Going to bite the bullet

[galanie]

I have a place on a big tree in the back that I hang my kill cone and put a 5 gallon bucket under it. My oldest hens love processing day cause they get the livers and some of the other stuff I don't care for. I probably shouldn't include them in the process but they love it so. They can't see the victim in the cone till after I pull it out and I let it hang there a bit to let it fully bleed out.

 

[LilyD]

Quote:
I was thinking of building a swing arm out from the side of my barn. I definitely have enough lumber. Then I can hang my kill cone on that when processing and put a bucket underneath. I may have to hang a tarp or something because there really is no area that I can use that the neighbors can't see. I don't want to gross people out just get rid of my nasty roosters. Most of my neighbors are much older and so I work hard to make sure that nothing I do with my critters affects them in any way. Maybe I can set it up to do inside the barn rather than outside so they can't see. I let out my Brahmas from my second coop to get some out time and they are pacing inside their run trying to find a way to get out and get after the Brahma hens. The others could care less about the other chickens they just want to get the last of the apples for the season lol. Why are some roosters so mean? It doesn't make sense for them to be like that because then the hens don't like them and neither do we. Is it because humans have been messing with breeding too much?

 

[LilyD]

So today was the day. I set everything up ahead of time and held each of them in my lap while they were going. For next time I think I definitely want to build a scalder that will keep the temp steady since I had to stop between birds to change the water so that it would get hot again. The hand plucking wasn't bad and went pretty much as expected as did the processing afterwards. It was definitely harder than birds that I had bought since I had watched these two hatch and raised them from then on. The girls are definitely breathing easier though and everything seems to be peaceful.

For those interested in raising these guys for meat, here are some pictures of what they looked like after they had been cleaned up.

I didn't actually weight them but they definitely felt like at least a 4 or 5 pound birds after they had been cleaned.

They had less breast than a Cornish X but what they did have was still a decent sized breast and would definitely be enough to make a meal for three or four people per chicken. The legs and thighs looked like the ones from the grocery store.

The only other thing that I had to do differently from the Cornish X was that I needed a butane torch to singe the hairs once the feathers had been removed. They have long very fine hairs that stick to their skin. If you are skinning them that would be fine but since I like skin on my dark meat I needed to singe the hairs to get rid of them.

All in all I am very proud that I was able to do it on my own. It is still sad that I had to do it but it's part of life and it won't be wasted.

 

[galanie]

I've considered trying to pluck only the legs and skinning the rest because I, too, like the skin left on the dark meat so I can roast me some tasty legs and thighs. The white meat just goes to making strips or chicken salad. I tried it with one of the last ones I did and it didn't work out well. Seems a waste to pluck a whole bird just to get legs with the skin on but I'm going to try it again, after hopefully learning something from that one.

Those pictures make my stomach growl!

 

[SC-ChickMom]

Very nice job.