BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[Kassaundra]

Well, if it was you...thank you. I've actually been thinking about that comment since I read it and wondering if I need to change feeding habits. My husband and I were discussing it tonight over dinner (pizza, not chicken

). Was it the winter season encouraging the rooster to hoard more fat? Too much feed? Too little activity? Age? The NN + WR crossing? He was a month shy of being a year old, but I've processed year-old roosters before and never seen that much fat leaving me with more questions than answers, and a few theories to test. There's always more for me to learn.

As a side note, I also processed what was supposed to be an Austra-White cockerel but turned out to be a female of some sort of white chicken. She had very short legs, crooked toes, spurs, an unusually small head, bulging eyes, and a sickle tail...all attributes that made me think she was horribly in-bred. I held onto her for roughly a year because my son was very fond of her in spite of her flighty behavior, but she never laid a single egg that I knew of and I was growing increasingly irritated about feeding a non-producer. Well, when I processed her I could find absolutely no sign of reproductive organs of any sort. She too was fatty, but I expected that, but there were no eggs or egg follicles inside her, no testes....nothing. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.

I know I'm behind but do you know where she came from? Could she have been a capon?

 

[Maeschak]

So we butchered some birds the other day. Most are Barred Rocks hens and a Leghorn hen, but the 2 roosters we did so far, 1 was a barred rock, the other a BCM mix, were hardly any fat, we skinned them and even though when feeling them up through their feathers didn't seem too meaty, but after getting the skin off and realizing hardly any fat! This may only be a 3lb dressed weight chicken, but let me tell you, his meat looks super delicious and more of it than what we thought it would be!

None of these were part of my previous meat project. Just random birds selected for culling. Hens were way fattier than the boys were. I suspect that the hens will be so anyway just because they are hens?

I have to ask as I just skinned my first birds yesterday as opposed to plucking... how did you get the skin off the wings??? I only did 3 but I could not figure out how to get the skin off the wings. I ended up having to just cut the wings off between the shoulder and elbow joint.

By the way, good looking birds!

 

[Kassaundra]

I processed 3 birds today, a young cockrel that was just to full of himself. (I was calling him, Himself) anyway he had huge testes so guess that explains that. He had nothing that tempted me to keep him.

The other two were females I hate having to do the girls for some reason. Both these girls (a younger first year hen and an older 3 year hen) had been having some failure to thrive type issues. Not sick but not vigorous. The younger one had an odd small lump on her rear hip, hard to see w/ the feathers looked very minor and sometimes not even noticable. When I got her feathers off though it was bad, she had a massively displaced hip, and it had been that way for a while, that poor girl must have been in pain every day and being mounted must have been excruciating. You couldn't tell though, she masked it well and was able to do all her normal chicken stuff.

The older one wasn't laying and seemed like she had some mild internal lay issues, I just caught it early I think it would have become bad if left, so over all glad I took care of the girls today.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
Personally, when I do it, I pull the skin down the wings as far as I can, and cut the joint at the elbow.

 

[Kassaundra]

I do the same as Fire, I HATE skinning it is so hard. Everytime I have to skin (when I process my non NN) I curse the fact that I still hatch out feathered chickens!

 

[Phill98]

Hello guys, I'm from Nn thread, and most of you know me, but I have simple q. Do your hens tend to get fatter with age?

 

[Maeschak]

Personally, when I do it, I pull the skin down the wings as far as I can, and cut the joint at the elbow.

Yeah... I pulled and pulled and no luck... out of frustration I just cut as far down as I could pull.

 

[Molpet]

Yeah... I pulled and pulled and no luck... out of frustration I just cut as far down as I could pull.

I had to use a knife to cut at the topside of the wing where the feathers are attached to the cartilage/ muscle, just didn't pull off... I don't care for wings that much so I just cut them off now at the first joint closed to the body.

 

[DesertChic]

I know I'm behind but do you know where she came from? Could she have been a capon?

Not by my hand. I had separated her out from the boys early on when it was apparent that she was different. All of the boys, including the two I'd tried to caponize, grew very large even if they were incredibly meaty. She stayed very petite and processed out at only 3.5 lbs, and most of that I think was fat. Caitlyn Jenner had nothing on little Sugar.

 

[DesertChic]

Hello guys, I'm from Nn thread, and most of you know me, but I have simple q. Do your hens tend to get fatter with age?

Definitely! And I'm still convinced there's a seasonal influence as well. All of the birds I'm culling during these colder months have much more fat on them than my summer culls.