Processed 10 today

[dani63]

This is my first time with chickens and I bought mine for eggs. My neighbors also got some chicks and decided they didn't want them so they have been in my dog kennel for the last few weeks. They were bought as day old chicks 3/25/2010. There chicks turned out to be meaties ( I thought there was something really wrong with them until I found this section on the forum). All 10 were butchered and skinned today and are doing their 24 hours in my fridge. I didn't lose any birds and they weigh approx. 3 lbs. Looks like chicken to me.

 

[Red&Yellow]

DANG! Looks good! Just asking, (I did this myself, the first time) Why'd you skin?

 

[joanc]

We have 54 close to the same age (we got them them week of March 22). We will be processing them this weekend.

We got straight run and lucked out that we got about 2/3 males. Ours will dress out somewhere between 4-6 lbs.

If your were only about 3 lbs you must have had mostly females-they don't get as large as the males in that amount of time. But, when they're smaller they can be easier to process. I've known some people who let them get to be 12 weeks old and they are 10-15 lbs. Those get really hard to handle (at least for me!) when processing.

We have a scalder and plucker, so we don't usually skin them unless we have an "oops..too long in the scalder and then the skin rips". That seems to happen at least once each batch.

Happy eating!

 

[dani63]

The men skinned for convience. A lot less mess and a huge time saver. All 10 were done in about an hour between two people. Of course this was not a planned event...It was now what do we do with 10 chickens the neighbors no longer want? I have 7 layers, 2 roos, 4 bantam babies and now 4 ducks (2 from the same neighbor) all new babies this year. I also did my research and realized the meatie chickens wouldn't live long.

 

[dani63]

When I got them from the neighbor they looked horrible. They had been kept in totes and I seriously thought something was wrong with them (thats how I found this forum). The ducks were 1/2 the size of mine too. We had bought them from the same place, same day. So 3 lbs is good and yes they were mostly hens. If I would have raised them they probably would have been bigger and (harder to butcher)

. I don't have room for another 10 chickens, my poor dog had been tossed out of his kennel already. Been interesting and informative for my first chickens. Can't wait for eggs!