loveNuggets
Hatching
- Mar 31, 2015
- 5
- 0
- 9
My wife and I slaughtered 3 cockerels last night and have had some uneasy feelings about a few things of our process and how everything turned out.
We used a cone to slit their throats (had a hard time as our knife wasn't as sharp as we had thought), and let them bleed out - it wasn't too bad but will definitely invest in a sharper knife for next time!
We were in the process of putting our kids down for bed, so we killed all three of the birds and then hung them as we heated up water for scalding and got the kids down. Between death and scalding of the first bird was about 1 hours time.
First question: did we let them sit for too long before processing? Reading more today we realize a lot of people will kill, scald, and process as quickly as 10 minutes or so before putting in an ice bath - would our meat be bad having hung so long before processing?
When the water was up to temperature we grabbed the first bird for scalding and he was stiff as a board as rigor mortis had set in - this made scalding and plucking a bit more difficult than I'm assuming it should be, but nevertheless we successfully plucked all three.
Finally, we eviscerated the 3 birds, which took quite a long time due to inexperience, our children constantly getting out of bed, and the rigor mortis - I'm guessing the time between death and getting them into the fridge was about 5 hours total - which I feel may be way too long.
Lastly, one of our birds had 3 or 4 red lumps along the length of its trachea (about the size/shape of a bean) - I didn't take any pictures, but I wondered while butchering if these might have been tumors - possibly marek's? - The bird was a bit mangy looking and the other roos picked on it often.
I appreciate any feedback - the birds have been in the fridge for about 24 hours now and we're wondering if we should keep them or toss.
Thank you!
We used a cone to slit their throats (had a hard time as our knife wasn't as sharp as we had thought), and let them bleed out - it wasn't too bad but will definitely invest in a sharper knife for next time!
We were in the process of putting our kids down for bed, so we killed all three of the birds and then hung them as we heated up water for scalding and got the kids down. Between death and scalding of the first bird was about 1 hours time.
First question: did we let them sit for too long before processing? Reading more today we realize a lot of people will kill, scald, and process as quickly as 10 minutes or so before putting in an ice bath - would our meat be bad having hung so long before processing?
When the water was up to temperature we grabbed the first bird for scalding and he was stiff as a board as rigor mortis had set in - this made scalding and plucking a bit more difficult than I'm assuming it should be, but nevertheless we successfully plucked all three.
Finally, we eviscerated the 3 birds, which took quite a long time due to inexperience, our children constantly getting out of bed, and the rigor mortis - I'm guessing the time between death and getting them into the fridge was about 5 hours total - which I feel may be way too long.
Lastly, one of our birds had 3 or 4 red lumps along the length of its trachea (about the size/shape of a bean) - I didn't take any pictures, but I wondered while butchering if these might have been tumors - possibly marek's? - The bird was a bit mangy looking and the other roos picked on it often.
I appreciate any feedback - the birds have been in the fridge for about 24 hours now and we're wondering if we should keep them or toss.
Thank you!