The adventure begins

[SunnySkies]

Bag number five has been opened; I left work on time Saturday, the feedstore near the clinic was still open so I swung in and grabbed a bag of "Meat Maker" pellets from Southern States. It actually got opened yesterday. Pigs.

I like that the feed is pellets. It is 20% protein. They love it. But I did not love the price of $20/bag.

 

[SunnySkies]

I love how when I move the coop and open the door to the day pen they run out and start gobbling clover.

 

[SunnySkies]

Bags 6, 7 and 8 purchased, as I was passing a feedstore and decided to stop while child free..and this place will load my purchase for me, unlike my usual shop. I hope I don't have to buy feed for 2 weeks for these guys.

A friend came over yesterday and says they have grown a lot in a week! I need to weigh some. The one is small but she is still the size of a bantam Cochin I have in there. The EE is looking small compared to the monsters.

Feed has cost me approximately $140 to this point. I think they have another month to go, more or less. Need to get with my processing team and make sure they know when I say it's time, they are ready to roll.

 

[SunnySkies]

I bought bags 9 and 10 and opened bag 9 this evening. They are getting close. Getting big. Perhaps 2 more weeks, which will be 1-3 more bags of feed.

Yep, they roam free, no fence. Their pasture is part of the front yard, on the other side of our driveway. I had a day pen up, but it got to be such a pest to move, and I noticed the roosters never come down to that part of our property that I opted to leave it off one day. It's been fine. Not that they go far...they like to lay in the dirt and shade of the hoop coop.

 

[SunnySkies]

Picked up the last 2 bags of feed, and I think when these bags I have here -- 150 lbs of feed -- are gone, it will be time for these guys to visit freezer camp. Two girls are definitely going to be spared. One is really quite tiny, and she would literally be the size of a game hen if we processed her. A second is larger, but I would rather keep two.

 

[SunnySkies]

Just ordered 50 shrink bag kits at $29.95.

 

[SunnySkies]

Keeping them cool via a mister I bought earlier this summer for the back deck, but it works well for the meaties for now. I got it at Lowe's for $16. Ran several hoses out to their coop and the mister is a flexible hose I twist to make it stand up on its own, and I direct the mist into the coop. They don't like it much, but the panting wasn't as bad yesterday afternoon after I hooked it up. Need to walk out there in a bit and reset it for the day.

Bought a second 3 gal waterer. These guys are easily drinking more than 6 gallons a day. One big waterer wasn't cutting it. I was finding it empty too often. $35 for that.

Think I will process one or two Friday, after our heat wave passes. One is having a lot of trouble standing. He flops down after just a couple steps. I don't think he is much over 5 lbs. We are having people over for dinner after church Sunday, and how fun would it be to tell them dinner was raised here.

 

[SunnySkies]

Well, we ended up, because of work and life and stuff, not processing until last Friday, the 27th. We all agreed, in retrospect, that that was about 10 days too long. Some of the birds were having trouble standing, and upon processing, some had the beginnings of bumble foot (the dogs got the feet..we saved no feet for soup), but most were still coping fine and that morning had actually gone out to range a bit as I'd taken their feed trough away.

That meant I went though 14+ bags of feed, which was 2 more than I had figured. The price jumped too...I went off to TSC to buy feed, after buying it elsewhere for a few weeks, and it was a dollar more than it had been. Kind of a bummer. So feed averaged just under $17 a bag.

I bought a few knives and things prior to processing. I will be reusing the knives, but that was about $35 for the set, plus a plastic tablecloth and some bleach. I had everything else here.

The biggest issue we actually ran into during processing was getting the scalding temp correct. Sometimes it was perfect, and the birds plucked perfectly. Other times, we ended up plucking by hand after running the birds through the plucker and still having pin feathers and nasties on it, and there were a couple we skinned and parted out because they just did not pluck well. Then there were a couple where it was too hot and the plucker tore the skin. Sigh. We have decided that next time, we will not rely on a canning pot that we added heated water to every so often but will invest in a turkey cooker or a scalder and just do it right. I will also ask to NOT get the black ones. They were difficult to pluck, period. The white, red and buff ones plucked easily, even when the scalding temperature wasn't quite right. The black ones just didn't want to give up their feathers.

Our second problem was that they wouldn't fit into the cones. And they would actually break their own wing as they flapped postmortem. We found if we sat them on the ground while my large man friend contained the wings and I used limb cutters on their thick necks, that they didn't break their wings. So we are getting real cones for next time.

My friends have a vacuum sealer, so we split the birds in half, pulled out the guts, cut down the backbone, and then sealed quite a few as halves. We used the bags I got to store some whole birds, and my friends were regretting the vacuum when they saw how easy the bags were. I put birds in the bags, zip tied them shut, poked a little hole and dunked them in hot water. Done. They look beautiful.

So...what everyone always wants to know...how big were they? And how much did it cost?

HUGE.

One was 10 lbs DRESSED weight. He was ginormous. He was a very large white and red bird that actually did walk around until the bitter end.

We kept 10 whole and they were 9 lbs to 6.5 lbs, with the average of 7 lbs. My friends picked one for Thansgiving day, lol. We chose the most beautiful ones to keep as whole birds.

The halves averaged 3.2 lbs per package.

We got about 200 lbs of meat and processed 29 birds (one disappeared in the last week while I was working, we had lost one at 3-4 weeks, and we spared two pullets.) So, doing the math, they averaged 6.8 lbs.

Cost, we figured, was about $1.40/lb for feed and the birds. Higher than I had planned, but the extra days are probably what did us in, along with the increase in feed costs right at the end. But, go to the store here, and a bird like these will cost you $4.95 or more a lb. The local farm store I go to is processing next week, and they will sell birds that average 5 lbs for $5/lb. If you add in the various reuseable purchases (the feeders, the waterer, the coop, the bags -- still have some -- as tabulated above) it costs more than $1.40. but m already reusing the coop with a laying flock and the feeder went to a new group of chicks, etc. The circle of life goes on.

But keeping them alive longer was a bad idea. They were fat with a capital F. The livers were greasy. They had huge fat stores laid down in their necks, making it difficult to see their empty crops. We took wads of fat out with their guts and just threw it away. So those last few bags were just wasted as the birds laid down fat but didn't grow more muscle. We have decided that next time, we make sure to process earlier.

My nine year old son killed four and helped process. We had a team of 8 people for 4 hours, 4 people for 3 hours and finished with 6 people. One person came over to watch, and she said it was way less traumatic than she thought it would be. I was pleased, as my goal was to make sure these guys only had one bad day.

 

[SunnySkies]

Cooked one up tonight. It was one we skinned and parted because the plucker didn't do a great job.

Yum. All I did was put it in a Dutch oven, add a bit of oil, some Wegman's garlic seasoning and roast at 350 until done. Tender, juicy and simply amazing. That one bird fed all six of us, and hubby has leftovers for work tomorrow.

 

[aoxa]

So they were 11 weeks old upon processing? How on earth were they averaging 7 pounds processed?!

My CX girls were averaging 5.5 at 12 weeks. I ranged them as well. Did you offer food at all times?