BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[Fire Ant Farm]

Agreed...the hens have trouble having their egg out of that crooked pelvis and, if the eggs are large, they can end up dying from it. I'd not deliberately breed a wry tail male over any hens if you can help it.

Thanks - that helps me understand better. He's getting culled next weekend either way, but it helps to understand the functional issues behind this defect...

- Ant Farm

 

[Beekissed]

Here's a few pics of a hen culled for wry tail...hers wasn't as bad as some but still pretty distinctive. This hen was not a layer, though young and should have been laying, so thinking she had other issues~ genetically speaking~ as well. You can see how the spine being twisted causes the legs to be offset and crooked also....this hen had a waddling type gait that slowed down her ability to run if out on range, so not good for her survival genetics at all. If out in the wild she would be easily picked off.

 

[draye]

There is a  lot of truth to that!

Sadly, there are some family members at my house that will not eat the skin.

I've got some here that won't eat skin. I won't let it go to waste though I eat it myself.

 

[Beekissed]

We don't much eat skin here either but will boil it down in the stock to render the fat out of it when we do pluck our birds....but mostly we skin. It doesn't go to waste as the dogs will eat it and gain the nutrition to be found therein.

 

[RattlesnakeRidgeWV]

Jules,
Post the link to the video he was talking about when skinning.
Kurt

 

[Kassaundra]

My NN are easier to pluck then skinning. Especially if your talking about a mostly grown boy, those connective tissues take some serious muscle and a sharp knife.

But after plucking some non NN I can see the allure of skinning even the older boys.

 

[Beekissed]

Jules,
Post the link to the video he was talking about when skinning.
Kurt

I've got a link to my own vid on it...is that the one you mean? It's not the best vid out there, to be sure, but it's a vid on skinning..... As you can see, these WRs are well worth skinning...their feathering is so deep and copious that one is fighting through the feathers just to butcher. Very fine, very downy, so they stick to every little thing.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
This video helped me A LOT yesterday! Thanks again for making it/posting it. Speaking of feathers getting everywhere, that was an issue I struggled with (downy feathers sticking to skinned carcass), and rinsing didn't always take care of it. (They had been molting, which made it worse.) When I prep them for freezing tomorrow, I suppose I'll need to pick them over again. Do you have any tips/tricks for that issue? (I DID learn to try to keep the pelt "inside out" as I was pulling it down, reducing the sticking of the feathers to the carcass, but didn't figure that out until the second to last one.)

- Ant Farm

 

[Beekissed]

No real tips there...just a really good picking under running water and later, when cutting up the carcass, having a damp rag on hand for wiping fingers free of any other fine hairs/feathers that need picking even after the rinsing. Pretty much like cleaning a deer haunch or other piece of a deer carcass, just picking and repicking until all scurf/hair/debris are off the meat. I'm a real freak about that...all of it MUST be off the meat, so I check and check again obsessively, even right up until I place that meat into the jar when canning, I'm still critically turning and viewing each piece of meat under a bright light before canning/freezing/preparing it for consumption.

 

[bnjrob]

My NN are easier to pluck then skinning. Especially if your talking about a mostly grown boy, those connective tissues take some serious muscle and a sharp knife.

But after plucking some non NN I can see the allure of skinning even the older boys.

I'm glad to hear somebody else say that. It is faster to pluck our Javas than to skin them. If we try to peel off the skin, it just rips the meat up. Having to cut every bit of skin off the meat is slower than plucking them. Our birds have a ton of connective tissue holding on their skin and their meat. And it also takes me a good long while to cut the meat off the bone raw so I can run it through the grinder.