Oh man... this will be the first time ever...

[Mr.Grantly]

Jeff


Thanks so much for telling us your story. I sure appricate it especially after along day or roofing. and butchering turkeys to have the effort to take pictures. All i can say is your the man Jeff. I'm sure we seem like a bunch of kids Jeff Jeff Jeff what about this and what about that. Your what makes this forum so much fun to be on! Thanks again for offering us your expertise. I cant wait to get turkeys next year. Here in Canada we cant sell them unless there gov inspected. So even if I wanted to i couldn't butcher my own


Grant

 

[ScoobyRoo]

Jeff,

Thanksgiving was here and gone. How did you fare?? What would you do different next year if you were to do this again?? I know you weren't happy with the killing cones.
Were you able to get extra help and get them all processed? When you get the chance, let us know how it turned out.
Thanks again for sharing your experience with us.

 

[anthonyjames]

Jeff,

thanks for all the info and your photos and +/- for things. I am currently looking to start do meat birds next year and 6 turkeys. I would love to get to the point where you are. Any guidance would be great.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Well... it's almost done. I have 20 more turkey's left to process and I'm so tired! I'm probably going to wrap them up today and take them to the freezer. I have some pics of the last steps of the process and also added in the final result... and some flasbacks from mid summer!!


The turkeys going into the blast freezer at -30 degrees

Another pic... you can see how cold it is... 5 minutes in the freezer and they are already crusted over.

Then they go to a 20x20 space once they are frozen I rent this space for $50.00 / month

And... the final product... Mel and I's first Thanksgiving dinner at our new house! It was a sucess...

Flashbacks... 300 little turkeys going out to pasture... one by one!

Notice how they look for bugs almost instantly!

Sorry it takes so long for me to post pics... I have to track down my girlfriends camera every time I want to take a pic... and then I have to track her down again to load them on the PC... I'm learning how to do it though!

Thanks for all of the nice coments! For those of you just getting started... the best advice I can give is take your time and not to get overwhelmed too early or you will burn yourself out. I've been doing this for about 10 years now and I can't tell you how many times I fell on my face... just get back up do it again and make sure you learn from your mistakes because this buisness will burry you very fast if your not carefull. As bad as a loss or a mistake is... it was my best learning curve to screw it up... because there are things that you learn to never do again.

I'm looking foward to my 3 month break here in a couple weeks.... let it snow... let is snow... let it snow!!!

 

[ScoobyRoo]

Thanks for the update, Jeff. I don't plan on doing what you did. I had 11 and thought THAT was too many. Mine free ranged a lot but was penned up at night. They ate and ate and ate!! I was glad when we butchered them because they were beginnig to eat me out of my house. But I tell ya, they sure do taste good! Kudos to you.