Processed two turkeys early for customers. Live vs dressed weight....

[Brunty_Farms]

Did two broad breasted whites. Had one weigh 28 pounds with food and dressed out at 21 pounds, the second weighed 19 pounds with food and dressed out at 14 pounds.

So when figuring your percentage it's safe to say 72% without food will be your average dressed weight. I will get some pics of dressed weight turkeys on here in a few... just finishing up.

Anyone know the heritage percentage of dressed weight?

ETA:

 

[CDennis]

I don't know, but I will be processing two heritage next week, so I can tell you then!

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Forgot to mention that the weights I did before were without gizzard, heart, liver, and neck. The weights on the bag are with them... I didn't do that last year but after complaints of no neck, liver, hearts, and gizzards for gravy. I decided to do them. With doing 200 turkeys this year the innards weigh about 1 pound on average... well at $4.00 / pound that's $800.00. Took me a year and some complaints to realize that.

 

[PaulaJoAnne]

Quote:
From what I understand, you will lose about 3.5 pounds during dressing out.
We just got 3 heritage turkeys, at 4 months old.
We will be processing one in a few months, and keeping the other two for breeding!

 

[NonnasBabies]

WOW!! Your birds came out looking great!!

 

[CDennis]

I agree, those are some beautiful birds.

 

[SteveH]

Looking good Jeff ! Do you have to " bag within the bag " for giblets ?

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Thanks for the compliments. After I processed I said the same thing.... this year the birds look really good. I'm kinda thinking it's because the pasture is starting to be pasture. Last year it was a far cry from pasture..... it's weird but the skin looks better, that fat is white not yellow, and they look more dense.

All in all I'm excited for this Thanksgiving and I'm going to be glad when it's over.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Quote:
Ya, I have a small bag of giblets inside the carcass and then re-bag it in the big turkey bag. Then it goes into a shopping bag (reusable) then I weigh them. The three bags combined weigh 3 ounces. I'm going to be particular on the weight because a quarter of a pound is $1.00 and normally I would just round down. Needless to say I really was shorting myself.


I use a fish scale from Berkley. Digital and was like $10.00... money well spent. It's dead accurate too, as I weighed a gallon a water and it was exactly 8 pounds 2 ounces.

 

[terri9630]

Quote:
Do you really get those prices there? I don't think I could sell a bird for half that here.