80 lbs of turkey! How do you process?

[spook]

Granted 80 lbs is not much for some of you, but the 6 BB Whites- 3 month olds weighed in at 80 lbs (+/-) and difficultly crammed in the refrigerater very carefully like lego blocks and a chair to help prevent any slidding of birds!

How do you process your birds? I wish I could stick them, I believe it would be so much easier, but I'd like to know how you go about the "deed"?

 

[Julie_A]

Bump.

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

We cut the corner out of a feed sack, insert the bird so just the head and neck is sticking out, wrap a piece of rope around the mid section of the turkey (over the bag) to hold the wings down, tie the legs together. Then Sharon holds the bird over the chopping block and I remove the head. As soon as I chop I'll help her hold it while it bleeds out.

On thing we do to save freezer space is to cut the bird up before freezing. We skin them (much quicker than plucking) you end up with 2 breast fillets, 2 leg 1/4's, 2 wings. On the leg 1/4s we cut them up and freeze the thighs seperately. The drum sticks we put in the pressure cooker 15 minutes at 15 pounds pressure and it's falling off the bone. We take that meat and use for turkey tacos, enchilades, casserole etc. Sharon saves the stock from the pressure cooker for soup.

Steve in NC

 

[spook]

Super, thanks for that information. I walked them into the garage where I process broilers so I have everything I need handy. Then I grabbed the bird by the head, with super sharp hunting knife (and I file between birds) cut through the vertibrae first and go right through to the front. The first ones seemed fine, only moving in between feed barrels, the last 3 were difficult, of course I was tired, and they didnt want me near them (can't blame them) but we did them on the lawn and they didn't seem like they were going to stop. Also the last 3 were something else, we came out of that with red spotted hat, heads and jackets! It was one of those things that only someone like us could get the humor. (sick I know)
Thanks for your reply once again. What weight do you let your birds get up to as a general rule?
My plans for these are to do just what you mentioned, quarter the peices up and some ground. I want to try to make a turkey sausage too. Of course I say all this whilst sitting on my behind typing! LOL Have a great day all!

 

[farmerlor]

We processed our Broad breasted when they were about 30 pounds apiece. Yeah, we procrastinated trying to decide if we could do it by ourselves or not and then when we finally decided to take them to a butcher we had to make an appointment and that took another two weeks so we ended up with a HEN who weighed 30 pounds and a couple Toms who were 38 pounds. The smallest turkey weighed 28 pounds. Next time (if we ever actually process any of my beautiful babies) we'll do it ourselves and we have heritage turks now so they'll be considerably smaller.