cooling your birds

[minister man]

When we butcher birds, we always just left them out on the table to cool and dry off, with the windows open and the fans running, but we usally kill them later in the year. This time we have to butcher tommorrow, because I have to have the show birds vacinated on Monday, and if the meat birds are still here they have to be done too and then I can't kill for a month. So any how, how do you cool your birds when it is hot out? Right now it is about, 80-95 degrees. One place put them in tubs of ice water for several hours. anyone do anything like that? What works? I have 20 to do. Thanks

 

[satay]

We do the tub of ice water for a few hours.

 

[minister man]

how long do you usally leave them in the ice bath?

 

[AinaWGSD]

When we butcher, the birds are essentially in an ice bath the entire time we are eviscerating except for the period of time that they are on the table. We slaughter, scald, and pluck, then place them in a large tub of cold water from the hose while we finish the rest of the killing/plucking. Once we are done with the plucking, we rinse each bird off with the hose, dump the water from the tub, and move the whole tub full of birds into the house. Once in the house, we add several pounds of ice (usually one or two of the 20lb bags from the store) and just enough water to cover, or at least mostly cover the carcasses. We pull the birds out and eviscerate them one at a time, then put them back in the tub of ice water until we are through all of them. If we do a small batch, it only takes an hour or so, but with fewer bodies there is more contact with the ice and they cool quicker. When we do a large batch (the largest we've done so far is 13) it takes closer to 4 hours. By the time we are doing the last few birds, they have cooled sufficiently enough that my fingers get very chilly reaching into the body cavity and pulling everything out. I'd guess that 2-4 hours should be plenty of time in an ice bath to cool the birds sufficiently.

 

[Oregon Blues]

I use one of those blue 55 gallon food grade barrels cut in half. So it is about 25 gallon size. Fill it with cold water and add a lot of ice. The birds go into that after they are cleaned.

You can tell when they are chilled by feeling them. They feel like they have been refrigerated. Then mine are drained and go into the refrigerator, in a tub and covered with plastic wrap so they don't dry out.

They stay in the fridge until the next day, when I cut them into pieces and package and freeze them.

You won't need quite that much ice water for fewer birds, but I am usually doing 25 chickens, or 6 geese, or 20 rabbits at a time and it takes lots of ice water to chill them quickly.