My first meat birds

[Missceegee]

I bought 20 Cornish Cross from TSC a few days ago. Currently, they're in a brood box I built inside an outdoor open air coop. It's Florida so it is plenty warm. 89 degrees at 11 pm. Soon they will move into the new 6' x 10' tractor my husband built for me from John Suscovich's book. We're adding the tarp tomorrow. It will be on pasture and moved daily.

My question is about butchering. I have a guy who will do it all for me for $2/bird whole bird not cut up. That's my current plan since I lack the set up to do my own right now. Is this a good price?

 

[Jenessa_096]

Idk anything about butchering. Never done it before, we have very little space. I hope you have luck and a successful journey!

 

[iwltfum]

That's definitely a good price.

 

[Tre3hugger]

Seems like a good price to me. Pluckers alone are 400+ dollars.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I don't know where you are at, but I can't process three birds an hour personally. I SHOULD be faster, but I'm not. You figure out what your time is worth to you, then multiply it by essentially a full day of preparation, boiling water, dispatching, scalding, removing feathers, butchering, bagging, and cleaning up afterwards.

If I had invested in specialized equipment, I'm sure I could dramatically better those times, but I haven't. Neither, I'd guess, have you.

Unless a day's labor is worth less than $40 to you, I'd say its well worth the price.

 

[Brooks_]

I'd have to agree that 40 bucks is a good price. Even with equipment, I'd charge more. Though I could offset the price by keeping the feet, necks, and giblets. Can make a bomb broth with that.

 

[Missceegee]

I thought it was an excellent price but since this is my first go I thought I’d ask. His price is either $2/bird or he keeps 1/5 birds. I opted for the $2. Years ago I helped process birds a few times but never the whole shebang. Using him let me get meat birds much earlier than I would have normally.

Side note it is crazy how fast they grow. They seem to grow before my very eyes.

 

[Acre4Me]

Yes. Good price.

will ge allow you to learn from him while he’s butchering?

if you want to make stock, get the necks and wing tips that might otherwise get thrown away.

 

[Parront]

I thought it was an excellent price but since this is my first go I thought I’d ask. His price is either $2/bird or he keeps 1/5 birds. I opted for the $2. Years ago I helped process birds a few times but never the whole shebang. Using him let me get meat birds much earlier than I would have normally.

Side note it is crazy how fast they grow. They seem to grow before my very eyes.

I will chime in and say I would take that deal! The meat birds grow crazy fast. They are the easiest to process, not nearly as many feathers and only 6-8 weeks old so very soft.

 

[iwltfum]

Just to give you a bit of perspective on price, I have, what I feel is, a good system in place and with our three person team cranking a full day out, we can butcher at about 3.5 minutes per bird. That's 10.5 work-minutes into each bird. At 15-30/hr that's between $2.5-5 per bird just in man hours for the butchering at my place.