Butchered chickens for the first time today

[chickenandgoatlady]

why do you do a 24 hr brine soak??

 

[JFord]

I hope it goes that easy for me. I have recently decided to start breeding chickens for eggs and meat. I have 18 right now. I have 11 leghorns, 4 Americaunas, a rhode island red, and 2 others I'm not sure of. 1 is all black, including the comb, and the other is white, but I dion't think it is a white legger. Anyway I'm planning on eating all the roosters except 2 and then just seein what happens after that.

 

[FutureChickenMan]

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It helps keep the meat tender; I do it to my thanksgiving turkeys too.

 

[FutureChickenMan]

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The all white one could be a white rock. Hopefully it is. You could breed that one or the RIR to one of the roos for meat. Basically, you want to pick the biggest fastest maturing birds to mate for your meat birds. I have some birds I'm going to mess around breeding to get meat birds too. I gotta tell you though, the cornish x rocks grow really really fast but my gosh they sure do create one heck of a mess and you gotta keep after that mess or they stink to all high heaven.

 

[living2ride]

I'm pretty happy just dropping them off at the poultry processor's place and coming back in an hour or so to find them all bagged and ready to go. Worth EVERY penny to me.

 

[blueskylen]

I am glad that you were able to do it yourself! I have never liked to cut up chicken, let alone butcher it. Altho, i have helped butcher pigs, deer, beef, and never had a problem.

We are a few weeks away from doing our first 28 red broilers, and thought that I would be able to " do the deed", but am a bit attached to them now and decided to start looking around for someone else to do it. I found a family about 25 miles away, that will do it for $1.75 per bird - needless to say, we am very happy to pay that small amount to avoid the sadness,strain, and mess.
I think that it will be much easier to enjoy eating them, without having to see them butchered. I do admire anyone who can do it themselves, and save the expense of having to pay to have it done.

 

[FutureChickenMan]

Oh believe me, I looked up somebody to do it weeks ago just in case. But right now I'm only doing a couple here a couple there. If I raised a crop of them, for simplicity I'd probably take them to a processor. I've got two cornish x's left and they'll probably get the cleaver this weekend. After that it will be a while before any of the other birds are mature enough. Plus I've got to grow them out so I can start picking my breeding stock.

 

[greyfields]

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This is a point of debate. Every chicken you buy at the grocery store is 'marinated' in brine prior to being packaged. They allege this is to make the meat moist (I do not believe they claim it makes it tender). But, sceptics argue that they're displacing any moisture in the carcass with salt water, thus making the chicken weigh more. I mean, why not sell salt water at the price/lb of chicken if you can get away with it?

And all this is allowed under the "Natural" label which really infuriates some people.

So, I'm producing my own birds to avoid industrially produced chickens. So, I'm not interested in brining mine for my customers or for myself as I'm not trying to replicate the industrial food chain on the small scale.

 

[chicknaddy]

I too was told that skinning is a lot easier than plucking. Skinning sounded great too, because typically we take the skin off our chickens. However, I won't skin again after trying both methods this past weekend - my first time to do either. Skinning seemed to be a "dirty" job to me - all those dry poopy feathers floating everywhere and sticking to everything, and the smell was the only part of the job that I found disagreeable. So, I killed two birds (pun intended) with one stone: scalded the birds in a pot of water in which I squeezed in a good dose of soap. I had read somewhere adding soap this would help loosen the feathers and any dirt, but it also added a much more pleasant aroma to the event! Picking didn't take all that much longer than skinning, and the end result is much purtier.

 

[FutureChickenMan]

yeah the feathers and dirt can be an issue. I kept the hose near by and just hosed it off every couple of minutes. A proper working station with a sink would have made it a bunch easier. But the meat bird I got were unexpected so I didn't have all the time I needed to get all the gear in order.

I think what matters most, is that folks use the method that works best for them.