I butchered 40 on Saturday. It went well, especially the borrowed Featherman picker. It was the gasoline powered model, worked great with 2, 3, or 4 birds at a time. The picker left a neat pile of wet feathers that were easy to clean up.
My neighbor's 15 year old showed me a better way to gut and truss, with two separate cuts in the abdomen.
We cut up about half for our own use, and left the rest whole for sale. i used new garden shears to cut through ribs, necks...
With four killing cones, the automatic picker, and a small handed Amish boy gutting, the biggest slow down was catching the birds from the pen. This particular pen only has 1/3 of the top hinged. The first few were easy to catch, since they always run to me when they are hungry, and they had no food since the day before. Then I started placing a feeder outside the pen near the opening. most of them fell for it. The last few were smarter and i had to crawl in after them.
My other pen's top comes off with 4 screws, but I will still have to hurdle lots of cross pieces. I can use plywood to herd them into a corner, but I want other options.
Fish nets? Do the feet get tangled, making them hard to remove from the net? Any bruising?
Leg hooks? Do they work 100% of the time? Any pics of homemade hooks?
Any other ideas?
I strongly recommend having Amish friends. Maybe I need to borrow some shorter sons to go in the pen after the chickens.
My neighbor's 15 year old showed me a better way to gut and truss, with two separate cuts in the abdomen.
We cut up about half for our own use, and left the rest whole for sale. i used new garden shears to cut through ribs, necks...
With four killing cones, the automatic picker, and a small handed Amish boy gutting, the biggest slow down was catching the birds from the pen. This particular pen only has 1/3 of the top hinged. The first few were easy to catch, since they always run to me when they are hungry, and they had no food since the day before. Then I started placing a feeder outside the pen near the opening. most of them fell for it. The last few were smarter and i had to crawl in after them.
My other pen's top comes off with 4 screws, but I will still have to hurdle lots of cross pieces. I can use plywood to herd them into a corner, but I want other options.
Fish nets? Do the feet get tangled, making them hard to remove from the net? Any bruising?
Leg hooks? Do they work 100% of the time? Any pics of homemade hooks?
Any other ideas?
I strongly recommend having Amish friends. Maybe I need to borrow some shorter sons to go in the pen after the chickens.