Spring 2020 Freedom Ranger project

13 of the 15 chickens bagged up and ready for the freezer

On June 19th, we started the process of graduting the meaties to Freezer Camp. Since there were only 15 we weren't expecting this to last a terribly long time. Especially since we have a neighbor/friend who has joined us for each of our butchering days.

This year's batch went from 30 to 15 due to a brooder fire. Then we figured out that we didn't count correctly and there was one more. However one of the meaties didn't grow nearly as much and actually appeared to be about half the size of all the other monsters. She may weigh two pounds where as the others all dressed out at anywhere from three to almost five pounds. 

As I posted a couple of weeks ago we got ourselves a Yardbird Chicken Plucker - this is a game changer!

This plucker easily accommodates two chickens

Short story - we were not able to reserve the Poultry Processing kit for this particular weekend. Which is kinda funny, because the original date was the previous week and there would be NO ONE to help check the kit out. I think since then COVID might have changed things anyway. 

In addition to the plucker we would need a vessel large enough to dunk a couple of chickens into. Using the big pot that came with the turkey fryer set up would work, but we wouldn't be able to dunk two at once. I know, minor detail - Whatever. To solve that problem I did some research and then found this behemoth:

This stockpot is 80 quarts! Everything else looks miniature

Thank you very much Amazon. This thing worked great AND the water was up to temperature in about an hour and twenty minutes. This is actually a pot for crab boils and comes with a basket that you put all the crab and other goodies into and lower into the pot. We used that for cooking the entrails (which we let the pigs have later). 

There was only one Restraining Cone, so Tom picked up one more at Wilco a couple of days before processing day.

We set up the saw horses and a piece of plywood covered with thick plastic for our evisceration station. 

Adding the plucker and the giant pot to our processing kit gives us so much flexibility. We don't have to calculate the weeks from picking up the chicks to processing day - which I mess up anyway. In the future we can just plan to pick the chicks up and then go from there. We can do two batches of chickens a year if we want and invite others to join us in the harvest. The minimum order at Jenks is 25 so there would be plenty of chickens to go around if we even had a couple of extra people coming to learn and get their hands dirty. 

There will be a second batch this year and that batch will begin on July 7th. This next batch of birds will be what is called the FryPan special. These are a heavy breed cockerel and will take 16-18 weeks to get to 6 or 7 pounds. I would be happy with a 5 pound chicken as I am having a hard time finding bags big enough for a five pound bird. We'll see how this goes. It will be a fun next project!

This little girl was just too little and it made more sense to keep her as a layer just like Cleo from the first batch a couple of years ago. I wanted to give her a name that kind of went along with her breed with is Freedom Ranger - so I said Liberty! Which was okay, but Libby is much better. After spending most of the day by herself yesterday she got introduced to the main flock earlier today. No one thought twice about her presence, she just blends right in.

Farm Life is the Best Life when you add meat to the freezer!