Disconcerting evening

[cafrhe]

My 28 birds were supposed to go to the processor this evening to be processed 1st thing tomorrow morning. We waited until 730 to pack them up into 5-6 crates, trying to keep them uncrowded...It even had cooled off from 4ish days of 90+ and humid weather. They were very comfortable today.

This is my 1st batch of cornish x and they did very well--no deaths until this week. One girl wouldnt stand, so she was processed 2-3 days ago. She was small--3 lbs dressed weight.

They were bigger than I expected considering they were tractored/free ranged. Many males were 9+lbs at 7.5 weeks so we decided to process a little early.

So they were all packed up and put into the (air conditioned) van and one of the biggest boys freaked out and ended up having a heart attack....So before he left, dh killed him and my dd and I processed him (totally unprepared to be doing this tonight--my young niece is here this week and you should have heard the good night phone call to mom and dad tonight!!)

Dh told the processor that we were 1 short and what happened--processor was very surprised and said he had never experienced a bird having a panic attack/heart attack.

How common is it to have a problem trying to get to the processor? I am trying to keep this as stress free as possible and feel terrible to panic them at the end....I know we will probably process our birds on our own at some point, but had no plans to do so this soon...

If nothing else, we did scald this chicken better than the 1st one, though he was a bit harder because he had been eating all day. He is 6lbs 10oz dressed.

 

[GitaBooks]

I'm sorry to hear that.

Yeah, butchering your own birds is hard. I don't do it myself, others in my family do it. I've heard that Cornish x do panic pretty easily and have heart attacks pretty easily.

I know you tried your best to keep them calm.

 

[slingshotandLAR]

It depends really....

Some batches are more flighty than others, at least in my experience. I have a big group now 100+ That are still very jumpy at almost 5 weeks. When they were 2 weeks old I needed to add some more bedding to the brooder, they absolutely freaked out. I had to stop for fear of them killing each other. When I got done even though I did it as gently as possible I said to my wife it will be a miracle if some don't die from heart attacks, sure enough I checked on them an hour later and had two dead flipped over birds.

Point is you can't control everything, only do the best you can. There really is no non stressful way to crate the birds, we try to do it as fast as possible so they calm back down.

Sounds like you did great honestly, there is all manner of ways to kill your birds mistakenly. The more you do it the more things happen, like running them over with the tractor by mistake or setting a bucket lid on a shelf that then falls and hits a bird just perfect enough to break its neck. Maybe you let your 3 year old daughter help/watch you put day old chicks in the brooder and she grabs 2 because they are so cute she can't stand it and squeezes them to death because she wants to pet them..... Like I said your doing pretty good

 

[cafrhe]

Thanks for the support. These guys were very flighty from the beginning. I thought I would give them heart attacks by adding bedding too...They would calm down if I wasnt moving, but any movement from me they objected to. The new batch is similar.

The processor did tell me I could drop them off after dark from now on. I am also going to make my own cages and have more of them so they are not as crowded (they were not overly crowded, but I liked the cages that held 3 birds with a little room)

I will also process a week earlier if they get as big as these did. My smallest birds were 4lbs 8oz (not very many) and 7 were over 6 lbs (one 6lb, 10 oz) dressed weight with no giblets inside. Most were in the 5lb range (many of those over 5.5lbs). So not bad for semi free ranged birds.

I am thankful that we did this well. My next batch started out worse--1 chick was doa, 1 had a bent neck and then I lost a chick at almost a week old. So far no more losses though.