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Well if we do the canning at your house, then we can do the freezer camp at mine. I need to do the actual kill this year. I haven't done that part yet. But with the kill cone (aka a used traffic cone) and a pair of sharp pruning shears, I am going to have to do the deed. Anyone that wants to watch or would like to bring some of their own birds to process, please feel free to come. At this point it looks like we are going to have the freezer camp school on either May 28th, or June 5th. If we want we could do a potluck for lunch.
I'm in! I'll post photos of my roos before then so I will know which ones to keep! Do you ever order extra meaties and sell them once processed? I'm running out of room with all my egg birds! I guess I could put up another fence, and I do have 2 empty tractors. My yard is nothing but mud, so I have stopped using them.
I did last year, but it didn't work out as well as I wanted it to. DH was a bit overwhelmed with 28 birds. We processed over two weekends. This year I am only doing 15 at a time this year. I don't know if I can keep up with anymore at a time. Last year with 28 birds I really couldn't keep up with the waste from that many birds. They got to stinking a bit to much. It was the only time I had the next door neighbor complain about the smell.
Keeping meaties in an area that is mostly mud is not a good thing. The birds tend to lay in front of the feeder most of the time.
They don't move around like real chickens. I think that meat birds are some of the dumbest animals on the face of the earth. I don't have any problems with eating them.
I have them in the garage at this point. I am still hoping that DH will move his motorcycles out of the bike area. That way the meaties will have a bit more room if they want it. I am going to need to build a pen for them. I have one but it is smaller than I would prefer for this year. I will have to see how my first kill goes before I commit myself to raising meaties for others. I can be such a pansy when it comes to stuff like this.
But given how much I like to eat chicken
. I think that I am going to need to suck it up this year.
I am going to order another batch for later this year, I am going to need to to split the order of birds. I would really like to try the hatchery in Idaho this time. I shared an order from Welp's hatchery, but with 5 out of 15 dying in just the first day, I am not going to buy from them again. I would rather have healthy chicks that haven't travel all over the US.
