Processing Day Support Group ~ HELP us through the Emotions PLEASE!

[LBKS]

I have a question for you all about using a knife with the cone method to put down a rooster - is there a good way to test sharpness before hand? I had to take care of my first aggressive rooster (~6 months old) yesterday but despite thinking I had sharpened my knife and backup knife enough, I just didn't seem to get as clean and deep of a cut in as I had expected. I don't know if it was a matter of sharpness or something in how I cut, but I do felt like my inexperience made the poor guy suffer unnecessarily.

I have a few more roosters I need to take care of over the next few weeks, so I'm hoping to sort this out so they can have as quick and painless an end as possible.

 

[ronott1]

I have a question for you all about using a knife with the cone method to put down a rooster - is there a good way to test sharpness before hand? I had to take care of my first aggressive rooster (~6 months old) yesterday but despite thinking I had sharpened my knife and backup knife enough, I just didn't seem to get as clean and deep of a cut in as I had expected. I don't know if it was a matter of sharpness or something in how I cut, but I do felt like my inexperience made the poor guy suffer unnecessarily.

I have a few more roosters I need to take care of over the next few weeks, so I'm hoping to sort this out so they can have as quick and painless an end as possible.

Disposable scalpels are not too expensive and are guaranteed to be sharp.

To test your knife, see if it can easily cut paper.

 

[dutchbunny83]

We did our first real processing-- 5 HOURS from start to finish and only did 9 birds, our rooster Gigantor gets to live awhile longer.

My husband skinned them instead of plucking to save time. And I tried to debone, but it was a disaster (especially since I pretty much have only bought boneless skinless chicken from the store or sectioned skin on pieces for frying). I was able to debone all the breasts, but just left them in for the thighs, legs & wing pieces.

Honestly I have no appetite now I don't even want to eat any of them. Hopefully the feeling wears off because we have a lot....

 

[BCMaraniac]

What kind of birds did you process DB?

And yes, the desire to eat chicken will return.....

 

[Kassaundra]

I'm the same, never eat chicken, can't even stand the thought of eating chicken on a processing day. Give it a few days and it will sound tasty again.

 

[Beekissed]

I have a question for you all about using a knife with the cone method to put down a rooster - is there a good way to test sharpness before hand? I had to take care of my first aggressive rooster (~6 months old) yesterday but despite thinking I had sharpened my knife and backup knife enough, I just didn't seem to get as clean and deep of a cut in as I had expected. I don't know if it was a matter of sharpness or something in how I cut, but I do felt like my inexperience made the poor guy suffer unnecessarily.

I have a few more roosters I need to take care of over the next few weeks, so I'm hoping to sort this out so they can have as quick and painless an end as possible.

With most folks I've observed who don't get a good cut, it wasn't so much the knife but the decisiveness of the cut that was the issue. Maybe bearing down more on your blade as you cut, while doing a quick slice? It also seems to matter where you are cutting..some of the vids I saw, folks were cutting way down on the neck where the guard feathers(hackles)were and just doing a sawing motion as the feathers and the skin there are loose and easily moved with friction, but it doesn't make for the best cutting.

If you can feel for the jaw of the bird and cut just back of it and below it, you will be cutting in the right place and it has very little feathering there, plus the skin can be drawn taut by pulling down on the head a tad.

 

[Kassaundra]

I really don't see how. If you took two groups of any bird and fed one group longer than the other, you'd have more meat and weight on the carcass, whether you retain the bones or not. To do an accurate experiment your control group would have to have the same conditions as the studied group except for the one factor of being caponed. To feed the caponed group longer and then claim they put on more weight and have more fat would be an obvious conclusion....if you fed a non-caponed group longer they too would have more fat and weight then the group killed 3 mo. prior. That's kind of a no brainer and not a real assessment of meat on meat. One was grown longer and fed longer...of course it's going to be bigger and fatter!

I was thinking BC's point of experiment was the cost per lb of bird and whether caponizing was cost effective. If that is the case the only fair way to do it would be to butcher the uncaponized roo at the time you would normally butcher him (around crow generally) and the capon at the time of normal butcher for him (6-12 months). The point wasn't going to prove whether the older capon was bigger, of course it is, no need to test that out, he is older and neutered. The point in question was how much it costs to get him to eating age. The non capon will eat "x" amount of food producing "y" amount of meat costing "z" dollars per lb, the capon will eat the food for longer so does that equate to cheaper meat lb per $ spent on food or not?

 

[BCMaraniac]

I really don't see how. If you took two groups of any bird and fed one group longer than the other, you'd have more meat and weight on the carcass, whether you retain the bones or not. To do an accurate experiment your control group would have to have the same conditions as the studied group except for the one factor of being caponed. To feed the caponed group longer and then claim they put on more weight and have more fat would be an obvious conclusion....if you fed a non-caponed group longer they too would have more fat and weight then the group killed 3 mo. prior. That's kind of a no brainer and not a real assessment of meat on meat. One was grown longer and fed longer...of course it's going to be bigger and fatter!

Deboning the birds will let me compare the cost per pound of meat between the two birds at their normal age of harvest if I keep track of the cost of feed for each of the two groups. I know that capon meat will be of a higher quality. That wasn't even a consideration in what I had outlined. If the meat wasn't of a higher quality, the capon wouldn't cost more, and we would just let all of our roosters grow until they are 9 months old before we butcher them.

The capon is always grown longer than the young roosters before harvest for the very purpose of getting a larger bird with more meat, so if we were going with your parameters as an experiment, then the rooster would be grown to the same age as the capon is when it is normally harvested, not the other way around. I think you would agree that a nine month old rooster is not going to be a tender succulent bird when roasted. That is why the roosters get butchered at an earlier age, to preserve the quality of the meat at the expense of the quantity.

 

[Beekissed]

One couldn't really say if it's cheaper or not unless they were weighed at every step of the way....what if the capons top out at X lbs and gain no more weight past that point but are still being fed for 10 mos? I think an experiment like that would take some diligence, daily wts, weight of food per day consumed, etc. to get an accurate reading of when exactly the birds topped out on weight per food consumption or if they continued to grow in size the longer one feeds. I've had CX that topped out on wts at 8 wks and were fed to 11 wks but gained no appreciable wt for those extra 2 wks.

I think what you are proposing would be the only experiment one could do between those two groups...the cost of feed to get each to butcher weights and then cost per lb of meat. But to measure total wts and flavor/tenderness of the two groups would be impossible to compare. Much like it's impossible for people who insist that DP birds are cheaper to raise to butcher wts and they taste better than CX...they are forgetting that CX are traditionally processed at 2-3 mo. of age and one would have to measure the DP birds at that age as well to get a fair comparison of feed conversion, meat yield and flavor profiles.

 

[dutchbunny83]

I did Freedom Rangers.
I was really happy with them as birds-- they were really pretty, friendly and active.
They were I believe 11 weeks old at processing, I'd have to go back and look at a calender to be 100% sure.
The meat on them was really good-- the breasts were a good size (I was thinking they wouldn't be since not the cornish cross). The only thing without much meat was the lower flat portion of the wings (which is my favorite to eat as buffalo wings, my husband likes the little mini drumstick wings which were big). The drumstick legs were huge, bigger than most you see in the store, I guess for carrying around their weight since they were so active.

We haven't eaten them yet. And our food to bird ratio was crazy high, though we didn't start fermented feed until the last couple weeks so maybe next time it will be more efficient.

We spared our rooster Gigantor, he is HUGE! So one day he will probably need to be culled for size.

I kept one bird whole (though skinless) and portioned off the rest and vacuum sealed them. The weight of the birds after the skin/organs and whatnot were gone but still on the bone were 4-4.5lbs.