Our first experience butchering

We prepped three ducks and a chicken today, definitely a bit of difference between the two.

Honestly, the whole thing was absolutely fine with the unexpected squawk when I pressed on the breastbone while de-feathering. And yes, I'll do it again later this month and likely order more meat ducks next Spring.

The oddest thing so far was the reaction from others when they ask what I did today. My mother is rather shocked 'but I sent you to college so you wouldn't have to do that sort of thing!'. Dad, an Irish immigrant, was predictably much more interested - "how'd it go, how do you feel, will you do it again and would you come for Thanksgiving to prepare ours if your Mum and I buy live turkeys?" (Short answer - no, long answer - hell no)

Anybody else preparing their freezer birds?

 

We prepared three different duck breeds - a full Blue Swede, a Swede/Cayuga mix and a Cayuga. By far, there's a hell of a lot more long feathers on the Swede & Swede mix vs the Cayuga.

Cayugas & Swedes are medium-sized ducks but the full Swede was almost twice as large, which made it easier to handle. The small leghorn chicken was frustrating as anywhere you went to hold it, blocked access to the feathers to pluck.

Plucking out the pin feathers on the duck were easy by hand, especially with the thick downy undercoat - they all came out together. The chicken had a lot less feathers, but most were pins and we needed pliers for those.

We'll be making the drill attachment for mechanical de-feathering in the future.

If that didn't answer all your questions, just let me know what I missed.