Dead Meat Bird

[mcmommy]

Our meat birds are almost 9 weeks. I am learning how to butcher tomorrow. One of our meat birds was dead this am! did I wait too long, is it possible he had a heart attack?
What do I do with him now? Arggghhhh and help! This stinks.

 

[HEChicken]

If it were me (and I'll probably get shot down for this

), I wouldn't want the meat to go to waste, but also wouldn't want to risk making my family sick. I'd probably cook it up and feed it to the pets. I've only processed a few roosters so far but found that the hens would more than willing to eat the parts we didn't want to eat (fought over it actually). And we also have two dogs who were quite happy to eat bits and pieces too. I figure this use is better than just throwing the whole bird in the trash.

 

[KatieH]

I had that happen and it was congestive heart failure (I was told here that if you open the cavity and there's yellow liquid, it confirms CHF). I started taking away their food for 12 hours a day and didn't lose any more (well one more the next day was almost dead, but not totally, so we butchered him).

We threw out the first guy since we weren't sure what happened, but the second guy we knew for sure was CHF so we processed and ate him.

 

[AHappychick]

feed him to the dogs or other animals and pull the feed back to just enough for them to eat for 20 minutes twice a day or remove all food for 12 hours a day. and get ready to process the rest. start with the biggest and the ones who look thike they are breathing heavy. Wait until you see how good they taste. Next time you might want to consider starting to process a few at a time from 6 weeks on. I always do the biggest ones first and this was I have fresh chicken in 6 weeks and then each week there after I process a few more, by 9 weeks they are all in freezer camp. Good Luck!

 

[jaku]

Burn it. Or bury it. Don't even feed it to the dogs. That's my personal opinion/policy, others may say different, but I don't want to eat a bird that isn't bled out, MAY have had a heart attack (or some other disease,) and "probably" ok to eat just isn't good enough for my kids- period.