- Aug 4, 2013
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I called a relative this weekend to ask if he could come over to help me process the broilers. I explained to him that I was on my last breath of life because I was currently bottle feeding 4 lamb and there was no way that I could continue working with the broilers and caring for the babies. I asked if he would mind coming over to help me. I told him how many broilers that needed to be processed and explained that it would take all day long. So, while I waited for him, I got everything ready. He said that he would come after church. So, as the time passed, I was getting nervous. So, it was 1:30 PM, he hadn't showed up yet, so I went ahead and started without him. He finally drove up about 2:15 pm and I had already processed (skinned) 4 of them. He immediately started helping. Well in between customers stopping in wanting stuff and asking me what to do about their sick birds (), I had to keep stopping to talk to them. Anyway, about 4:00 PM, my cousin looked at his watch and said that he had to cut it short because he had to get up at 4:00 AM to go to work. I was speechless when he said that. I'm not sure what part of "I need help processing 43 broilers", "all 43 broilers need to be processed today", "it would take all day to process all 43 broilers", "I have to get this done TODAY because I have 4 lamb to bottle feed and I can no longer physically do all of this work and I need help" didn't he understand. I said ok and thanked him for helping me process 10 broilers total. Yes, I said 10. 10. 10. 10 broilers. Now if you look at the post where I said I was broiler-less, you will see that I said that 53 were processed. Sooooooooooooooo, let's get out the calculators and get some numbers on paper. So, if 4 were processed when he got there and then he helped with 10, so that makes 14 and if a total of 53 was processed, that means I processed the remaining HOW MANY BROILERS BY MYSELF???? Yes, you got it right. 39!!!!!!!!!!. Soooooooooooo, it he left at 4:00 PM and I posted at 10:00 PM, that will give you an idea how my night went. Can you say processing by candlelight?
It was me and the ducks last night until 10:00 PM. My ducks start sleep walking and roaming about 8:00 PM and are extremely active at night, so they kept passing by me and looking and wondering what I was doing outside that late and probably wished that I would hurry up and get back in so that they could get to doing their usual scandalous mischievous nightly acts.
I was determined to get them done due to the new duties that I acquired with the baby lamb. I could not go another day with the broilers. So, I sucked it up and took one for the team and processed them until about 10:00 PM last night. It was a struggle during the 9:00 hour but I pulled through it. And to top it off, I had to pluck a rooster after that. I found one of my roosters laying on the ground dead yesterday morning and I have no idea why. I went out to bottle feed the lamb and he was ok. When I came out of the sheep pen and walked back to the house, he was laying dead near the back door. He literally dropped dead. He had been fine and wasn't sick. After plucking him, I looked closely at his innards and I was looking for the heart and for the life of me, I could not find the heart. Well, when I looked closely, the reason that I overlooked his heart was because the heart did not look like a normal chicken heart. I researched an enlarged/abnormal chicken heart and his heart looks like some of the enlarged hearts that I saw pics of online. So, I guess my poor boy may have had a heart attack.
So after hand plucking him (I didn't plug up the chicken plucker for 1 bird and I should have.)I finally got inside at 11:13 PM. I was so so so tired but I felt better knowing the broilers were processed and resting in the fridge. I got to sleep at 2:45 AM and only got a few hours of sleep last night and had to get up at 5:00 AM to feed my baby lamb before setting off for work at 7:00AM. I'm energized knowing I DON"T HAVE TO SEE ANY BROILERS IN THE PEN WHEN I GET HOME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is a pic of his heart. Does this heart look normal to you all? Have you all saw a heart that looked like this before???????? I
The skinned broilers looked great and I will post weights as soon as I can.
*SIGH* I am taking a deep breath that this is OVER !!!!!!!
That's a chicken heart??? Are you sure you didn't process something bigger in all that yesterday? That is huge! It also doesn't look right. Sorry for your loss. Getting reliable help is always hard.
Then work their behinds off come processing time.... LOL.
