I started yesterday and processed half of the them. I finished the rest today. In all, 20 birds were process this weekend. I spent about 5 hours each day and I was working by myself. I had a drill mounted plucker that I made but I don't think the black rubber bungies are the best thing to make them with. I ordered fingers and think I'll see an improvement. The scald is very important to get right. I'd rather underscald a bird than over scald it. Dishsoap in the scald water seemed to make a noticeable improvement.
I spent most of my time per bird on the plucking. I used a coleman stove and almost couldn't turn the burner down low enough. I initially brought he pot to temp on our kitchen stove and then moved it outside to save on propane.
Things I would change for next year.
1. Get fingers for my drill mounted plucker. (already ordered)
2. Use a separate knife for each of the following:
-making the killing cuts (sharper is much better)
-cutting the head off (dulls the knife after a few birds)
-opening and dressing the gizzard (little rocks etc dull the knife quickly)
3. Put the birds in a wire floor enclosure/tractor during the fasting period. The fasting period is mainly so you don't have full crops and gizzards. All the crops were empty but the gizzards were all full of rocks, dirt, and feathers. The bulk of it was just dirt/soil, cause they were SOOOOO hungry they ate anything. I only fasted them for 24 hours.
4. Get more ice. You can never have enough on hand.
5. I could have used wider size variety of killing cones. The larger roosters were a stretch. I had to reach up into the cone and pull their heads out and there wasn't much room to make the cuts.
6. Process them at 8 weeks instead of 11 weeks. There was considerably more fat in the organ cavity between the test process bird I did at 8 weeks versus the batch I did this weekend.
I did cut one head off with a hatchet just to compare side-by-side with the jugular cut method. There is no comparison....bleeding out in the cone is MUCH cleaner, appears less stressful on the bird, much less stressful for me, and gets more blood out of the carcass. I didn't measure the blood that came out because it never freely "flowed" from the neck like the jugular method. There were a few drips but the jugular method streams blood out for 30 seconds or so and them trickles down to a drip by drip. The hatchet method just dripped and then nothing. That bird is earmarked for early consumption.
Dan
I spent most of my time per bird on the plucking. I used a coleman stove and almost couldn't turn the burner down low enough. I initially brought he pot to temp on our kitchen stove and then moved it outside to save on propane.
Things I would change for next year.
1. Get fingers for my drill mounted plucker. (already ordered)
2. Use a separate knife for each of the following:
-making the killing cuts (sharper is much better)
-cutting the head off (dulls the knife after a few birds)
-opening and dressing the gizzard (little rocks etc dull the knife quickly)
3. Put the birds in a wire floor enclosure/tractor during the fasting period. The fasting period is mainly so you don't have full crops and gizzards. All the crops were empty but the gizzards were all full of rocks, dirt, and feathers. The bulk of it was just dirt/soil, cause they were SOOOOO hungry they ate anything. I only fasted them for 24 hours.
4. Get more ice. You can never have enough on hand.
5. I could have used wider size variety of killing cones. The larger roosters were a stretch. I had to reach up into the cone and pull their heads out and there wasn't much room to make the cuts.
6. Process them at 8 weeks instead of 11 weeks. There was considerably more fat in the organ cavity between the test process bird I did at 8 weeks versus the batch I did this weekend.
I did cut one head off with a hatchet just to compare side-by-side with the jugular cut method. There is no comparison....bleeding out in the cone is MUCH cleaner, appears less stressful on the bird, much less stressful for me, and gets more blood out of the carcass. I didn't measure the blood that came out because it never freely "flowed" from the neck like the jugular method. There were a few drips but the jugular method streams blood out for 30 seconds or so and them trickles down to a drip by drip. The hatchet method just dripped and then nothing. That bird is earmarked for early consumption.
Dan
