It's Done - Roo#2 is in the pot

[PurpleChicken]

Quote:
The one who may take it the hardest would be your son. How old is he?
He may surprise you and want to protect the other birds. I've learned a lot
from my son and other children. Sometimes they see simple things as they are,
simple things. We, as adults, complicate the hell out of everything we do.

"So now what?" Talk to him. I made this whole thing sound bad but I'd rather
process 100 birds right now than have to see my son deal with even a minor
stomach bug. You, as a Dad, understand.

Today was a learning experience for me but it was a life experience for my son.
Sounds like you are facing the same thing.

 

[HobbyChickener]

He is only 6. which doesn't help matters. He has watched my process many animals which has never bothered him. I jsut know it is his pet which is bound to not settle well. I just don't want him getting physically hurt by the bird. It happened to me at about his age and it really bothered me for along time. I guess I will have to see if it keeps getting worse or not. He might be just getting teritorial do to the young roos on his turf. They might find their way to the freezer next weekend if I can find time (and catch them)

 

[Chelly]

Hobby, check out this site, it might help some with that Roo

http://shilala.homestead.com/roosters.html

good luck

 

[homechick]

Man. I've been trying to decide if I should do this because I have two roosters too many. I can't decide which one needs to "go". The little one is too little for a meal and the bigger one is a beautiful old english. I don't know if I could do it but I like the idea better than just letting the two roosters torment my three hens. Kudos for doing the hard thing!

 

[HobbyChickener]

That's good reading, Thanks Chelly

 

[jenichick]

Oh my, we just went through this same thing last night. We originally had 12 roosters. We culled 3 last week, and 3 last night. The hardest part for me was sitting and watching and pointing out which ones need to come to dinner. I pick the most aggressive ones first. Then we'd catch him and DH would do the deed. He cuts their heads, then hangs them to drain. But last night when he hung them to drain, they flapped and carried on and got a lot of blood on him. One even flapped out of his hand and ran around on the ground. He told me he didn't like doing this, but it has to be done. We cleaned him up then cleaned the birds and soaked in salt water for a while then froze them. I haven't eaten any yet.

I've decided I'm going to not order standard run again unless I can absolutely help it. I'm tender hearted so it's hard to process them, but we raised knowing we'd eat the roosters, so I can handle it but I'll try to order pullets only from now on.

edited for spelling

 

[joanc]

My dh and I ordered both layers and meat birds back in May. We knew that we were going to have to process the meat birds at some point.
We had 15 of them processed by a local? (15 miles away) farm and it cost $3.35 per bird. That is their rate for 5 lbs and under. If the birds were over 5 lbs they charged a $.25 per lb additional fee. At those costs we decided we were going to process the remaining 14 meat birds ourselves.
I noticed in a couple hatchery catalogs that they sold "killing cones". I ordered 2 of those from Stromberg's (McMurray carries them too).
The cones really helped with the positioning, flapping and mess you get with killing the birds. DH made a stand to hold the cones, then positioned a large waste basket underneath to catch the blood and the head. The cones contained the flapping birds for all but one that was really lively (pardon the expression). That one flapped out and bounced around on the ground. When it flipped out of the cone we both got blood spurted on us. Yuck!
Anyhow with just the two of us we processed those 14 birds in about 4-1/2 hrs (we averaged about 20 mins each). My DH did the "deed" plus the scalding, most of the plucking (we have a plucker), and the eviscerating. Then he/we rinsed off the carcass and put it in a coller filled with ice water to help cool it down. As soon as it was cooled down I would put it on a draining rack. When the draining was complete I put the bird in a foodsaver bag and put it in the fridge to chill. The next day I put them into the freezer and put out a sign at the end of our driveway advertising fresh chickens for sale.
We sold all of the first batch-some to repeat customers who said they tasted terrific! Yay! (We did manage to save 1 for us-we thought it was pretty good tasting if I may so so).Good luck on furhter
Anyhow, yesterday we processed 13 more birds from our second batch of meat birds. That went pretty well the same as the first time around. Now we still have 22 more to process, but those need to grow another week or so.
My DH has had experience as a kid butchering birds, so the whole process went rather smoothly. It does get easier with each bird.
As for thinning out the roosters (on the layers' side) we have 9 roosters for our 24 hens. The layers are all 13 weeks old now. I know that I will be choosing 6-7 of the roosters to go to the "cones". This will be hard for a few of them, but I know we can't have that many roosters around. Soon there will be fighting more serious than the "face-offs" they've been doing lately. I can hear them crowing right now--the Hamburgh has perfected his crow, the Australorp is working on his. It will be a hard decision when the time comes.
Good luck on any more processing-it does get easier.

 

[silkiechicken]

I don't soak mine in brine solution prior to freezing, but if you do soak them, aren't you supposed to soak them after you thaw them because salt will increase the freezing temperature thus the bird may not freeze right?

 

[jenichick]

I use very little salt when soaking right after processing. It helps to dry up the blood while waiting for the other birds to be finished. Then after they've set for 45 minutes in the clean solution I rinse them one more time before freezing. When I thaw them, I'll soak them 1/2 day but this time it there will be more salt in the solution. Then we'll slow roast in crock pot all day while we work. I'll let you know how they taste, but the frozen ones seem well preserved. I plan to cook the first ones this week.

Oh, and I want to order the cone, but we thought we could do without it for just 10 birds. We only have 4 to go. Two of which were not 100% sure they're roosters or really big hens. We'll see.

 

[PurpleChicken]

Great replies all. Thanks for sharing your experiences.