Does anyone have advice for selling meat birds to family/friends?

[scubaforlife]

If your DH is good with a knife, he could skin them. My sister does that, says you lose the skin that is so nice for roasting but you don't have to pluck.

Those whizbang pluckers are decent, find your local 4H meeting and see if anyone else wants to share the cost or even better has one.

 

[blueskylen]

I don't have any problem selling them to my family - started out 2 years ago with 25 - have now just got in 60 cornish X peeps - my family keeps asking for more. I really don't make any money on them tho - just sell them for what we have in them and a couple of dollars more. If I was going to raise them to sell to neighbors, then would probably be about $3.00/lb. - usually have about $2.00/lb in them by processing time

 

[bucketgirl]

Check with your local extension offices and search around. We rent a full featherman setup for only $25 locally:

http://www.agbizcenter.org/node/38

Lots of groups are getting together across the nation to support small producers. Surely you can find or easily start a group to get a setup like this together. The equipment above lives at a farm store. We just drive up with a trailer and they forklift it in. The $25 goes in the mail to the ag biz center. Farm store probably loves it because we always find something to buy "while we're there"

it's a big community win.

It's worth it even though we only process a few birds. we did 12 in about 4 hours and now that we are practiced can probably do this batch of 25 in the same time. I've heard of people plucking a single bird for like 45 minutes... no thanks.

I'll be posting pics soon.

AC

 

[gvntofly05]

Quote:
Just so you know, if your family is already used to the cornish x's you may want to stick with those. A dual purpose chicken is much much different when plucked out. Not as much meat, a more protruding keel bone and the legs don't look so tucked in, they are longer and more slender. Also with dual purpose breeds, age determines what type of cooking is best, 7-12 weeks broiler, 12-20 weeks fryer, 5-12 months (6-9 being best) roaster and over 1 year stewing.

I do have to say that nothing beats the flavor in a 6 month old chicken though!

 

[Buster52]

Quote:
http://www.apppa.org/legalstates.pdf

 

[ninny]

Thanks everybody!! Im really thinking about doing this, just need to get DH on board. Would it be best if i tried it with 5 or so cornish cross to start with?

 

[Hillsvale]

Quote:
We been thinking about building one but the cost is the kicker. I was thinking maybe we could rent it out when we dont need it to try and get the money back.

try this.... I am going to build one!

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=130787

Shelley