When Will We Process...

Batch #3 of Meaties? The date that I had on the calendar is June 13.

Hmmmmm...

For some reason, this year's meaties are on the smaller side. I'm wondering if the Brooder fire may have made a difference in their lack of growth or if I miscalculated processing dates. 

Anything is possible.

So, just to be safe I decided to take this coming Friday off just in case we do decide to do the harvest. I also decided to go ahead and take vacation time next week. Looks like I'll be working on getting the garden planted then...but that's a different task altogether!

When we had picked up the chicks I tried to get the date that we wanted the Poultry Kit on the calendar with the Clark Conservation District. I actually received the email from one of the ladies in the office and as soon as I read it I responded with the date that we were looking at and then waited. Several days went by and pretty soon I was back at work (I had been on vacation then). Then I decided to resend my reply and see if anyone was going to answer. Well the person that responded back to me informed me that the kit would not be available the weekend I had requested and that there were no other weekends available in June. 

OH FINE. 

So now what? After a couple of emails we Tom and I decided that maybe this was the impetus to actually get our own chicken plucker. We each searched for pluckers that might be for sale on Craigslist. Nothing. Then we started to research different pluckers available to buy. There is the Featherman which is what we are used to and there is the Yardbird which I had already looked at months ago. Maybe I was just preparing myself for this situation. Tom did some research, read reviews on Amazon and then said that we should go for it. The question was where would we purchase it from? Amazon? Tractor Supply? Somewhere else? In the end Tom decided to order thru Tractor Supply. It took a couple of weeks for the box to show up at the store, but it did so off we went! It was great because we got to get away from Vancouver for a little while AND new pokemon opportunities!

Before too long we were back at home and BAM - chicken plucker!

We had an opportunity to try this out on a laying hen that had injured itself and even in our chicken ICU was not getting better. If we were to leave her out in the chicken run she would have been pecked to death and there was evidence that the hens were picking at her. However, being isolated didn't really help either. She wasn't eating or anything so the kindest thing we felt was to go ahead and put her out of her misery. It sounds uncaring, but I really wanted to try out the plucker.

It worked like a charm!

Now, when will we process the 15 meaties out in the field?

Stay tuned - an update will be coming.