Chicken Mummy Week II: Pharaoh Kirby I

Note: This is a catch-up post; week 2 was actually about 3 weeks ago, and we haven’t changed the mixture out since then.

Week II: Dehydration

We’re waiting for PBJMom and the kids, and Fred to arrive so that we can drain, unpack, weigh and re-spice/salt Pharaoh Kirby I.  Jana and her kiddos over at Homeschooling a Texas Tornado did their mummy a couple of weeks ago, and she posted their final product here. We’re using a different method; ours has spice and salt at every change. I think she only used the drying mixture (soda, salt and something else?) and spiced afterwards. I can say that in the spices added throughout the process definitely keep the smell down (if not altogether gone). We’ve had this thing on our kitchen counter and I can smell the cinnamon and cloves (if I stick my nose up to the bowl) but there is nothing that even faintly resembles the smell of what I would imagine decaying chicken to smell like. So spicing throughout gets my vote if your plan is to mummify indoors.

It’s been a funny experience, mummifying a chicken; made more-so by the fact that we had our friends over to start the process, and are now waiting on friends to arrive to continue… It’s not like that’s your average conversation. How would people react if you walked up and said, “Hi, my name is ~h and for fun, my kids and I like to mummify dinner chickens — with friends!”

I guess that’s one of those, ‘you know you’re a homeschooler when…’ things. Weird.

So here’s our week 2 progress. There are notes on the pictures – if you put your cursor over the picture, the notes pop up.

I was REALLY surprised at how much liquid came out that first week. I’ve read about how the poultry industry injects water into hens to make them heavier (and thus can charge you more for the same chicken) and seeing this, I am inclined to believe that. I’m considering next year’s mummy and thinking we might try to get a farm-raised hen to try this experiment with and compare notes.

It was only after I was washing it off that I realized that washing a chicken that we’re dehydrating might have been a bad idea. Oh well… no harm done, I guess. It’s technically weeks later now and that doesn’t seem to have impacted the process at all.

We don’t have a small scale, so we weighed PeaGreen (67lbs.), then had him hold Pharaoh Kirby and weigh again (71lbs.). That’s a difference of 1 pound. Water weight? Maybe we’ll try some Midol or Pamprin in the bag next time and test their claims of helping to prevent bloating.

And so concludes part 2 of this endeavor. Unfortunately, we’ve been kinda busy over the last few weeks and so weeks 3 and 4 sorta slid by without me realizing it. I have been checking on the bag though; there haven’t been many changes since we sealed him up at the end of week 2. I’ll update later this week with Week 5’s unmasking and re-packing. It’s almost finished!

If you missed it, Part I is here.

Warmly,

~h