Our Buff trio hatched out 13 out of 13 eggs this April. The two females sat on the next together. They did that last year with their first owner and didn't have a good hatch, but I think it must have been inexperience because now that they are 3 years old and have more experience they did very well.
Today they are 10 weeks and 5 days and we butchered 9 of them and we decided to save 4 to do later and see what age we like them best. At least this way they won't be going through so much feed.
It took us 3 hours to get to the point of having the feathers off of nine birds with 3 of us working most of the time. We had everything set up the night before. We put each one in a gunny sack with a hole cut for the head to go through. This made it easy to hold them while we chopped off the head. Then we hung the sack up on a nail to bleed out. We used a 60 quart pot on a sturdy gas stand and it was the perfect size. We kept the water around 170 to 180 degrees and dipped for about 45 seconds and then plucked what came out pretty easily. They we dipped again for about 20 seconds and the second dip was much easier to get the leftover feathers wet. Then we plucked all the large feathers remaining and a whatever down was pretty easy. Then we dipped them in an 18 quart pot with hot water and melted duck wax in it and removed it as soon as it was covered and put it into a large galvanized container full of cold water. After about a minute we started peeling off the wax, and all of the down and many of the pinfeathers came off, leaving the carcasses looking good. Some of these geese only had a few pinfeathers and some had quite a few, but they are pretty easy to remove and most of them are white and not too noticeable.
Next time we will either do them one week earlier or some weeks later. We will be trying a later processing time later with the 4 goslings we have left. I will post again later with a photo of our set up and more information about the rest of the process. We will be gutting in a couple of hours.
Today they are 10 weeks and 5 days and we butchered 9 of them and we decided to save 4 to do later and see what age we like them best. At least this way they won't be going through so much feed.
It took us 3 hours to get to the point of having the feathers off of nine birds with 3 of us working most of the time. We had everything set up the night before. We put each one in a gunny sack with a hole cut for the head to go through. This made it easy to hold them while we chopped off the head. Then we hung the sack up on a nail to bleed out. We used a 60 quart pot on a sturdy gas stand and it was the perfect size. We kept the water around 170 to 180 degrees and dipped for about 45 seconds and then plucked what came out pretty easily. They we dipped again for about 20 seconds and the second dip was much easier to get the leftover feathers wet. Then we plucked all the large feathers remaining and a whatever down was pretty easy. Then we dipped them in an 18 quart pot with hot water and melted duck wax in it and removed it as soon as it was covered and put it into a large galvanized container full of cold water. After about a minute we started peeling off the wax, and all of the down and many of the pinfeathers came off, leaving the carcasses looking good. Some of these geese only had a few pinfeathers and some had quite a few, but they are pretty easy to remove and most of them are white and not too noticeable.
Next time we will either do them one week earlier or some weeks later. We will be trying a later processing time later with the 4 goslings we have left. I will post again later with a photo of our set up and more information about the rest of the process. We will be gutting in a couple of hours.
