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WOW y is this not more populer??? i tryied it earlyer today on 2 young black Orp roosters... i skined them instead of plucking but other than that followed the directions exactly... being as this was my first time doing it it probably took me the same amount of time... but i can see that with practice this would be way faster and easer to do... no need to get the lung pullers out... would save alot of time in the final clean up of the bird....
thanks so much for posting this
Excellent! I am so glad you tried. Yes, with a little practice, you save immense amounts of time. The only reason we do whole birds is if they are intended to be roasters. Otherwise, this preparation, i.e. spatchcocking, saves time and also gets you one step further to having your bird porperly cut up for recipes.
NB: This is great because it gives you a viable way to cull early and yet make proper use of your culls, if this is an aspect that causes you pause. In other words, certain traits are visible, or weight defficiencies are discoverable at an early age. The ALBC method is really quite good and is suited to all of our Heritage LF, especially those built for production, which is most.
Now, I"m not advocating culling all of one's stock too early. If you cull down to five cockerels at 8-weeks, you're probably cutting your chances significantly. However, if your growing-out capacity is 100 birds,
per se, than why are you going to grow about a bunch of fowl you know are not worthy. If your growing arrangements permit (think space and sanitation) hatch out 150 or 200, at 8 weeks, in accord with the ALBC plan, weight out your birds, notice birds with aboslute defects, as well. Reduce down to that 100 number, which is your goal. Now, when you're growing out birds, you at least know they "made the cut", and you still are going to have your quota for watching type, early maturity, etc.... Then when you cull down to 10 +/-, you're choosing from birds that have reached a bare minimum from an early age.
Besides, broilers are truly yummy.
