Three Less...on a Labor Day

Why we chose to process three of the cockerels on Labor Day is beyond me, besides the fact that we did not have all of the items to do the processing, I don't know why I chose Labor day. Being a holiday probably was the biggest reason and we didn't have any other plans.

As far as needed equipment, we knew that we needed something to dunk the birds into before plucking. We thought we still had our turkey fryer from soooo many years ago. After Tom looked for it he vaguely remembered that we donated it for a church sale thinking that we wouldn't ever used it again. So early last week I was pokin' around on craigslist for a turkey fryer and there was a barely used one for $40 - SCORE!

With the turkey fryer purchased, the only other things we needed were knives - sharp ones. So Tom decided on a couple that we have at home and used the honing tool to get a good sharp edge on them. They worked fine, but after having done the processing, we're going to have to revisit the knife situation for future processing days.

We would need a table - so we covered up an old homemade table (formerly used for seed trays) with plastic. Then we took a couple of storage bins to fill with ice and water for rinsing and keeping the birds fresh post plucking/eviscerating.

The first task after getting stuff set up was to gather up the young roosters we wanted to cull from the flock. As I have mentioned in earlier posts we do not need 4 roosters! As the young roosters started maturing more there was more chaos in the chicken run/arena. The boys really were bullies! Also, there was one in particular that I have been wanting to be rid of as he had been coming after me and challenging me during evening chores. It was getting bad enough that I didn't want to really go out there and have to deal with him. We had to get a little tricksey to catch these guys and the first one actually escaped the old brooder (he is our keeper). We were able to grab the others once they let their guard down and started heading out of the chick mobile. We used their old brooder as a waiting room - if you will. By the time we got around to doing the deed they were not as crazy. Here the the "lucky ones..."

The one in the middle was the more aggressive dude.

My hope was to keep the "good" one. Having observed the young boy birds the past couple of months we had him picked out, but we never got the leg bands to tag him. Over the past month or so, his tail feathers started to look like the others and we lost track of which of the dudes was our keeper. In the end I am not sure who we have, but he seems happy and his crow is the least strong of the four, so I'm okay with that. He might be our original Thor - if he wasn't before he is now. As there is no more competition from the others, he will mature into a nice roo.

How the processing went - it wasn't smooth. However, I can say that it was a learning opportunity. We wanted to make sure that these 3 didn't suffer too badly, but in all honesty, the first two were the learning kills. The last one (which was also the undesirable young rooster) actually went well.

This is how the morning went down...

#1 - With this dude we figured out that the cone was a little on the smallish side. Man, Jersey Giants are BIG! Everytime Tom would try to get him in there he would crane his neck in such a way that we couldn't get a hold of his head through the bottom. Once I was able to get to his head and we could stretch his neck out through the bottom it was time to make the cut. Well, things didn't go that well and he ended up not bleeding out very quickly and he was still breathing. So we took him out and had to lay him down on the ground and do another cut. Once we felt confident that he was unconcious we felt pretty bad because the process was drawn out a bit. Then we got him plucked (by hand) and eviscerated him - it wasn't pretty.

#2 - Okay, I decided that I needed to try to do this one. After we got him into the cone I contemplated for a moment where I needed to make the cut and thought it was good...he was bleeding out all right, but at one point he totally popped out of the cone. The only fortunate thing is that he had almost no strength so actually being able to get him was easy. Tom returned and we did the deed and felt a bad for this kill as well.

#3 - Well, with two failed kills we had the motivation to not fail again on our side. Also, this was Mr. I'm-Gonna-Kick-The-Person-Who-Feeds-Me dude, so that helped us ensure this one would be the "clean" kill. Thankfully it was and we both felt relief. I tried my had at the evisceration, but it wasn't going well, so Tom essentially did all three of the birds.

Since the weekend I searched for chicken processing on the YouTubes and found a really good one by Weed 'em and Reap go HERE if you want to check it out.

How are we feeling about doing this? Personally, I was determined. After following many homesteaders on YouTube and other farmers I have decided that in order to make sure that what we are eating is good for us, we need to grow it ourselves. This makes sense to me and I wish that we had started doing this a long time ago. Also, I come from a home where there were chickens on the property (not just a few) and culling the flock was done on occasion. So it wasn't anything that was terribly freaky. It has taken Tom a few days more to work through what has happened, the mistakes that we made and the things we need to do differently.

Since I really didn't feel terrible I am starting to wonder if I'm more heartless than I ever imagined...

In the end, there were two things that made this first processing difficult. The Jersey's are: 1. A large breed and 2. They were almost 20 weeks old. Cornish Cross are processed at 8 weeks and are a more standard size bird, as they are the bird that you'll find in the meat case at most markets. A mature Jersey Rooster can get up to 15 pounds and I don't think that they were far off of that weight. Even at 8 weeks we still weren't quite sure which of the roos we wanted to make sure to keep. It took some time to really figure out the personalities of the 4 that were left (#5 was eaten by something).

So, we will explore other breeds specifically for meat birds - that will be a future post.

What will we do different next time?

The number one thing would be get better knives that we can just dedicate to chicken processing. We used knives that were a mish-mash of items from the kitchen and a couple that we had used in the garden. Earlier this week I did a little research and found that others had gotten a set of poultry processing knives from a place called Cornerstone Farm Ventures:

Go HERE to check out the set

Our goal for a future chicken harvest is to raise more meat birds which will probably require more of a set up as pictured below. We can equipment from the local Conservation District. Let me tell you this is a sweet deal for $70 (which includes a $50 refundable cleaning deposit). This set up has everything that we will need to process more than three birds! Check it out...

What an AWESOME set up!
(Fake chickens not included)

The last thing that I can think of would be extra people. More hands would make for a quick processing. The three that we did took most of the morning and we did alright. I know that this will be the challenging part. Even if we were to offer a chicken to those who come and help, I'm not sure that would be alluring enough. Not many of our friends that I can think of would be remotely interested. We might have to call on friends who hunt to help with the next round of chickens.

I get it, the idea of taking the life of a happy, healthy bird is not a popular one. It has been said on Abundant Permaculture "Every day something must die so that you can live."  

Seriously, I could go on and on...I feel so strongly about being responsible about our food and how we grow the veggies (no chemicals) and how we would raise the chickens (on pasture). Why oh why wouldn't other people consider that too?

Grow.

Your.

Food.