Well how was your turkey?

[card5640]

I cooked my 51 lb home raised bird BB white. It was soo good and tender, I sliced off huge wedges looked as big as prine rib steaks. Made gallons of gravy . Family was so impressed as was neighbors and townspeople...still sharing the leftovers. Turkey pie for supper. Made 3 gallonsof soup from the bones. YUM

 

[Schultz]

Here's our girls, they were both deep fried and delicious! Oh, and thanks to Steve, our butchering went smooth!

 

[MikeG]

Butchered the last two BBWs on Thanksgiving Eve. I recruited my father-in-law and it went 'ok.' We culled them around 7pm with headlamps so as not to alarm our neighbors (live in a City). We opted for Ax and wood block. Lets just say we'll be doing it differently next go-round. They finished at 26 and 24lbs respectively and we brined, injected, and deep fried both of them. Scrumptous.

No leftovers.

Novice mistake:
I did a good bit of research on how to process but I must say that I didn't know about the 'crop' near the neck cavity. I didn't starve them as they graze with our chickens and I
found the crop only after checking in on the bird soaking in the brine solution-alot of recently eaten food/bugs/watermelon/grass/corn floating in the brine solution.

We miss them and their eggs!

 

[Hillsvale]

Quote:

I wouldn't consider growing birds if we could get it that cheap... our turkeys START at 1.69 a pound and that's on sale. How is it our birds can be so much more expensive!!

 

[boxermom]

They were selling here for $.44/lb, or buy a ham and get a turkey free. How do you compete w/ that? I look at it this way. My turk was delicious, I enjoyed very minute raising it and it had a very happy life. I'll do it again, jury is still out for DH.

 

[MikeG]

That's what is wrong with the agri-business complex/US Food market. The poor farmers are forced to de-humanize and 'stream-line' operations to lower costs forcing worse conditions for the turkeys (and need for more antibiotics, etc) so people can buy them for less than .50/lb.

We can't compete, we just need to recognize that everyone (including the animals) suffers with this distortion of 'good food' vs. value concept. We should be paying 1.69/lb for turkey that is raised and processed in a healthy, safe, and humane way.

Off my soapbox now...sorry, I couldn't resist.

 

[AHappychick]

I was shocked at the prices of the turkeys here as well. about .50 a lbd non organic of course.

I sold 3 of mine for $6.50 a lbd although they were raised organically They were pricey but cost me about $12 each as day old chicks and $6 each to process and then ate through a 50lbd bag of feed in just a few days (my feed is $29 a bag)

I cant imagine how they could be raised for under $1 a lbd

I know I am on the very high end of prices but that is very low!

Next year I wil be feeding them lots of acorns so hopefully that will make them a lot cheaper to raise.

 

[al6517]

Ours turned out fantastic and was juicey and delish, I spend alot effort on my turkeys because after all it's Thanksgiving right.

AL

 

[farmerlor]

We had a store bought turkey. Boy, trying to explain to Greg that we CANNOT eat the turkeys outside because they're for breeding so he had to get a turkey from the store just about used up all the words I have. He was still griping about it Thanksgiving day as my little hen turkey came up to the door to see if I could play with her. Anyway, I brined mine per usual and put it in a bag and it was supposedly most wondrous. I don't eat meat so I can't say but everyone raved and raved and by the next day that 23 pound turkey was only a memory-NO LEFTOVERS!!!

 

[Poupoulles]

So proud of this!! Hubby and I raised a mixed bag of heritage birds from McMurray, we sold the blacks and Narragansetts live on craigslist for a tidy profit. Then we processed the remaining nine standard bronze and white (what kind of white I dont know, just not BB) all by ourselves. We have never processed our own poultry before. Then on Thanksgiving we ate one fo the white hens, she weighed about 10 lbs dressed, just right for us two with plenty of leftovers. Served here with whole chestnuts which cooked with the bird.

I stuffed it with chunks of apple and onion. I put fresh herbs and butter under the skin, wrapped in bacon. I put a piece of parchment paper, oiled, on the breast and cooked for about three hours at 350, removed the paper and cooked another hour. Rested it for a good twenty minutes or so. It was DIVINE. So incredibly good. WE raised our birds on pasture, on the sporting bird starter from Southern states. The last month we transitioned to more and more corn/scratch grains and stopped letting them roam, though we still moved their open bottomed pen daily. We killed them by hand, scalded in a deep fryer full of water (SO GREAT!!!! $100 and did the job of a $500 scalder like it was NOTHING!) we hand plucked which after scalding was easy. We did about three a day. Most we cut up and froze in pieces.
So proud of ourselves!