All the talk and videos about processing, you never mentioned...

[Saltysteele]

i don't mind the smell, but we've been doing it a looong time.

when i was a little kid, my cousins and i would fight over who got to skin the gizzards. i still like doing that

did you add a detergent to the water? it cuts through the grease, and makes plucking easier.

 

[CCourson05]

Quote:
Deer smell awful... Is it worse than a deer? Because if so, I am opting out on the processing of any roosters I may accumulate...

 

[GiddyMoon]

 

[CowgirlJules]

No, it's not worse than a deer.

I'm pretty insured to stinks, but I was offending the rest of the house. I found that putting a fair amount if dish soap in the scalding water not only helps as a surfactant, but it also cuts down on the wet feather odor.

 

[ams4776]

Reading about the smell makes me soo glad ill be doing all my work outside. Ill even be scalding my water over my fire pit

 

[Dogfish]

Butchered 30+ deer. Never noticed a bad smell. Their tarsal glands are a bit gamey, but not sickening. Bear, they smell, but not inside. Sweet nasty smell.

Never noticed the smell of CX to be bad. We wear Nitrile gloves and just power through it.

 

[HLAC]

We used to do as many as a couple hundred pheasants, chukar, quail, turkeys and ducks in an evening at the processing plant. (if you think a chicken smells bad... try cleaning some geese that were shot through the guts many hours earlier.)

Sometimes we'd go out for something to eat afterwards. We'd wash up real good... but I think we still must have smelled funny judging by the looks we'd get. We'd always notice a glob of blood or goo in our hair at some point during the dinner too.

After a point you don't really notice the wet feather smell. (thankfully) A hot shower and a good body wash and you're good to go.. but just a faucet and a bar of soap rarely seems to get the job done.

 

[Country Parson]

The smell certainly isn't lovely, and probably quite a bit worse than wet-dog. But, I would never dream of scalding/plucking a chicken in our kitchen. Gutting is no problem indoors.

 

[NancyP]

I add dish soap to my scald water and that helps quite a bit.

 

[Jamie_Dog_Trainer]

I tried dish soap in the scalding water when I first did turkeys and chickens. Didn't help, in fact it just gave me a sick stomach every time that I smelled that dish soap from then on. I switched dish soaps LOL.