Well.... we butchered for the first time this morning. seven birds. one got a stay of exocution because it's so puny that I think it needs a few more weeks. It went pretty well. My DH did the killing, I helped with the first couple until he got it down, then he was killing and I was processing. Evidently he has a strong aversion to eviscerating things? Not me, I have no problem dealing with them once they're safely dead. We both plucked. I looked up older posts from Delisha and mumsy and followed their instructions for the dunking. I tell you what, you get them scalded right and the feathers really DO just wipe off. We started with the three guineas, and that made it easier, it was easier to judge the cut on them because they have no neck feathers. We still botched the first one. Felt terrible, but quickly made the second cut and I don't believe that it really suffered. It was very educational as a whole. I didn't like doing it, but, as my husband pointed out, we do eat meat, and these birds had a better life and death than any bird we can buy at the store. I will feel good about feeding my family this meat.
Now for the downside. I haven't weighed any of the birds yet. they're "resting" in the fridge, and I figure I will vacuum pack and weight them on monday before I freeze them. But they looked aweful puny. by heft they're all right about five pounds, which seems little for a broiler. and we waited until almost 12 weeks to butcher. Unfortunately I didn't keep exact track of how much these guys ate. They've been eating out of the same ferment bucket as the turkeys and guineas, so I'm not precisely sure who ate how much of what. They obviously weren't starving, they had some fat around their organs and some fat deposis under their skins. But it didn't seem excessive to me for a broiler. certainly less than half of the fat that you would see on a supermarket chicken. I think with this next batch I'm going to try feeding them more when they're younger, and then cutting back as they get older. I wish that I had enough range for all for them to just free range. That would make it so easy. I'd just treat these guys like my layers, they get a couple scoops at night to sweeten the pot coming in, and that's it. I guess in some ways this is a process of tril and error. In which case, this wasn't a 100% sucess, but neither was it a failure. Over all for a first time I'm fairly pleased. Just ordered a larger batch of meat chicks which should arrive early next week. I've frozen all the hearts/livers/gizzards from this batch to feed those chicks. we'll tweak our management some, and see how our results vary!
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