Auchia doesn't look like a butcher. Pretty, in her early 20s, dressed in an elegant purple jalaba she is always smiling and nearly always laughing. In truth she almost never touches a chicken. Rather, she commands a staff of four and touches only money and the computer on which she registers and tracks each sale in a business that grosses around 750,000 US dollars a year. This, in Ait Melloul, a populaire suburb of Agadir, where few make more than $10 a day.

Every neighborhood in Morocco has at least one chicken butcher who will kill and butcher to the clients order. Auchia's shop distinguishes itself by making every step visible, ensuring hygiene and selling at about 5% lower than the others.
The shop is divided into three sections. The largest, to the left, is where the live chickens are kept. Able to move around freely they have food and water and don't seem to notice that this is the last stop before being someones' dinner.

The second is where the chickens are killed, bled, de-feathered and butchered before being handed to the clients in the small waiting area in front of the counter. In the evenings the customers have considerably less space to move around than the chickens.

Customers demand a chicken based on approximate weight. The smallest weigh a little less than a kilo and the largest can exceed three kilos. The picker grabs a bird, pins its wings back and after showing it to the customer puts it on a scale to be weighed. After being weighed the chicken has a tag attached to its leg which ensures the customer receives the chicken he paid for.

The chicken is then given to another man who pulls the head back and with a quick slice of the knife slits its throat and puts it head down into a funnel to bleed.

After a few minutes, he dips the carcass in boiling water to loosen the feathers and then de-feathers it in a machine consisting of a turning drum with rubber nobs that quickly denude the chicken.

I wasn't able to take any photos of the finishing process because the women who finish butchering the bird didn't want to be photographed. But they chop off the head, remove the entrails (leaving the heart, gizzard, liver and lungs), cut the chicken up if the customer desires and wrap the bird in a plastic bag before handing it off to the customer. The whole process takes about 20 minutes even when busy.

Our bird weighed about a bit less than 2 kilos and cost 21 dirhams or about $2.60. With another 10 Dirhams of vegetables and spices we made a Tagine and 15 Dirhams to cook it at a café down the street it comfortably served 5.

Ibrahim sat down with us after he got off work and over a joint and pot of tea helped fill in the details of the operation.

They sell at a minimum 800 kilos of chicken a day. If they have a wedding order they can sell up to 2000 kilos in a day. Most days though they average between 1000 and 1500 kilos. The market price of chicken changes but when we bought ours, the rate for a live chicken was 11.50 Dh/kilo or about 65 US cents a pound.

There are four such shops in the Agadir area and the three proprietors raise the chickens from eggs and send them to the retail locations when they're 40 days old.
Achia has a degree in information science and earns 100 Dirhams a day.

Ibrahim and the other man earn 50 Dirhams a day ($7) and work 07:00 to 13:00 and 15:00-21:00. The women about 33 Dirhams a day. Once a week they each get an afternoon off. They don't get any employee discount let alone a free chicken though every two weeks or so they each manage to sneak one home.