Do it yourself or take them to a butcher?

[member 373180]

Are they vegan? If not, you should process them anyway since they dont have a valid argument if they eat animal products. More humane to grow and process yourself compared to store bought. Actually, even if they are vegan, they should support your doing things the humane way if they cant convince you to be vegan anyway. Stand your ground, it is the right thing to do and they will learn to respect you for it after learning more about the horrors of factory farming themselves.

Agreed. Unless they consume no chicken products they have no argument. Plus it's your house, too. You might let them know when you plan to do it so that they can arrange to be away from home at that time.

 

[Amandakae]

Have you tried listing a wanted ad? I did this in my area and found someone! Just a thought =) I listed on craigslist under farm and garden.

 

[twigcrafter]

I processed my own. I looked into taking them some place and thought it would be too much of a hassle to load them up in cages, which I don't have, and then handing them over to a stranger. I feel it was more humane to do it on site. This is my first year and I didn't have a lot of birds to harvest. I invested in a drum plucker though. So if I had to pluck them myself, I'd probably sing a different tune.

 

[YdogsflY]

Always process them ourselves. Me, wife, and daughter, dogs to. Makes no sense to pay someone else to do it.

 

[Morrigan]

My husband and I do it ourselves. It's cheaper and easier on the birds as they don't have a stressful transport and strangers handling them. It takes two of us (no plucker) about 1 1/2 hours to do 6 birds. We raise about 25 meat birds each year and we spread out the butchering over 4 weeks so we wind up with different sized birds -- first batch are 4-5 lbs for frying and the last batch are 8-11 pounders we convert into sausage. Now that we have the hang of it, I can't imagine paying someone to do it for us.

 

[wildeden]

We do it ourselves. We use a captive bolt gun for dispatch.

Then we end up actually "peeling" the skin off! no plucking required.

 

[Duck Wax]

Has anyone tried waxing them?

 

[lcertuche]

I do it myself. I usually skin them rather than pluck. It would cost too much to pay someone. I would go on shares and help someone to butcher and I have did it for someone who didn't know or didn't want too.

 

[Lynn-n-JimsVT]

We will be doing our first round of meat birds this coming week. I had the good fortune to have a friend ask for help in processing a bunch of his and that experience was invaluable. I have my stations ready to go and I'm excited to begin the harvest. Here's a picture of my just completed (today) DIY chicken plucker made of PVC end cap, 3/8 threaded rod and cut off bungee ends.

 

[MasAhora]

When your housemates provide home grown fruit and veg in a decent quantity then they can rule the roost! That involves a lot of work and just a spot of bad weather or bugs or fungus might wipe out your fruit and veg produce for the season.