'm the last guy standing," he says, "who's going to do this for this family."

Portland's hipsters have provided a bit of new business as they discover the complications of backyard coops.

"I've seen a lot of roosters come in from town because the neighbors don't like roosters crowing at 5 a.m.," Ogle says.

But he's not convinced the urban chicken trend will amount to much in the way of revenue.

Still, he sees some "Portlandia" scenes, including the customer who insisted on telling Ogle the story of her "girls" as she delivered four hens for processing.

"Lady, I don't care," Ogle says he thought to himself. "If they've got feathers, I'll take care of them."

--Eric Mortenson

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Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/07/small_business_rural_poultry_p.html

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