First Time Processing

This past weekend was the first time we processed our own chickens. It took us 4 hours on Saturday and a couple hours on Sunday to get them all done.

Saturday was the processing day and Sunday was packaging day. We killed, scalded, plucked, and cleaned on Saturday. This is a picture of the cones we used. There are two on each side. We have 8 cones total but only used 4 this time, since we were only processing 26 birds.

Doing the dirty deed.

Scalding

Our plucker doing it's job

We purchased a used Featherman Pro Plucker, and it does a wonderful job. They birds came out with only a few feathers still attached but I think that was because we either didn't scald them long enough or we didn't run the plucker long enough. But I remember plucking chickens by hand when I was a kid and trust me, this is the way to go!

We cut 10 chickens into parts including boneless skinless breast. 2 chickens were in the scalder just a little too long so they went straight into the crockpots and now we have 3 bags of shredded chicken in the freezer and had a chicken casserole last night. All the others were left whole. We have a few of them sold. We marked 10 of them for sale but I hope all 10 don't sell. I would like to keep enough to get us through until Spring when we raise some more.

It was a lot of work, but well worth it. We have chickens in our freezer that we know where they came from, how they were treated, and what they were fed. We also know that they were processed cleanly.

Have a great day!

Mae

Freezing the Birds

After getting the chickens processed they were given back to us packed in ice chest with ice water on them. Ice water gets into the cavity of the bird and cools them down faster than just covering them with ice would. It took us about 3 hours to get them all in the freezer. We ordered poultry shrink bags from Nayda's Poultry. I ordered them on a Friday night and received them on the next Monday. That was very fast!  We looked at the tutorial on this site: http://poultryshrinkbags.blogspot.com/ to get an idea of how to use the bags.  The bags came with a straw that you put into the cavity of the bird and then twisted the bag around the straw. That worked better for us than cutting a slit in the bag.

It was very easy to do and the finished product looks really good. I haven't printed my labels yet. I ordered blank labels from Growers Discount Labels and they arrived within three days of ordering them.

Here are pictures of our packaging process:

Washing and cutting off the necks

Drying the birds before putting in bags

Bird in a Bag

Dipping in 180-200° water

Shrink wrapped

The necks were left really long on the chickens so we cut them off down below the breast. I will use them to make broth. They had a lot of meat on them for necks. It is our goal to not waste any of the chicken. We haven't eaten one yet but will be cooking one this weekend.

Have a great day!
Mae

Linking with the Homestead Barn Hop 

Butchering Day

Okay, so we did take the easy way out and had our chickens processed at a processing facility. But, the processor did all 42 birds in less than 1 hour, start to finish.

Last ride

 

 

 

 

 

This is what they looked like on their way out this morning. I found myself feeling a little sorry for them. But then I realize that their lives would only get worse if we allowed them to live any longer. Fortunately, we didn't see any broken legs or heart failure in the 7 weeks we had them. Their lives were the best we could give them, lots of food, fresh grass every day, and clean water. Cornish X are different than any chicks I had ever seen. Not that we had a bad experience with them and we will raise them again in the fall.

On the way home

They look beautiful. Clean. Better than any chicken I have seen in the store in forever. I hope they taste as good as they look. I will let you know how they turn out, and will be posting pictures of the packaging process.

Have a great day!
Mae