I need help with persuading..........

[Chickenpoor]

I need help persuading my dad to get some cornish x to raise. I have always wanted to get some and raise them and see the difference in the taste of the ones we grew our selves compared to super market chicken (Ive never eaten a chicken Ive raised and have always wanted to try one). He says it is a really nasty chore once butchering day arrives and that it stinks when you scald them to pluck them. Does anyone have any ideas of how I could finally persuade him into getting some to raise. Ive already tried telling him they would be healthier to eat than store chicken. Wouldnt it be cheaper than buying store chicken also? The one thing I keep telling him is that I want to try a home grown chicken but he still doesnt want to get any, although he says it is good because he use to grow rooster up to fryer size and butcher and eat them. Does anyone have ideas or suggestions???

 

[Beekissed]

You could show him my thread in the meatie section on raising CX with the use of a broody hen and free ranging them. I goes through the whole process~pics all along the way~...and then it shows the processing. My experience with processing meaties was quite pleasant after processing dual purpose birds all my life. They were relatively smell-free even when scalded, their guts had no odor and they were so easy to pluck it was like wiping feathers off with your hands.

My experience was cheap, it was trouble free and the meat was incredibly better than store bought....and it didn't cost me much more to feed those CX than it did my layers as they can get by on cheaper feeds. I yielded over 100# of meat from 20 birds...can't do that will dual-purpose breed roos.

 

[Denninmi]

Well, I'll share some of my recent experience, and perhaps you can tell your dad my perceptions.

I bought 25 Cornish Cross chicks at the feed store the 2nd week in June. I butchered at 5 and 6 weeks. I figured out my cost -- $1.32 a lb for dressed out, cut up chicken with giblets but no skin. That price is about comparable to the sale price on cut up chicken, but that will be the mass market stuff that is full of hormones, antibiotics and "injected with up to 15% of a solution of ..." My price was actually a lot cheaper than comparable premium farm raised chicken from a high end butcher or grocery store.

It was much EASIER than I thought it would be. As far as the plucking goes, I didn't! We don't eat the skin anyway, so I just skinned them. Simple and quick, I could completely process a bird in about 15 minutes from live bird to cut up and soaking in salted ice water. After I let them soak for a couple of hours in a couple of changes of water, I put them in the freezer. The gutting was much LESS difficult than I thought, and no much odor. I just withheld food starting at dark the night before, just let them have clean water, and there wasn't much at all in the digestive tract.

The taste was out of this world, no comparison at all to the nasty store stuff. Fresh, tender, moist, succulent, and vibrant. Just night and day, like the difference between some kind of nasty super cheap cardboard frozen grocery store pizza and a really premium homemade one from scratch with ultra high quality ingredients.

The whole process was interesting, easy peasy, and I'm psyched to raise my own from now on. The ONLY hard thing about it was the heat -- we're having the same heatwave here in Michigan that others are having, but not quite as intensely hot. The Cornish Cross definitely don't like the heat. I'm going to order 50 for late August delivery, so that they mature in the cooler fall weather of October. If I did it again in the spring, which I'm pretty sure I will, I'd get them about mid April so they could go out in early/mid May, and mature by mid June before our major heat hits.

Sorry, Dad, it may not be the answer you want to hear, but I think this would be an EXCELLENT project for a young person to undertake -- and, I bet if you tasted the end result, you'd never want to go back to the nasty grocery store stuff either.

 

[4-H chicken mom]

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