It was butchering day for geese last Monday.
We did 6 of them. Dressed weights, minus neck and giblets were in the neighborhood of 11 pounds.
Necks chopped. My son says the regular butcher stump didn't work well. Next time he wants something to support the weight of the geese because it was hard to hold them up with one hand and swing the ax with the other hand. So larger surface needed next year.
They don't thrash badly. Interesting that rigor was slow to set and quick to pass. They were out of rigor before we got them wrapped.
I have to feed less. Body cavities were stuffed chock full of fat. Intestines were confined inside a solid block of fat.
It took 30 minutes for each bird, because the EZ PLucker isn't really big enough. It couldn't tumble the geese and there wasn't room for 2 geese at the same time. So 90 second scald, into the plucker to get as many feathers off as possible. Then hand pluck as clean as possible, and then into the wax for the last of the pin feathers and down.
The carcasses came out absolutely gorgeous.
I followed the published schedule for butchering geese and there were exactly 2 pin feathers on one bird. That makes butchering much easier. Weather was downright cold, and that makes butchering much easier, too. No worries about the meat getting warm, no flies, no problems with chilling.
Next time, I need a larger work area for gutting. Once I got the bird gutted, I didn't have enough room to separate and prepare the giblets. Necks were impossible. I had to leave them on and have my strong son take them off the geese before we wrapped them.
Wrapping was multiple layers of butcher paper with freezer tape. Next year, I want some cotton butcher's twine to tie the legs. They want to straddle out which made wrapping more difficult. They stack surprisingly well in the freezer and take up much less room than I planned on. I'd been working on freeing up enough space and then didn't use nearly all of it.
Hand plucking was well worth it. It made the wax easy to filter and get put away for next time.
We did 6 of them. Dressed weights, minus neck and giblets were in the neighborhood of 11 pounds.
Necks chopped. My son says the regular butcher stump didn't work well. Next time he wants something to support the weight of the geese because it was hard to hold them up with one hand and swing the ax with the other hand. So larger surface needed next year.
They don't thrash badly. Interesting that rigor was slow to set and quick to pass. They were out of rigor before we got them wrapped.
I have to feed less. Body cavities were stuffed chock full of fat. Intestines were confined inside a solid block of fat.
It took 30 minutes for each bird, because the EZ PLucker isn't really big enough. It couldn't tumble the geese and there wasn't room for 2 geese at the same time. So 90 second scald, into the plucker to get as many feathers off as possible. Then hand pluck as clean as possible, and then into the wax for the last of the pin feathers and down.
The carcasses came out absolutely gorgeous.
I followed the published schedule for butchering geese and there were exactly 2 pin feathers on one bird. That makes butchering much easier. Weather was downright cold, and that makes butchering much easier, too. No worries about the meat getting warm, no flies, no problems with chilling.
Next time, I need a larger work area for gutting. Once I got the bird gutted, I didn't have enough room to separate and prepare the giblets. Necks were impossible. I had to leave them on and have my strong son take them off the geese before we wrapped them.
Wrapping was multiple layers of butcher paper with freezer tape. Next year, I want some cotton butcher's twine to tie the legs. They want to straddle out which made wrapping more difficult. They stack surprisingly well in the freezer and take up much less room than I planned on. I'd been working on freeing up enough space and then didn't use nearly all of it.
Hand plucking was well worth it. It made the wax easy to filter and get put away for next time.
