Finished totally ...

[Arielle]

Enjoy the good eats!!

 

[Sami]

Hi there. We are allowed to process our own birds as long as they are for our personal consumption. If we want to sell we need to take them to a government inspected processing facility .

 

[Czech's_chicks]

Speaking of approved processing places, I'm thinking of taking mine to be done at the same time. It would be several days work for me and I don't have room to cool the meat prior to freezing and frankly, I'd like a few with skin on and I don't pluck. The only way is to have a place do it. The cost is $5 per chicken and $25 per turkey. Assuming money isnt an issue, do you think that is too much? I'll be processing 10-11 Cornish and a Tom.

 

[Arielle]

I pay $5 at an inspected facilty, but they only cahge $10 for a turkey.

Plucking isn't all that hard to do. I hand pluck. WHen prepping for the roaster pan, I pluck the missed feathers and consider candling the hairs at that point. My family no longer cares about a few hairs and feathers now . . .

 

[Veronika212]

Good to hear you had such a great experience! This is our first year raising meat birds, our CX's are 4 weeks now and we have had 4 losses so far out of our 53 CX + 6 turkey's. We are in the barrie area also so if you find a great source for feed please let me know! Also, did you ever look into getting them processed in a facility? We plan to do it ourself but I'm still considering sending them away to get them done, but I haven't found any local facilities.

Thanks,

Veronica

 

[Arielle]

Good to hear you had such a great experience! This is our first year raising meat birds, our CX's are 4 weeks now and we have had 4 losses so far out of our 53 CX + 6 turkey's. We are in the barrie area also so if you find a great source for feed please let me know! Also, did you ever look into getting them processed in a facility? We plan to do it ourself but I'm still considering sending them away to get them done, but I haven't found any local facilities.

Thanks,

Veronica

Lots of rules and regs for a facility to have poultry processing-- if you can manage it yourself , go for it, maybe do a few a day. Honestly the first time I shipped some 30 birds and it was nice to get back nicely dressed birds at the end of the day. I just needed to repackage everyone. SO do ask about packaging so you know what to expect.

GOod luck and welcome to BYC.

Try your state thread for resources, also try your state poultry inspector.

 

[bowhunter862]

WOW!!

I'm a serious "numbers" guy and those are super great numbers. $6.26 per bird X 16 birds means you only spent $106.16 on feed. You used 450 pounds of feed which means you were only spending $11.11 for a 50 pound bag. HOLY COW! That's a steal! Feed here is a minimum of $16 for a 50 pound bag. If you find a better price on feed next time than you did this time, I want to know where. You did GREAT this time!! And, you got 100.18 pounds of meat for that $106.16 investment. That's only $1.06 per pound. Again, WOW!! I need to take lessons from you. My last batch worked out to be almost $2 per pound. I did add in cost for packaging bags, electricity, and a couple bags of shavings I had to buy when my sawmill was out but, still, you did waaaaay better than I did.

Congrats on a job very very well done.

 

[bowhunter862]

Lol. Just reread my post.,. Must have been tired as my math doesn't work lol. It works out that the average weight is 6.26 per bird not the cost. Works out to $1.95lb which isn't as low as I wanted but its home grown so I am happy.

OK, now I don't feel so bad. I missed this correction before I posted. *Whew*