Chickens died yesterday- can we process tonight?

[Molpet]

https://honest-food.net/on-hanging-pheasants-2/

 

[jlwquilter]

I was so excited to get them too. And then I got home and..... not too excited then. I feel so bad. Poor things. Lesson learned that’s for sure. Not a cheap lesson either.
I got a few hours sleep last night and then started working on cleaning up the transport bins and stuff and then making things as nice for the survivors as I could. It’s been 24 hours and they do seem to be settling in ok.
I guess we can clean them and see what it looks like. We can cook them and offer the meat to the neighbors for their dogs.

 

[jlwquilter]

How does that accidentally happen? Haha!

But I would think that they would be okay to process. Some people will only process immediately, but there are some who will process if it’s only been a few days.

Have they been refrigerated in the meantime? That’s very important.

They were refrigerated within a few hours of death. It was a long drive home. They were still warm - probably due to the live birds on top of them. Oh geez.
Anyway. We unload the live birds first of course and then bagged the dead ones and placed into the fridge. So a couple of hours total.

 

[jlwquilter]

https://honest-food.net/on-hanging-pheasants-2/

Thanks for the link! Reading it now.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hanging pheasants is a good comparison. I think it comes down to how fast the individuals cooled off. If they were spread out enough so the individuals could cool down you should be OK as far as that goes. If they were piled up so the ones on the bottom stayed warm. not so much.

The other issue is how fast could your refrigerator cool off that much mass. Even if they were spread out a lot of warm stuff can raise the temperature inside a fridge or freezer. It can take a while for them to catch up.

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

Thats so awful - I’m sorry to hear about it! I’ve processed rabbits that were kept for longer than ideal. I think if you open the abdomen and find that you can get the gut and gall bladder our intact, and there is no bile staining inside, they will probably be ok if well cooked. You could make something like chicken shreds for soup. I was wondering about pressure canning the meat, since there should be no live organisms after that, but I shy away from canning anything that’s in less than pristine condition. You could al least make a big batch of well cooked chicken and freeze in portions for your dogs. It sounds like a lot of work though. Best of luck and sorry about the unexpected loss.

 

[jlwquilter]

Hi. Thanks for all the info and support. It’s been a very trying few days. We ended up tossing the carcasses. We just kept running out of time every day to get to them - really my husband as he’s the one that does the task.
Thanks again for trying to help me!!!