Just did my first butchering of 6 meat birds!

Everything went pretty smooth except the plucking.
The birds were exactly 7 weeks old...made a killing cone from a old traffic cone (which worked fine)
Sliced the veins in their neck while holding their head till they went limp.
Let em bleed out for 5 minutes, then scald in 140 degree water, swished and dunked for about a minute then off to a homemade plucker on a drill.
This is where it got tricky. The feathers weren't coming off as cleanly as I would of liked. Actually they were kinda hard to even pull. So I increased the water temp to 150 degrees and scalding time to 2 minutes and they were still hard to pull! It took time to get them clean but we did it.
Their now in the fridge for a couple days before going to the freezer..One is going to the oven tomorrow!

The weather has been down to freezing a few days before slaughter, would that have any effect on the feathers being hard to pull? I also seen dish washing detergent in the scalding water..would that help?

I cant wait to do this again.. in the spring / summer months!

 

We just roasted one tonight.
Birds sat in the fridge for 3 days to age...
Split the bird, used the back bone for a stock for gravy.
Oven set at 400 degrees, buttered. salt and peppered the bird and baked for 45 mins... it was the BEST chicken I ever had!! Im not much for white meat, but he breast was tender and moist...without injecting.

I was wondering if I can ever eat something I raised, but this was no problem. Now I'm convinced the "chicken" sold in stores is actually seagull!