Woo Hoo We had our meaties processed today!

[momofchicks]

I'm so excited to eat one on Wednesday, I can hardly wait. We had 16 birds done at an USDA facility. The smallest was 2.67 pounds and the largest was 4.28 pounds with the average being around 3.54 pounds. They were 7 week old Cornish Cross and they look delicious. Here are a few pics. One of them at 5 weeks and two pics today. I am thrilled already just by looking at them vacuum packed up, I can't wait to eat them.

 

[Just-Like-Hatching]

Looks delicous. What did it cost to get them processed?

 

[momofchicks]

$58.68 It cost $2.63 each bird and then $2.00 extra for each bird I had cut up and .35 for each tray for the cut ones plus two large bags of ice. I thought it was well worth it, because it would have taken us days to do 16 birds. We had processed two of our own Roosters and they took over an hour each. And I know they are all healthy and not damaged since there was a USDA inspector there.

 

[menageriemama]

OOOoooooh... Vaccum packed. Very nice!

 

[halo]

Nice. I wish I could find a USDA facility to do that within reasonable driving distance. I would love to try some of those cornish x.

 

[Heather J]

I'd love to find somewhere to get mine done, but I was told there's no one in Utah who does chickens (says the meat processor I asked, but I had previously made several calls to other places that also didn't do chickens). I'm going ot have to do it myself instead, and I'm really not excited. We had a friend come help us with our roos last year, early winter, then again late winter, but I don't want to bother him again. I have 12 cockerels that MUST go one way or another. I think doing them in two or three batches will take lost of time, but then I'll be able to weed out the ones I'm not keeping to breed.

I can do the processing, no problem, but I'm not sure I can do the killing myself.

Then again, if I think I'm going to be able to intubate and insert IVs, I can probably handle slicing an artery on a chicken.

 

[cjeanean]

wow, that cost is just outrageous!!!! I couldn't fork over that much after putting feed into those birds for 2-3 months!!! They DO look mighty tasty, though!!!

 

[blueskylen]

Nice looking packages!!

we can get ours processed in northwest Maryland for $1.75 per bird. they did 25 for us this spring in a little over 2 hours - would have taken us at least 1-2 days, plus the mess to clean up.
Now we are sending 47 on Nov 7th to the same man.

None of the butcher shops that i contacted around our area would do chickens, so I thought that, as we know a Menonite furniture maker - and a lot of them follow the older ways of doing things , we would ask him if he knew of anyone who processed chickens - he said his brother-in-law did, and he is the one who did ours,and had a spotless area to do it in. we were extremely pleased with how carefully he cleaned and plucked them - not a pin feather left.

 

[becky3086]

I am sure it was nice to have them done for you but I would never spend that much to do them. The whole point for me is to know exactly what went into my birds and how they were processed from start to finish and that means doing it myself.
Plus that seems like a lot of money for chicken.

 

[greyfields]

that is a very nice job they did processing, wish I had processors like that in my state