I am back to report on the feathering and harvesting. There is a huge difference between NN and normal birds and it isn't just the neck. There is a lot less feathers on a not pure NN, so I can imagine harvesting a pure NN rooster would be really quick. I found that the boys only had strips of feathers on their chest, down the keel bone and on the sides. Under the wings and between the feathered areas the skin is completely smooth, they have a really clean carcass. What feathers there is that are along the back and legs were more down like than hard, it was just the tail w/ hard to pull feathers. I did a dry pluck since I was skinning them basically. The birds are also very lean. Last week's bird had quite a bit more body fat, but Marans tend to carry more fat anyway. They were about 22 wks old, and the breasts were obviously not as meaty as a Cornish X would be at 8 wks, but the legs and thighs were impressive. Twice the size of the store bought.
Now I know that most of you won't harvest your birds, I certainly don't with my hens, but if you have an excess of roosters and can make your self do it, it is worth the effort-it was only my second time and it took less than 2 hours to harvest both the boys. It will be faster with practice. Still had the queasy stomach until the carcass looked more like meat and less like bird, and I have to put the meat in the fridge/freezer for a few days to distance it from the living bird. For me this is better than giving them away and no knowing that they met their fate quickly. I can't bear the idea of one of my birds being fed live to any animal. Wish that the male to female ratio was more like 1:6
