how do you prosses your birds without getting blood and guts all over

[abhaya]

I want to prosses some birds but I dont want to attract predators. How do you contain the mess?

 

[jerseygirl1]

In all honesty, I bring mine to someone else to do
But, I have heard of people who put them in feed bags upside down with just the head sticking out to contain the blood
I've never seen it

 

[Judy]

Garbage cans. Slit the throat in a killing cone over a garbage can. Old sink mounted in a knocked together outdoor table with a garden hose and a garbage can under the drain. When you pull the guts out, they go in another garbage can, where the feathers also go. Hose things down when you're done. No mess, the little blood that escapes gets washed into the dirt.

 

[Keara]

I have a small fire pit and burn all unwanted parts guts, head feet. Bones will turn to ash..... nothing left for a predator!

you can burn the feathers too!

 

[Scottingitup]

I dig a hole about 2.5 feet deep. Heads & entrails go in there. I just rinse the blood with a hose until it soaks into the ground. Feathers I keep around and add to the compost pile - they are an excellent source of nitrogen.

 

[abhaya]

Thanks for the ideas. I have an old bath tub up in the woods I could get down here. The guy down the road has a tractor with a scoop on it. I can put it up on block or rock and drain it into a large rubbermaid tote. I can cover one end of the tub with a table to work on mount the killing cones over the other end all the mess would go into the tub then just scoop it out and dispose of it. I can dump it out on the back forty. I dont have a problem feeding wild life I just want them away from the house and coops.

 

[guitari609]

I process alone. I've done it maybe...5 times now, and learned a lot each time. I went from about a bird an hour...or worse, to about 4 birds per hour now. I scald in a bucket that I keep on the fire, I check it with a heat gun every so often, whenever its about 155 I pull it out, dunk two chickens, then put it back on. I have a chicken plucker that I made myself, similar to the one in the link below. If Id have had the parts and not goofed as much I could have easily made the plucker in two hours, and it saves me about 25 minutes per chicken I figure. Two things I learned are that for one, plucking is the hardest part, an electric plucker makes all the difference in the world, and two, a proper scald is by far the most important part of plucking, especially with a plucker. I went from absolutely hating processing to now I don't mind it. Before it'd take me all day to do 8 birds. I did 12 before lunch on Friday, and could have kept going, but was out of birds. Now I'm on to streamlining and perfect my process.

If you are in a hurry, and not doing tons of birds, this is a great little design. Mine was even simpler, I left out the bearings and just used two pieces of oak on either side of a piece of LVL as bearings. Oak is tough enough that it'll take forever to wear out.

 

[guitari609]

One more thing, if you are going to make one of those drill based pluckers, speed is vital. The first plucker I made was of this sort, and was too fast, it ripped the chicken to shreads. Make sure you have a drill that has relatively low rpms, and can do so with out loosing too much torque. When I revamped and tried a variable speed drill and slowed it down, the torque was such that touching it with anything, my bare hand even, stopped it immediately.

 

[guitari609]

Uh oh...meant to post that under another topic...not sure how to delete it.

 

[Cargo]

The dogs and other chickens get all the scraps.