Yesterday was processing day for our first batch of meat birds. I haven't posted about our meat birds yet. To catch you up to speed, head over to our friends' blog (first post was june 16) where they have been posting from day one and my myspace. We raised sixteen Red Bros from one day old to ten and a half weeks. This has been quite an educational experience for us all. I was really nervous about us completing the task when it came time to butcher, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd psyched myself out for it to be. The guys did the killing, scalding and plucking. Sounds like a lot of work, but with the handy equipment we rented, it took them all of 5 minutes to do two birds. They then handed them off to the ladies to do the dirty work of cleaning. I now know the insides of a chicken better than my own!
We set up the rented scalder and plucker the night before so the water was heated and ready in the morning. We started around 7am, getting the rest of the station set up. The first bird took almost an hour from start to finish because we wanted to be sure we did it right. Once we got the hang of it, we were moving along pretty quickly. We were finished with all the birds by noon and spent less than an hour on cleanup. Not bad for our first time! (Did I mention that none of us have done this before?). True to our sustainable living, nothing was wasted. The feet and necks were made into delicious broth, the organs were made into pet food, the blood and feathers were composted for our vegetable garden. My only regret is that we didn't raise more birds. Eight chickens aren't going to stay in the freezer long. Oh, to have a few acres of our own!
Last shot of the beautiful birds
Killing cones keep the bird calm and somewhat still during killing and bleeding out
Doing the chicken dance! This is the automatic plucker that sprays water down while it rotates and the fingers clean the feathers off the bird. I wish you could see it in action. The kids (and adults) found this part amusing. The spray went further than expected, hitting us all the first time.
Tyler playing with chicken feet.
And in the spirit of the Olympics... Synchronized Cutting!
5 comments:
Synchronized cutting!! I love it! I'm glad we did this with you guys. I love that I know that the birds were very well taken care of before they fulfilled their lot in our lives. It went so well that I have no issue with doing it again. It will be wonderful when we do finally get that acreage!!
Thanks for leaving out the blood and gore. Glad things went well.
Nice! Glad to see our equipment put happily to use.
David
Featherman Equipment
Hey Steph!!
Just wanted to pop in and say "hi". I saw that you blogged from your last comment on Tiff's site. I've enjoyed seeing all of your latest adventures w/ the Johnson's...loved the vacation pics! One of my favorites was w/ you throwing the ball for your dog...great action shot w/ him running in front of the ball anticipating its landing.
Stop by and say hi sometime at mine. :)
Su (Joel's sister)
Have you tasted a chicken yet? I'm super glad everything went smoothly!
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