if my birds only knew what i was thinking when i'm looking at them

[bj taylor]

i read recently that body configuration is a good way to determine if a bird is mature enough to proces.. it said if the body is more triangular, it is still too young. if it is more rectangular it is mature enough to process.
since reading this i look at my birds to see if they're triangular or rectangular. my older girls are definitely rectangular while the younger ones are the other way.

i've about convinced hubby for us to start a meaties project this fall when it cools down. i think it would be a good idea to do a batch in the fall & again in the spring. i think i'm going to convert a big metal swing set frame into a tractor for the meaties.

he still wants to take the birds to the processor. i want us to do it for several reasons. i'm not sure who will win this one.

 

[mstricer]

I personally would go with a processor. We did do it ourselves, but soon realized that we were dreading it more and more, with each batch. Don't get me wrong, it is a good learning experience, for us it was one of we don't want to do this anymore. But for the 2$ a bird is well worth it. I can clean and pluck, but it was time consuming and made my old fingers hurt. If we would have had a plucker it would have gone faster and easier. The flies suck and its messy.

 

[kizanne]

We don't have the option of a processor here. I don't know which side I'd fall on either. It takes us about 20 minutes or so to process a bird. We don't boil, or pluck, we just skin but it seems to take my hubby a really long time to cut around the vent and pull the innards out and it takes about 5 minutes for the kill and drain part. 20 minutes is a long time if you are trying to process 12 or more birds. So it would be nice to send them off and save all that time.

On the other hand. Part of why I raise my chickens is to know they have been raised well both humanely and food given to them. Taste. and general health. By sending them to a processor you are trusting their cleanliness and humanity in killing. We certainly don't enjoy killing our chickens but we are doing it in the least stressful way we can. I had one of the people who buy my eggs ask me if that makes a difference in taste noting in some animals as they get stressed and such they release hormones and such that changes the taste. I don't know but out chickens taste better than anything else I've tried.

I think your spring and fall plan is a good one. We are currently trying to figure out how to do small batches and still keep ourselves in chicken. We did a batch of 25 Cx's over the winter (in florida) and we didn't like that number when you have to process or lose them to heart disease. We prefer being able to kill 4 one saturday and that lasts us 2-3 weeks. I've read about people who have it down to no time at all for processing but we've tried speeding it up and it did get faster at first but now we are just down to how long it takes with what we are doing. Don't think much will change unless hubby changes some things which I don't see happening. So at that point if I did 25 Cx's and had a local processor I probably would let them process. But we are going for small batch DP's as we like the DP's better.

I know that was long but hopefully someone else's perspective can help. I find it does help me even if I don't agree with it, it helps me to figure out I don't want to go that way.

 

[debs_flock]

The processor here is $6 per bird!

Of course, the bird I processed on Saturday probably cost me around $500.00!

I nearly took the pad off my left thumb with my new boning knife. I think $500 will about cover the copay at the ER for the stitches that were required.

Deb

 

[bj taylor]

OUCH! for the thumb & the pocket book.

 

[Oregon Blues]

We process at home. Not only is the licensed processor 150 miles away, he charges $12 for one duck.

I figure that the plucking machine pays for itself really quickly as long as we keep raising birds for our freezer. And, wow, does it ever cut the time down.

We time butchering for a month that should be cooler weather. Butchering in the heat is no fun.

debs, I always cut myself at least once on every batch of birds and I am old enough to have learned how to keep my fingers away from a knife. Costco had Band-aids on sale this month, so I bought the jumbo Costco size. Now I am all set for the next several years.

 

[Life is Good!]

We're butchering our first batch of meaties at this time, at home. It's a bit too warm this summer season, and they should have all been dispatched before this anyways....but, it's taking about 20min per bird for us as well. Husband kills and gets table ready. Wife and Husband both skin and gut bird. Wife takes somewhat cleaned bird into kitchen to finish cleaning thoroughly, bag and seal bird while Husband gets next 'contestant' and dispatches. By the time Wife is back from kitchen, Husband has started on next bird.

Goes well this way. Haven't ever tried to do this with just one of us. We're a great team, and work well together at most everything, so why not this too?