Are meat birds dirty?

[rungirl]

My avitar is a picture of my daughter holding one of our meat birds. Now in all fairness, ours were raised for the county fair, so they were washed, pampered and very well taken care of, but they are generally much dirtier than any of the other chickens. They don't like to walk very much and they love to eat, so their breast feathers are sparse because they spend a lot of time laying around and growing bigger.... and they poop A LOT. You just can't compare them to my egg-layers. My hens are like prissy little princesses compared to the meat birds.

Lisa

 

[cassie]

Quote:
You are right about the birds being only as clean as their living conditions. I think a lot of people are simply not prepared for the amount of waste they generate as compared to other chickens and do not compensate for it. Does anyone keep meat chickens in cages?

 

[myhubbycallsmechickeemama]

Quote:
You are right about the birds being only as clean as their living conditions. I think a lot of people are simply not prepared for the amount of waste they generate as compared to other chickens and do not compensate for it. Does anyone keep meat chickens in cages?

I agree with this about the overall cleanliness of the birds but sorry....their butts have nothing to do with how clean or dirty your living environment is. Mine is very clean and some of them still have yucky butts!!

 

[NewHopePoultry]

I must admit, I never payed much attention to their butts or how they pooped

I have a friend who raises meat birds in old rabbit hutches and they seem to be alot cleaner then the floor raised ones.

 

[Grace11]

I came in here today just to ask about this very thing! I saw this youtube (

) regarding Meat chickens.

The video had a label showing them the day before freezer camp. Every one of them had poopy butts. How can you butcher a bird with this uck on them? Do you wash them before butchering? And with what? Just the cuts made to eviserate them could contaminate your meat! I don't think the hot water bath to pluck them would be long or hot enough to kill the possible contamination. Not to mention, just one meat chicken in your hot water would make it so disgusting you'd have to keep a HUGE supply of hot water to change it out in between them.

 

[geeky_farmer]

We did 5 birds today. They were a mess.

We have had rain, rain, and more rain. This delayed their time on pasture but even with keeping them on clean shavings for most of their lives they had muddy bellies and feet. And since they were bigger then we should have let them get they were a bit poopy on the bottoms.

How we did our chickens was after we killed them we hit them with a hose to clean up all the mud and any bottoms prior to scalding them, so they were pretty clean when we cut of their heads, scalded, and plucked them.

I don;t know what a processor would do.

 

[SethJ]

Quote:
thats what we do,....on a real dirty bird,..we hose them off ,..then we use a big crawfish pot to scald in,..I always heat to 160degrees,.....prefect for not tearing the meat,.....but in reality most bacteria will only be killed at 186 degrees F. So I dunno? I've never been ill yet,....lol,....Just use alot of water,...pluck,..rinse,....pluck rinse sme more,.....by the time i'm done plucking,..they're aint ANYTHING left on the skin,....it's pretty well cleaned all up.

 

[eggbuster]

A processor throws them in the scalder one after the other. Poop soup. We are required to take the chickens to a government inspected processor if we want to sell. It totally grossed me out to take my pristine birds there and watch what they did with them. They come back all banged up skin torn, broken legs ect... Its disgraceful. (only processor around) This regulation cannot be for health reasons; its false advertising.

 

[flstout]

At one point I hated them and wanted to go on a mad killing spree in the coop...lol,.....I had too many and they were driving me nuts!

This made me laugh out loud in the library where I work. I felt exactly the same way just yesterday and reading this post made me feel somewhat normal and not like a crazed maniac! Thanks for the honesty I really needed that.

 

[jenny_kap]

my vet told me that the birds get poopy butts when they drink warm water. my chickens are living together with the ducks, so, there is no chance to have warm water around

. still, the cornish x have poopy butts and the layers don't. they free range together, they are very clean, but the meat birds have this problem. i don't make a tragedy out of this, as i clean them very well when i process and the meat will be boil, fried, cooked before eating it.