Thanks for all of the tips everyone! We got them all done in about 6 hours, with 8 of us out there. It went really smoothly with everyone having a job to do. We did 63 meat birds, 3 turkeys, 4 bantams, and 15 old laying hens.
Tomorrow is the big day :) We have about 80-90 birds that we are going to butcher. We have 63 meat birds. As much as we change the bedding every weekend, they still love to lay around in their poop :/ Do any of you wash them before butchering?
I was thinking of just putting them into the tractor...
We are going to butcher our meat birds this weekend and I'm wondering what is the best thing to wrap them in? Do you use freezer paper, freezer bags, saran, tinfoil, etc.???
Thanks so much!
Jennifer in MN
Originally Posted by el pollo rey
It doesn't really take much to get the chickens to use them. They're red and they LOVE red :) So they'd peck at them even if they didn't have water dripping, lol!
It wasn't the water in the bucket that froze, but the nipples themselves. They were always wet and at night when they weren't being used they froze up. The aquarium heater worked great for keeping the water from freezing, it was just the nipples themselves that were more exposed and froze...
Haha! It was probably created by the Church. They probably got sick of all the birds crapping all over the sidewalks on Saturdays, just in time for Sunday Church :)
We made a nipple bucket with an aquarium heater in it. It worked great until winter came and the nipples froze and the plastic stretched. After that they leaked like crazy and made a big frozen mess :( It was great for the summer though.
Thanks Soap, I'm glad you mentioned that. I should add that after 2 days, I have taken each chick to the brooder box so that Mama would stay on the eggs and with the newbies. It's worked great. She was started to get stressed out once the first ones started wandering in their little condo and...
I had 14 eggs under one of my Buffs. She did a great job, but they were put under her over a period of a few days by the other hens. I finally moved her to her own "condo" to find some peace. So far we've had 6 hatch, but I'm wondering about that others. Some of them were from the first day...