Illinois...

[Molpet]

might not want to let it brine until rigor is passed... might suck up too much of the brine and be too strong of brine flavor.

 

[Faraday40]

See! Those are the kind of useful things to know. The 1st time we processed a chicken, I knew to "rest it" but not how long. I put the old hen in the fridge overnight & in the slow cooker the next morning. The meat was very tough after 7-8 hrs! It was a terrible dinner experience. I left the meat in for a few more hours and by 10pm it was chew-able.

So, you do plain salt water for a couple days & then brine for a couple days before cooking? Do you keep a special cooler used just for meat?

The recipe said 72 hour brine for best flavor. (The concentration of herbs & salt didn't seem like much to me - when diluted with water. I hope it's OK) Does the rigor make it pull more of the brine into the meat? Can the meat simply be in a bag or covered bowl in the fridge during rigor or does it need to be submerged in water?

You must forgive all the questions. I really only started processing birds last year. A lot of trial & error because it's a skill that's been lost through the generations.

 

[Molpet]

See! Those are the kind of useful things to know. The 1st time we processed a chicken, I knew to "rest it" but not how long. I put the old hen in the fridge overnight & in the slow cooker the next morning. The meat was very tough after 7-8 hrs! It was a terrible dinner experience. I left the meat in for a few more hours and by 10pm it was chew-able.

So, you do plain salt water for a couple days & then brine for a couple days before cooking? Do you keep a special cooler used just for meat?

The recipe said 72 hour brine for best flavor. (The concentration of herbs & salt didn't seem like much to me - when diluted with water. I hope it's OK) Does the rigor make it pull more of the brine into the meat? Can the meat simply be in a bag or covered bowl in the fridge during rigor or does it need to be submerged in water?

You must forgive all the questions. I really only started processing birds last year. A lot of trial & error because it's a skill that's been lost through the generations.

LOL me too
when I was a kid I brought home a bunch of leghorns from a school project... Now my Dad grew up with chickens and parents had them when they first got married.... but apparently everyone forgot about the resting part. My brother killed a cockerel and I went and fried it....it was like rubber bands .. I have read if you can get it in the pan before rigor sets in you can cook it right away. I think that's what grandma did, but I am not that fast. I read if you pressure cook them while in rigor they are tender.

If the directions said 72 hrs I would go with that.

I have a cooler just for meat, for when I have no room in the frig. I use frozen jugs as ice and change them every 8 hrs. I just do a salt brine to pull the blood out,,, The one I left in for a week or so was too salty, but I just dumped some coarse salt in there. I have no idea how much, maybe a cup in a cooler with 4 chickens and a turkey. I had to put a weight on top to keep it shut with everyone and the ice jugs.. so now I put them in the salty water for a day and then changed to plain water or bag them and keep them on ice. I have soaked chickens from morning to evening, drained and bagged them in the frig... I also have just washed off the chicken and stuck them in bags in the frig, no salt water. But there is still blood in them so I just do that for parts now. If I have too much for bone stock, I save for the dog the raw backs with everything but intestine attached. He is a big dog...Cooked bone splinter unless they are cook to mush.

 

[chickendreams24]

If Bella's anything like our former Great Dane, she'd be dragging your niece down the aisle! Of course I also like the giraffe idea. I didn't know they were your fav animal too. As a kid I wanted to live in Africa and study giraffes just like Jane Goodall and her chimps.

Next time you process roos - just pluck some hackle, saddle, body, & sickle feathers. Feathers are easy to store away in Ziplock bags. Since they're sealed, I don't bother washing them until I'm ready to use or dye them. If you decide to go another way, you can always toss them later. Small feathers can be put into sprigs/sprays or made into large flowers. People pay a lot of money for this & it can be done with free feathers, floral tape, wire, & some tacky glue. Sometimes misc. accent stuff like old buttons, lace, etc.
View attachment 1691930 View attachment 1691932

Remember that "Christmas" is a mostly white turkey. Remind him to behave around the hens because you're looking for nice big feathers!!!! You may scare him straight or collect more feathers with a turkey dinner. Either way, it's a win for you!

Bella is actually great on leash so I don't think she'd pull our niece. However she would probably walk over when I was next to her in my wedding dress and use her head to lift the side of the dress up for all to see.

@chickendreams24
I think I need to send you a box of these.
View attachment 1693008
Your fingertips are probably bleeding,,,,,
Unless you have VOICE TO TEXT, on your device

LoL thanks. My phone has voice to text but I've never really gotten it to work and I don't like it so I type everything.

@chickendreams24
I hope the fox removal prevents future losses and that you can find a use for the hide. Perhaps the taxidermist family you know could talk you through the process.



* edit to add - I spent so much time typing my reply (between driving kids, prepping dinner, & caring for animals) that I missed a few posts in between your message & this. Perhaps I'll take those band aids too. LOL

The town meeting:
Although it was probably called a public hearing or public informational meeting, it's very common for it to be all hush hush with very little advanced public notice. (If the public doesn't voice criticism, then they can conclude the chicken factory is welcomed by all. By not advertising the meeting and keeping attendance low, there's less chance for opposition.) It's obvious why they didn't make the time/place of the meeting easy to find.

What I found odd is that the company didn't send their "A Team." After all, they're talking to a bunch of people who know agriculture, so sending representatives who know little about animal care was silly. It's one thing to talk about aquifers to city people (water comes from the pipes and is purchased via the city), but when dealing with people who own & maintain their own wells, the representatives should have come prepared to discuss it further.

I of course laughed with you about how all the regulations about #of animals per acre don't apply to them because their animals are "indoors." Here, we simply call those indoor animals pets. ..... and I certainly never heard of anyone terminating their pets every 2 years.

Did they talk at all about their biosecurity plan? This is what could hurt you the most. I remember a few years ago there was a huge avian influenza scare. It only took one bird to infect a farm.... and ALL POULTRY at the farm, regardless of species, had to be put down to prevent the spread. In addition, all farms within a certain # miles radius were required to exterminate all their poultry as well. At 1st people thought wild water fowl were spreading it via the Mississippi flyway during migration, but it turned out that very few outbreaks were found in backyard flock where the birds were free ranging. The majority of AI outbreaks were passed via trucks, equipment, & people doing deliveries between multiple large scale poultry operations.

I doubt you'll have to worry much about smell. We lived about 2-3 miles from a water treatment facility where they handled human sewage and even dried out the solids inside a large building. It's a massive plant and I never remembered the air smelling bad when I lived there. Of course, when I took my students on a field trip there (which was fascinating BTW) there was an odor in the air in certain areas. Although odor can easily be controlled, the tiny bacteria and air-borne pathogens are a different story. Trucks coming & going could accidentally transport dander, soil, dust, etc. along. Likewise, I'd worry about the area's water quality. Companies are only required to filter for particular contaminants and stay within a certain range. They never go above & beyond when it comes to reclamation. It's just too expensive. In fact, some unethical companies may feel it's worth a monetary fine to save money on those areas. Even is every procedure is above board, accidents can happen. (Sorry if I'm making you more nervous.)

Ultimately, you need to find out who exactly will be voting on this. (Is it the county board? or the town representatives?) If you can get names & addresses, start writing letters to sway votes. Give those addresses to people on your side.... even offer to help them write letters. The letters only matter if the authors care to give their name & address. (That's why emails & phone calls hold less weight than a well written, signed letter.) The politicians have been hearing all the pros from the company - like jobs, money, tax revenue, road improvements, etc. They need to hear what their voters think. If a politician feels his/her office could be at stake from the voters, then they will ask more questions and may even change their vote. Zoning, ordinances, codes, & regulations are always changing, so it's not really a done deal until things are built and operational.

Yes I'm sure that's why they waited so long to let the meeting time and place out. Still it was a pretty good turnout.

Yeah I'm not really sure but I know the majority of the people they brought were the big wigs from the family that owns the company there were a couple generations then their lawyer and some friend/associate of theirs. Maybe they just assumed that we were all stupid country folk or that if they could talk quickly enough and make themselves sound convincing enough we would all believe their crap.

Not.

Like when I started asking about the birds themselves and about the possibility of bumblefoot from being on wire for their entire lives. Btw each bird only gets about 8 square inches. They mentioned to me that their nutrition expert for the birds had left. I told them that bumblefoot had nothing to do with nutrition and maybe they should Google it.

Supposedly people walk the cages every day and looks at the birds(check health and such) but if they have no vet on staff, know nothing about the birds themselves, how are they supposed to teach employees that likely have no knowledge of/or experience with chickens. Furthermore when they reach 3 million birds there is no way they could ever check the health of every bird in that place. They're going to be searching the cages for dead birds. Period.

Unfortunately other than fences and security etc the only real biosecurity measure they mentioned was that each incoming truck gets hosed down before entering the gates. Probably power washed. More water that they didn't put a number to. They will not be washing the trucks before leaving.

It does scare me. The thought that someday I could walk outside and there will just be people there saying they have to kill my fowl. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do at this moment until the next meeting. Really DH2B and I feel like it's going to go in and this is all just a formality. They did it outside Brodhead WI in the last several years about a huge commercial dairy. In spite of everyone being against it. It went in.

Even if Mike and I were okay with it(which we're not) the thought of our neighbors losing their home is enough to make us against it.

Hopefully they'll be better prepared for the next meeting and we will be able to shake them to their cores again with great questions that leave them stumped. Standing around, shaking their heads.

After the last meeting I feel they are going to take every opportunity to avoid another public meeting until they absolutely must. They didn't exactly come off smelling like roses.

no eggs yet. 4/7 I have seen bred. Hoping soon. Last year it was middle of march...
Faraday got the early bloomers I guess

No eggs here yet either. I am curious can I expect my younger blue slate jennys to also come into lay even though they're younger about 6-7 months?

Welcome to our State thread
I may return into your neck of the woods in summer for vacation.
I'm sure you know where this is.
Soo much to see every time we visit. We usually camp in Fern Cliff.
View attachment 1694608

Spoiler: For everyone else..

Garden of the Gods Herod ILL.

That is absolutely amazing!!! It's also now on my bucket list. I wonder if they do weddings up there?

I processed my 1st turkey today with the help of my neighbor. Having some guilty sadness - especially since both hens were laying eggs. The other hen doesn't seem stressed by her absence, so she'll stay a while longer.

PS-
@chickendreams24 If my family won't eat the turkey, then "Back Up" can go visit "Christmas."

Poor Thanksgiving at least she got a longer life. I'd be happy to take Back up and give Christmas another lady friend. I wonder if they would remember one another?

Good for you with the processing how did you pluck her?

I'm still slightly confused.
Always thought the following.


Dressed

Turkey with ESP

Naked

In Heet

Delicious

Leftover

LOL

.... You mean "naked"?

I actually don't know. Looked pretty small, but larger than an orpington. It was a crazy day of carpooling kids & I didn't have a lot of time. I had to quickly get the meat into the fridge. (DD hates when we eat our birds, so I needed to hide all the evidence. On the night we eat turkey, I make a frozen pizza for them.) We let the birds out for a few min today & she noticed the missing turkey. The remaining turkey was calling for her friend, but felt better as soon as she & the chickens found the refilled food bowl.

I hope I did the brine right. Finding a recipe was tough. I used about 1/3c sugar & 1/3+ c salt boiled with 4 c water. Added veggies/herbs to hot water. Added another 12 c ice water.... Then poured over & submerged turkey.

I only had a big metal pot, so I lined it with a bag.... and another bag - just in case

Sounds good to me. Definitely a fancy proper brine. We seldom brine our chickens and if we do it's just cold water and salt. If your turns out well I might have to try that for our first turkey.

Oh here is cooking instructions
but it's for a whole bird.... takes longer than store turkeys...my cousin didn't believe me... dinner was 1 and 1/2 hr late

from attached pdf with min per lb added.
Between 25 and 30 minutes per pound.
Add a quart of stock to the bottom of the pan. Pre-heat the oven to 300◦ put it in for 30 minutes and turn the oven down to 275◦ Cook until internal temp is 145◦ remove the lid/cover and boost temp to 450◦ until the bird reaches 155/165◦ internal temp. Remove it, cover and let rest for 30 minutes. Strain the drippings and separate the fat.

Downloaded that thank you for sharing!

chicken size brine.
it is in parenthesis

Thanksgiving Turkey Brine

Recipe courtesy Alex Guarnaschelli 2009

Prep Time: 15 min Inactive Prep Time: 12 hr Cook Time: 3 hr 30 min Level: Easy

Serves:

14 to 16 servings

Ingredients

(for chicken) for turkey

• (1) 6 quarts tap water
• (2.6 oz} 1 pound kosher salt
• (1.3 oz) 1 cup molasses
• (2.6 oz) 2 cups honey
• (1.3 oz) 1 cup soy sauce
• (1/2 t) 1 tablespoon dried red pepper flakes
• (1/2 t) 1 tablespoon dried sage
• (sm) Large bunch fresh thyme
• (1/3 hd) 2 heads garlic broken into individual cloves, unpeeled
• (13 oz) 5 pounds ice cubes
• 14 to 18-pound turkey, cleaned, innards removed
• 1 pound unsalted butter, softened
• 2 lemons, zested

Directions

In a medium pot, bring 3 quarts of the tap water to a boil over medium heat. Put the kosher salt in a large bowl and slowly (and carefully!) pour the boiling water over the salt. Stir to blend.

Add the molasses, honey, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, sage, thyme and garlic to the salt and water mixture. Stir to blend. Add the remaining 3 quarts of cool water. Add the ice to a cooler or bucket large enough to hold the brine and the turkey. Pour the brine over the ice and use a large whisk to blend all of the ingredients.

Submerge the turkey, breast side down, in the brine. Make sure the cavity of the bird fills with the liquid as you are submerging it. Cover the cooler and allow the bird to sit in the brine overnight or for about 12 hours.

Remove the bird from the brine and dry it thoroughly with thick (absorbent) kitchen towels. Take care to wipe inside the cavity as well. Discard the brine. Whisk together the butter and the lemon zest. Gently lift the skin covering 1 breast of the turkey and spread half of the butter right on the meat under the skin. Repeat with the other breast. The butter will add extra moisture and richness as the bird roasts.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Arrange the turkey in a roasting pan fitted with a rack. Put on the lower rack of the oven and roast until the internal temperature of the turkey taken from the thickest part of the thigh reads 170 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, about 3 1/2 hours. Remove the turkey from the oven to a cutting board or serving platter and tent with foil. Allow to rest for 15 minutes before carving and serving.

I wish I could save this recipe maybe I'll have to copy and paste it.

Thank you @Molpet The recipe sounds delicious.

I hope I like the turkey's taste. I know I'm going to enjoy the bone broth the next day! I was making it about once every 1-2 weeks when we had lots of young cockerels & quail around. I made a crock pot of soup using canned chicken broth last month. UGH! Although all the veggies were fresh & the noodles were hand made, the soup was so bland! It reminded me of canned chicken noodle soup. (Not bad if that's what your in the mood for..... but I wanted the taste of home-made soup.)

Next question: How long to "Rest" the meat?

Processed on Fri (mid day) When is the soonest / latest day to cook? - when stored in fridge.

LOL yes nothing stacks up against the delicious homemade broth and stocks.

I think I've told you before but we don't generally brine our birds. We leave them in ice water for generally 1-4 hours and then we bag them in the shrink bags we bought and place them in the fridge to rest. Our minimum resting time for a chicken is three days but we've done 7-10 before cooking a couple of times and they were fine. Usually about 4-5 days we put them in the freezer. We have discussed getting a smaller fridge just for birds and meat we process to rest or thaw in in the future.

I agree it would be a longer rest period for a larger bird.

well that depends on how much it weighs, the bigger the bird the longer the rest. A 8lb chicken took about a day and 1/2 before the limbs were flexible...
They say 3 days for toms for rigor to pass
USDA say to cook or freeze by 10 days, but I had one in ice water in a cooler for 14 days and he was fine.

might not want to let it brine until rigor is passed... might suck up too much of the brine and be too strong of brine flavor.

Yeah I hadn't thought about that but it makes more sense it would just penetrate deeper into the meat .

 

[Faraday40]

My phone has voice to text but I've never really gotten it to work and I don't like it so I type everything.

Wow! You type all of that! My big, clumsy fingers have a hard enough time typing on a keyboard, and my phone can't even text. (Technically it can. i have a flip phone, so I must press the number pad a certain number of times to get the correct letter. It takes me a couple min just to text a single word.) I also never figured out how to read texts received. At this point, I'll be getting a new phone before learning how to use my current one.

Am I really getting that old!?

 

[chickendreams24]

See! Those are the kind of useful things to know. The 1st time we processed a chicken, I knew to "rest it" but not how long. I put the old hen in the fridge overnight & in the slow cooker the next morning. The meat was very tough after 7-8 hrs! It was a terrible dinner experience. I left the meat in for a few more hours and by 10pm it was chew-able.

So, you do plain salt water for a couple days & then brine for a couple days before cooking? Do you keep a special cooler used just for meat?

The recipe said 72 hour brine for best flavor. (The concentration of herbs & salt didn't seem like much to me - when diluted with water. I hope it's OK) Does the rigor make it pull more of the brine into the meat? Can the meat simply be in a bag or covered bowl in the fridge during rigor or does it need to be submerged in water?

You must forgive all the questions. I really only started processing birds last year. A lot of trial & error because it's a skill that's been lost through the generations.

No worries we all had to ask questions heck I still ask questions and DH2B even built us a plucker. I still want you to come up this summer sometime for a processing day. We can share our different ways of doing things and you can see how much easier it is to pluck when you scald.

LOL me too
when I was a kid I brought home a bunch of leghorns from a school project... Now my Dad grew up with chickens and parents had them when they first got married.... but apparently everyone forgot about the resting part. My brother killed a cockerel and I went and fried it....it was like rubber bands .. I have read if you can get it in the pan before rigor sets in you can cook it right away. I think that's what grandma did, but I am not that fast. I read if you pressure cook them while in rigor they are tender.

If the directions said 72 hrs I would go with that.

I have a cooler just for meat, for when I have no room in the frig. I use frozen jugs as ice and change them every 8 hrs. I just do a salt brine to pull the blood out,,, The one I left in for a week or so was too salty, but I just dumped some coarse salt in there. I have no idea how much, maybe a cup in a cooler with 4 chickens and a turkey. I had to put a weight on top to keep it shut with everyone and the ice jugs.. so now I put them in the salty water for a day and then changed to plain water or bag them and keep them on ice. I have soaked chickens from morning to evening, drained and bagged them in the frig... I also have just washed off the chicken and stuck them in bags in the frig, no salt water. But there is still blood in them so I just do that for parts now. If I have too much for bone stock, I save for the dog the raw backs with everything but intestine attached. He is a big dog...Cooked bone splinter unless they are cook to mush.

My Dad tells me they used to raise about 1000 cockerals a year for meat and would have a big neighbor processing party(each farm held one a different day) they would process all the birds and someone would be frying a couple huge skillets of chicken. When he told me about it all I could think of was how tough that meat must have been. They must have been very fast to get all the birds done and to get some frying before rigor set in. Their neighbor I think had a drill plucker so that helped I believe.

We tried salvaging a predator kill a couple years ago. Actually it was a salmon favorelles cockeral that our fox killed right in front of me. No fear at all. Since the bites were to the back and nowhere near the breast we decided to try and save them. At the time I was aware of the concept of a stressed animal giving tough meat but figured a broken neck was pretty fast and rigor hadn't set in. Not one bite of that meat was consumed it was awful. We have never tried to save another kill even if it happened right in front of us like with that cockeral.

Wow! You type all of that! My big, clumsy fingers have a hard enough time typing on a keyboard, and my phone can't even text. (Technically it can. i have a flip phone, so I must press the number pad a certain number of times to get the correct letter. It takes me a couple min just to text a single word.) I also never figured out how to read texts received. At this point, I'll be getting a new phone before learning how to use my current one.

Am I really getting that old!?

LoL how did you not know I type all of that? LoL I'm a pretty decent typer on a computer although I'm out of practice now but I'm a very quick texter. My phone has a keyboard so that helps tremendously. Flip phones were always more difficult to text with and no you're not old unless you let yourself get that way.

 

[chickendreams24]

Now my friends it has just occurred to me that I never shared photos of our fox.

Please be advised some may find these photos offensive however they were taken in the most tasteful way possible. As I am on my cellphone I can not make a hidden post that you'd have to click on to view.

I have done my utmost to show little to no blood and you can not see the kill shot. I can assure everyone that the animal was indeed a chicken killer and that it's life was ended instantly.

Skip the rest of this post if you don't wish to see.










Shetland sheepdog used for size reference she's about 26 pounds and mostly hair this time of year. She looks much wider but they weigh pretty close to the same I'd guess.

We weren't able to get a standing photo of the fox as rigor had set in when we took these. It would have stood taller than my sheltie. Also the sheltie didn't care to be so close to the fox but she's very obedient the fox had kind of a musky pungent almost skunk smell and she wanted nothing to do with it.

Here is a photo of the other side of the fox just to show the full pelt.

Also yes that is a feather in the fox's mouth. The trap was baited with a body of a bird it had killed the Friday before.

 

[chickendreams24]

Now for something a little bit lighter I found this shirt at tractor supply and now I absolutely need one.

 

[Molpet]

We tried salvaging a predator kill a couple years ago. Actually it was a salmon favorelles cockeral that our fox killed right in front of me. No fear at all. Since the bites were to the back and nowhere near the breast we decided to try and save them. At the time I was aware of the concept of a stressed animal giving tough meat but figured a broken neck was pretty fast and rigor hadn't set in. Not one bite of that meat was consumed it was awful. We have never tried to save another kill even if it happened right in front of us like with that cockeral.

pressure cooker works great ...
or long resting... like 5 days to a week
Birds shot hunting are pretty stressed.

 

[Molpet]

Now my friends it has just occurred to me that I never shared photos of our fox.

Please be advised some may find these photos offensive however they were taken in the most tasteful way possible. As I am on my cellphone I can not make a hidden post that you'd have to click on to view.

I have done my utmost to show little to no blood and you can not see the kill shot. I can assure everyone that the animal was indeed a chicken killer and that it's life was ended instantly.

Skip the rest of this post if you don't wish to see.










Shetland sheepdog used for size reference she's about 26 pounds and mostly hair this time of year. She looks much wider but they weigh pretty close to the same I'd guess.

View attachment 1697298

We weren't able to get a standing photo of the fox as rigor had set in when we took these. It would have stood taller than my sheltie. Also the sheltie didn't care to be so close to the fox but she's very obedient the fox had kind of a musky pungent almost skunk smell and she wanted nothing to do with it.

Here is a photo of the other side of the fox just to show the full pelt.

View attachment 1697302
Also yes that is a feather in the fox's mouth. The trap was baited with a body of a bird it had killed the Friday before.

still in good pelt... I have one I see occasionally that is a little darker red. It hasn't come near the poultry yard so it can stay, for now. Hade a coyote tracks in the poultry yard this winter, The electric net was off because of the snow. It jumped that to get in and then it tried to jump out over a 6' field fence that was floppy at the top. It fell back in. It paced and finally went to the corner that wasn't floppy and got out. Birds were locked in coops and it didn't go up to the coops