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.
