I've not done meaties before but have been intrigued by them. We just put together a group of 7 men who want to butcher some fresh chicken so we ordered 150 chicks from Mt. Healthy Hatchery. We are going to get the chicks on March 3 and butcher the last Saturday in April or the first Saturday in May. If we start around 9:00 a.m. we figure it will take until sometime in the afternoon to get all of them butchered if we set up an assembly line. We have a guy who has one of those automatic pluckers that we are going to use. One of the guys is going to build a few tractors to keep the growing chickens in out in his field. I'm going to brood the chicks in my barn until they get feathered. This is our first time doing this but I figure we can't mess it up too bad. If any one has any suggestions or "warnings" for us, I'd sure like to hear them. If you have any experience at this sort of thing, please share.
she had a plucker, much to my dismay
