What to do with all them birds?

[Tater n Beans]

My wife and I are discussing branching into the meaties. Our Buffs are nice but their eggs are better. We have seen the posts for the Freedom Rangers and feel that these would be a nice fit. A min order of 25 is required though, What do I do with all those butchered chickens? Does 25 just sound like a lot or am I going to regret not ordering more?

 

[MMPoultryFarms]

 

[angelique_redhead]

We ordered 30 red broilers from Ideal when we got meaties. 27 made it to freezer camp. That is just about right for us. As you notice we had about a 10% loss so I would get about 10% more than you want to kill off. You might get lucky and not lose any. The flavor on the red broilers is amazingly good. I tend to brine mine and then cook them. Enjoy!

: Angelique

 

[scubaforlife]

How many whole chickens do you eat in a year? If you cooked one whole bird every sunday, you would run out pretty fast with 25.

 

[mstricer]

Quote:
This is my first year for meaties also. I did order the 25 rangers from JM and I ordered 11 CX from Meyers. There is only 2 of us here. My sister in law came into alot of free dairy calf's last year and we are famliy working together. She's raising the beef and us the eggs and meaties. I will be ordering more probably this is only a trial run for me. I plan on rotating small flocks of meaties till winter. You can always share with family and friends who have never had a good bird.

 

[Tater n Beans]

I think that we will doing the 50. I subtracted the standard 10% plus a couple for my own small sustaining breeding program (8-10). Which leaves approx 35-40. A quick calculation as to how may chickens we consume on a weekly basis turned out to be larger than I had originally thought. I'm just going to have to get a deep freeze to handle all of that stock. No to mention once word gets around, I will find friends I didn't know I had...

Thanks everyone for the help.

 

[CoopCrazy]

Sounds like you have a plan .. We quickly realized that 25 were not nearly enough for our family.. And we will be ordering 100 next time.. that may get us through a few months LOL

 

[Raiquee]

Me and hubby rarely eat a "whole" chicken, but we eat bits and pieces a LOT. I'd say comfortably we eat chicken breast 3x a week. If not more. That times a breast per person, equals 9! So, I wouldn't be surprised to go through 5 chickens a week. Wings and Legs we don't eat a lot of on it's own, but hubby loves to make some hot wings and in that case he uses about 30 at a time and has the guys over.

People consume a lot more chicken than they think they do!

I like to eat more poultry, just because it is slightly better for you and because I just like chicken!

So once I get meat chickens I will keep a few whole, just for roasting purposes but most will be cut up into breasts, legs and wings and bagged appropriatly.

 

[Beekissed]

I wish I had kept more of mine whole, as all the sudden folks wanted to "try" them.....

They would make great holiday gifts, I'm thinking.

I kept some whole, cut the breasts off of the rest, kept the thighs for grilling and baking, kept the rest of the parts for canning chicken stock/soup. Even kept the legs and feet for this purpose...supposed to make the best jelly stock.

We had miscalculated just how much meat we would have from 20 meaties and our freezers are stuffed full and I had to give away some whole birds.