Processed Some Extra Roosters Today
Processed a few roosters today. When you incubate your own chickens you end up with a excess of roosters. An excess of roosters will stress out your hens with all the "action" going on and will run up your feed cost.
I usually put the roosters in the freezer about the time they start crowing. Today I processed one Orpington one Barred Rock and one Australorp rooster. I did not take any pictures of the killing or the evisceration. But I will show you my setup and walk you through how I do it.
The first stop in the process is the rope and bucket. With the Rope the chickens hang upside down by their feet. They're surprisingly quite common in this position. I stretch their neck with my thumb at the bottom of the jaw line. I always give a grateful thank you to every chicken that is going to be providing my family with food and then I cut the jugular and let them bleed out in the bucket.
In the bucket I will put a few inches of wood chips to soak up the blood. I'll add the bloody wood chips to my compost pile witch will add extra nutrients from a waste product.
This is my backyard processing area. I bring the chicken here after about 2 minutes of hanging upside down.
This is the scalding station. The purpose of scalding your bird is to be able to pluck it easier. We keep the water at about a 145 degrees. Dunk the chicken, holding the feet, in the water for about 30 seconds. Do this until the wing feathers pull out easily. It usually takes about three or four dunks. Make sure you don't have your water too hot, 170+, or you will rip the skin when plucking your chicken.
After scolding the bird its time to get to plucking. I made this work table out of scavenged wood and chicken wire. Using chicken wire for the top allows us to use a hose and spray away the feathers as we're plugging them.
The next stop is the evisceration table. Or the place where we're going to gut the bird in other words. I don't feed my chickens 12 hours before they get processed. This way they don't have any food in there craw and very little manure, if any at all, in there intestinal system.
The first step I take in this process is removing the neck with a pair of Choppers. After removing the neck I will stick my finger down the top to loosen up the connective tissue and when pipes so I can pull it out the back.
Taking off the feet is quite simple. Straighten the leg and run your blade in between the joints severing the tendons.
I like to take out the rear end and the guts all In 1 pull. Make a cut across the belly about one inch below the breast bone. First you will go through some skin and usually a small pocket of fat. Once you get through to the cavity stick your fingers inside and pull it open to be able to get one hand inside. Once your hand is inside you want to go around the organs to release any connective tissue. It will feel like tough spider webs you trying to pull out.
After rummaging around the organs and intestines for a little while I will make a small cut around the bone at the butt on each side. Following that cut up around the back and severing off the entire tail.
Now that the tail end and organs are pretty much free I'll stick my hand back in the chicken grab a handful and pull it all out. That will pull out the majority of the organs, intestines and rear end. You will have to go back in and scrape out the lungs from the ribs.
After washing them off real good I put them in a cooler of ice cold water.
The last step is the freezer. We use a FoodSaver to suck out all the air of the freezer bags before we put them in the freezer.
THANK YOU FOR POPPING BY!!
FOLLOW ME AT: @hopfarmnc
https://www.facebook.com/HOPFarmNC/
https://www.hopfarmnc.com/
Community Forums
Love the set up. I admire those who do all the work themselves. I wish I could have hens chicken etc. Darn municipality rules, seriously need to move.
Definitely sounds like you need to move
Yea I'm not one for rules. I'd find a way around or just do it any way. Have you heard of the chicken sitting program? It is where you can have chickens because they think you're just "chicken sitting"
Nice Set up GUYS!! Love all the pics. Not sure if you saw my post today about chickens being a status symbol in Silicon Valley. Most people out there won't eat their chickens. LOL.
Thank you @mericanhomestead! We incubate and if we didn't put the roos in the freezer they would eat us out of house and home. lol. 😁
Awesome post. I’m glad I stumbled upon your page, I’m not far from you in Hillsborough NC.
I don’t raise chickens yet but it’s on my list to do so. Thanks so much!
You're welcome @florio. Thank you for the comment!
Good set up, I really like to idea of having the fence on the table if you are pluck the birds.
Thank you @shalomacres! It work well for washing off vegetables too.😊
My brother was 9 and I was 8 when we decided to raise chickens for eggs. We incubated 21 and had a setting hen on 8. We had such plans and were counting eggs, not chickens. Eggs these chickens would produce. 15 out of the incubator hatched. The hen did a better job. 8 for 8. 23 chicks and 9 hens out of the entire lot! Lessons learned at an early age.
Still today, 49 years later, still raising chickens. From my early eaxperence I opt for the setting hen. No more incubators for me.
I love the taste of the free range chicken and the eggs. Never want to go back.
Great post! Thanks!
Nice story @mhm-philippines. I'll never go back either!
Our set up is kinda like yours. The lungs are always the hardest to get out.
I agree. it can be a pain in the butt sometimes. Thank you @homesteadbuilder!👍
Congratulations! This post has been added to our growing directory of Steemit post for the Homesteading/Survival communities. If you haven't done so already, you can claim your badge along with the code to add to your posts to let the world know you have chosen to help others Survive, Thrive and be Prepared! Click here to get the code
Thank you @sotall!!👍
Thank you for not being afraid to write about the topics "the squeamish" would rather not think about. If you would like to include photos some people don't want to see. I will set them up on a page on Sotall and you can link to that page for those that understand they need to learn so they can survive. Feel free to email them to me at [email protected]. I can set up a page so it will not be seen, except through the link on your post and you will retain all rights to your photos. I'm just trying to help those that truly want to learn.
I will keep that in mind @sotall. Thank you for setting up this awesome service for everyone to be able to use!!!😜👍👌
You got a 90.91% upvote from @greengrowth thanks to @hopfarmnc! You too can use @GreenGrowth by sending your post URL in the memo field to the bot. Minimum bid is 0.01.
If you feel this post is spammy or not worthy of @Greengrowth you can contact a moderator in our Discord Channel https://discord.gg/6DhnVTQ.
Thank you @greengrowth!!👍