Meat bird development (Week 9) - 10 lbs 11oz! Done. Whew!

[blue90292]

this guy down the road from me was selling his cabinet incubator, so i went over there to purchase it and checked out some of his chickens. he actually had grown cornish X on his property. i think the rooster was wide as he was tall. i was amazed they were alive. they actually forage AND mate. he said he just processed some of the roosters but i saw about 10 of them waddling around and the roos had spurs. he said they were around a year old!

 

[tomsgonefishin]

Well it has been an interesting experience, that's for sure. The birds are now just over 9 lbs, smallest one is at 8 lbs and they are all 8 weeks old. It is time to process three of them tomorrow afternoon and then three over the weekend.

Process will be Feed restriction overnight and tomorrow day (hope that isn't too long, Golden Hatchet, Bleed, wash/scrub/rinse them off (cuz they are pretty poopy), scald, pluck, clean, chill in fridge for a couple days. Eat one on Friday, freeze the other two.

Repeating the process on Friday afterwork or Saturday morning.

Don't feel too bad about it, cuz those huge birds just seem miserable sitting around, eating, and pooping. They really don't get around much, and I doubt with their size they could even scratch the ground like a normal chicken does. They certainly can't scratch their heads with their feet like my layers can. Like huge body builders with no flexibility. They waddle like ducks or worse. Kinda sad in a way, but that's the genetics of the Cornish X I guess. They had as good a life or better than most of the Cornish X have. They got to see sunlight, grass, dirt, occasional dust bath, other non cornish chickens, and had plenty of space to stretch out.

I'll post a couple of post processing pics and then I wrap this project up. My three kids have learned a lot (so have I) and really enjoyed the experience.

Glad you all stayed with me along the way. Thanks for all your comments!!!

Tom

 

[greyfields]

The reason we all raise meat birds is the sense of fulfillment you get knowing they were treated humanely, fed properly and were allowed to express natural chicken behavior.... scratching at the ground, feeling grass under their toes, seeing the sun (only 2% of chicken in the US will die having seen the sun, just imagine that), adequate space to move, and just generally be chickens.

Were I found trouble was with the Cornish Crosses. Even given the 'freedom', they have no instinct left to enjoy the pleasures we were trying to give them. They just ate, crapped and were miserable little creatures. We decided that we weren't in farming simply to recreate industrial condition on a smaller scale, then throwing the birds on pastuer to make ourselves look good. So, we've gone a different route with our meat birds and are using what I think is breeding better suited for organic, free range or small scale production.

But, I'm not trying to take anything away from your accomplishment here. Well done on a successful crop. I didn't catch your mortality rate. Commercial growers expect 25% to not make it 42 days.

 

[tomsgonefishin]

I hear ya. This was our first batch of birds for meat. Until we actually finish processing and then eat a couple, we don't know for sure if we will do these again. We'll see.

They did have a decent existance and were given the chance to take atvantage of it anyway.

We only had ordered 7 total, one developed a leg problem at 5 weeks so we processed him, and now we have 6 left to process. So we didn't loose any at this point which was pretty good I guess.

 

[greentree]

You did good!! Mine were dropping like flies for about a week. I started with 50, and I am down to about 35....they are really hard to count!!
I am processing a few tomorrow, and taking the rest to a processor next week. He is not USDA, so I can't sell them, but that was not my primary motivation, anyway.

Nancy

 

[silkiechicken]

Nice work there! It would be nice to see what you get for your "yield" of meat per bird too. I get about 75-80% of live weight dressed, with a 12 hour feed withdrawl.

Greentree, do you think maybe your batch got chilled during shipping? I've lost very few cornish x's to anything other than heat stroke on a strangely hot day... 2 hours before butcher time!!!

 

[tomsgonefishin]

Thanks.

Just completed doing three birds. One of them weighed 6 lbs 13oz fully dressed, the others without wings weighed right around 6 lbs 5 oz.

Plucking was really difficult for us. The feathers came out fairly well after scalding, but there were so many of them! We ended up with lots of 3/8 long feather pieces and that was very time consuming to pull out. Finally we just had to stop and move on. We figured we don't eat the skin anyway so we'll have to get over having some small "pin" feathers on them.

I think we are going to try skinning them on Sat. Three more Sat and we are done until Fall.

The breasts and legs were quite huge let me tell ya.

Tom

 

[Nichole77]

Why do you stop feeding them? Fascinating info by the way.

 

[greyfields]

I love chicken skin! You're discarding the best part!!

 

[greyfields]

Quote:
24 hours prior to slaughter you remove the food so that their stomach and intestines are largely cleaned out. It means less poop on the floor which can lead to food contamination. You're trying to keep the processing as sanitary as possible and busted chicken guts spewing e. coli. everywhere is a bad thing.

In ruminants, a busted belly (meaning the intestines are accidentally severed during evisceration) is the source of most the e. coli. outbreaks you read about.