First time processing - great difficulties and then SUCCESS!!

[mama dixie]

thank you scott, I loved what you said about how we should pause a moment before the kill. My dad really respected all life. he liked animals more than people and so I was taught they die to keep us alive like you said. We are teaching our son this and hope to not be saying one thing and then doing another. hard to put your money where you moth is you know... I will begin saving for a chicken plucker or see if we can rent one. also I will try to get trafic comes or save the big bleach jugs. good to know about the needing to bleed them out quick. my friend one time was out on her grandma's farm and was told to go wring a chickens neck for dinner, she had seen grandma do this in the past so she went out and was out there for a bit when grandma came out all the chickens were limping becuse she had grabed them by the feet not the head and broke many of there legs so many had to be killed. needless to say they spent the rest of the vaction time canning chicken. I think I am tramatizing myself before I even try to butcher them. I will just pray and study how to do it the quickestway and have my hubby and neighbor here and our son so he realizes why we get upset about wasting food. thank you for the feed back.. I really believe we are in a changing time and need to learn how to live more off the land and less off our society. I really want a chicken plucker thoes look very handy.

 

[ScottyHOMEy]

Ayuh. The mechanical pluckers are, I'm sure (I've seen them in action), durned handy. They make short work of the longest, most tedious, part of the job.

I overlooked it earlier and, not knowing where you are, my observation may be out of line, but $5.50 to process a bird seems more than steep. To the point that economy has to take the upper hand over quality, even if the price includes flash-freezing and vacuum packing. The shop in our area makes a very good and clean job of their work, and only charges $3/bird, packed in their ice in your cooler.

You all can do this. Search around the forum or the wider www and there are plenty of videos or step-by-step links (like the one someone posted above) on the mechanics of it all. Necessarily graphic, but, unless you run onto something I haven't, you'll detect the sense of respect for the life you'll be taking in the process.

The longer post I referred to is in the middle of the page here.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=7223202

 

[Ema]

Well the turkey harvest is done, I will tell you all like in a previous post that the first three birds I did were a mess, the plucking part anyhow was, the rest well I didn't do so bad at it. but it sure took me a long time. I must say though that I did think I would have issues with it all, I was raised on a farm and have seen this done many a time, but with my own I thought I might get sick or be upset or something. I did take pause at first, I mean after all I raised these birds from babies.

the second set of birds I did took less time, in fact half the time of the first three I did, and the plucking part went a lot better. Of course this was after I bought the turkey fryer to get the water to the right temps.

today I did the last five took me only 2 hours to do all 5 from beginning to end. and I hand plucked all of these by the way. Anyhow, today was a breeze, the plucking went real well. and the gutting went faster than before. I now have the remaining 5 birds brinning in salty ice water, of course I needed something big enough to brine them in so I used my huge rain barrel that I washed out with bleach water prior to using and then filled it with very cold well water, ice and salt. the birds look great. I have sold all the birds except the ones I am keeping for myself. and tomorrow they are all going to the people who bought them for a nice canadian thanksgiving dinner for these families.

I am very proud that my husband and I were able to do this and not give up on it, it was very rewarding and now I know I can definitely do this. My dh told me today how when I brought up having chickens and other farm animals to raise and sustain ourselves that he didn't want to tell me that he was not crazy about the idea. But today he said, he is glad we did it cause it made him feel real good knowing that we raised these birds on good pasture and feed and were well cared for and that he likes knowing that his food was treated well prior to fulfilling our needs. I could tell he was proud that he took part in this, even though he was really grossed out and squimmish during the first couple birds. Even my 2 youngest kids thought it was a great experience.

I had a friend come over the other day when we did the second set of birds, and he brought 2, 13 year old boys he is teaching about hunting and the outdoors. these boys were fantastic, they were not grossed out and were all hands on. Before they left hey asked if they could come back again sometime. they said they had a great time and learned a lot about where their food really comes from. Even their parents said this was an important learning curve for them because soo many people now a days have no clue about the real ways their food reach them.

It was a great week after all. thank you to all of you who gave me advice and encouraged me not to give up.

and to the rest of you who are thinking about whether you can do this or not, trust me, this may not be for everyone, but it sure is rewarding knowing how to do it and knowing hey wee treated right until the very end, and lastly knowing exactly where that meal on your table came from.

Ema

 

[Noymira]

Quote:
I love this, you say it so well. I had never killed anything before we did two birds a few weeks ago, other than fishing as a kid and the occasional suicidal squirrel with my car (and I felt bad about that). It was a very hard thing to do, I felt both sick and proud afterwards, and regret for my inexperience.

I don't think it will ever get easy, and probably shouldn't be. I couldn't eat much for a full day or two after and it took me a week to really come to terms with it. To this day I can't eat meat without thinking about the live animal it came from, but I think that is the way it should be. I don't feel right buying chicken from the store and cooking as though it were any other ingredient yet not be able to kill one myself to eat. I will do it again in the future and have a new respect for those who raise their own food animals, and a wish to make the most of the animal whose life I have taken to sustain my own.

I believe the disconnect from our food sources is one of the many things wrong with our society and something I hope to rectify in my own life.