imacowgirl2
Songster
Processed 3 New Hampshires today, 2 hens and a rooster. I guess probably technically 2 pullets and a cockerel, since they were 13 weeks old. Live weight on the roo was 9.3 lbs and the hens were 6.5 lbs and 7 lbs. Dressed weights were 3.2, 3.5 and 5.8. That seems like a large loss, bit I did use two different scales for weights (couldn't find my fish scale back that I used for live weights last night).
Processing was much easier than expected - since I don't use the skin, and I cook them in the pressure cooker, we opted to skin them instead of scald and pluck. Took us about 2.5 hours total including setup and cleanup and we averaged 20-30 mins or bird for the actual cleaning. As long as I like the taste and texture of the meat, we will be doing a couple groups of them next year.
I really liked the way these things grew -- I think in the future the two big changes I will make will be to not let them free range (the hens did, the roo didn't) and to feed them meat bird crumbles the whole time...these only got meat birds crumbles the last 2-3 weeks because I didn't even think about feeding meat bird crumbles until about that time, when I read about it here on BYC. I will also give the hens an extra week or two in the future, unless the previous changes cause the hens to grow faster (I'm not sure if the roo was that much bigger due to being a male or lack of free ranging or both... I'm guessing some combination of both).
Processing was much easier than expected - since I don't use the skin, and I cook them in the pressure cooker, we opted to skin them instead of scald and pluck. Took us about 2.5 hours total including setup and cleanup and we averaged 20-30 mins or bird for the actual cleaning. As long as I like the taste and texture of the meat, we will be doing a couple groups of them next year.
I really liked the way these things grew -- I think in the future the two big changes I will make will be to not let them free range (the hens did, the roo didn't) and to feed them meat bird crumbles the whole time...these only got meat birds crumbles the last 2-3 weeks because I didn't even think about feeding meat bird crumbles until about that time, when I read about it here on BYC. I will also give the hens an extra week or two in the future, unless the previous changes cause the hens to grow faster (I'm not sure if the roo was that much bigger due to being a male or lack of free ranging or both... I'm guessing some combination of both).