I posted this on my broiler thread about my broilers, so I thought I would copy and paste and post the same info here.
Good morning everyone. Just an update on the broilers.
All of them are doing great. Their appetites are increasing and they are still moving around, jumping around and flying around. They are doing well in their outside dog kennel pen. The lowest temp since they have been out there was 43 degrees. They were all bunched up together but they survived. No one froze to death. The lows Friday night will be 34 and I am hoping that they will be ok.
I am not planning on putting a heat lamp outside right now but I'm sure I will get a little paranoid and change my mind.
I am happy to say that the chicken plucker is FINALLY completed and working. THANK GOODNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so glad that I didn't pester my builder to "get her done" because he finally figured it out.
I have not lost any from leg issues or any other medical issues. However we did have to test out the chicken plucker, so we processed one broiler this Saturday. After one test run and we noticed that a few nails were sticking up where they shouldn't, so he had to cut the nails out of the bottom plate. Also looks like I will need more chicken fingers. 50 doesn't seem like enough but it did the job.
So, we initially decided to process one of the smaller broilers to test it out. I didn't want to deal with setting up a killing cone and all of that other stuff, so we decided to "do the deed" using a high powered pellet gun. This high powered pellet gun can kill a raccoon, opossum, dog and any small to medium size predator, so we knew it would work on the small broilers. I got an old feed bag, created a tight fit and situated the broiler in a stable position so that it could not move and get out of the bag. Once the broiler was stabilized, I placed the pellet gun to it's head and pulled the trigger. Perfect shot and he was gone instantly. There was minimal blood shed as opposed to slitting the throat and letting it drain out. Not sure I will do that with all of them (that's too many shots to take) but it was less to deal with and there was minimal set up and clean up.
His live weight was not a lot, which is why we chose a smaller one. Keeping the larger broilers and giving the bigger ones more time to put on weight.
2 lbs 9.9 ounces live weight
1 lb 12.0 ounces dressed weight
For those of you who remember the very first broiler that I processed - the one that got smashed? Well, we cooked it this weekend. We made a chicken gumbo. You would think that it would not have made a big meal because the dressed weight was only 1 lb 10 ounces but I was shocked at how much meat we had. It was enough meat to serve 3 adults and 1 child. If it were only myself, this would have been 4 meals for me.
So for those of you who may get slow growing broilers or other meat birds, please do not get discouraged if they are not growing as fast as you would like for them to grow or if their weight is not as heavy (meatie) as you would like for them to be because as small as you think they are, they will still be enough meat if mine are 1 lb 10 ounces dressed.
Here is a pic of the cooked broiler. I don't like a lot of juice in my gumbo, so you can fully see what it looked like. And I must add that it was DELICIOUS!
So this Friday, they will be 8 weeks old but they have plenty of more growing to do. I probably won't process them for another 4 - 8 weeks depending on how much they weigh. It's a slow process but I am patient. After tasting the meat on this weekend, it's all worth the wait.
Oh and I had a delicious glass of pineapple wine with this meal.
they're just gone 
