Bee's Guest House

[Farmfresh]

They were bigger than most of MY meaties. I start processing them when they achieve 4 to 5 pounds live weight. I also cut mine up as I clean them, so unless I have specifically raised them as a roaster they are all in pieces when I am finished.

Your end product is EXTREMELY nice looking. You should be proud.

Things non-chicken people should take note of:

Nice skin color through out the whole carcass - results of plenty of sunshine.

Good bone - plenty of exercise

HEALTHY skin on the breast meat - Factory farmed chickens often have giant breast blisters as a result of sleeping in ammonia laden, poo coated litter. Interesting how "Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast" is a premium meat item that was developed to allow the removal of bruised, blistered breast skin and the trimming away of the often green meat that results from a breast blister.

Also notice that the keel bone (which is the bone that passes through the middle of the breast) is straight and the whole skeleton of the birds is straight. Commercially raised chicken often sport contorted skeletons. Since you buy them cut up in a package you don't notice that.

I wish you also had a picture of the carcass rolled over. I am sure you would see nice normal hocks (the end of the drumstick). Many in the store are either missing their hocks or are reddened from hock burns again the result of living in filth. Also the joints of commercially raised birds are often enlarged and swollen.

Plus I will wager that the same water that was used to cool them and rinse them "clean" was NOT used to also rinse a thousand other birds.

If people only took the time to KNOW what goes on they would never consume commercially processed meats again.

Again hats off to you Bee on a job well done!

 

[Beekissed]

Thank you, Farm!!! That makes me feel better...I was kind of wondering how mine measured up to ones raised traditionally.

I will take pics of the whole carcass when we finish up tomorrow and I will also do a comparison pic of one of the birds next to one of my retired layers...should be quite revealing as to the difference in muscling and bone structure when compared to a dual purpose breed.

These had no callouses or rubbed off areas on their bodies and they were all fully feathered with only a little breakage of feathers on the breast.

There were several that had prettier skin than the ones I show in the pic....their skin was just golden and pink! I was very impressed and should have taken their pics instead.

We just layered them in an ice chest with ice layers until we could take them inside and clean them at the sink. No sitting around in water at all, really. I was amazed at the extreme tenderness of the meat and joints on these birds and had to keep reminding myself that they were only a little under 3 mo. old and shouldn't even resemble my old layers.

Tomorrow I plan to do some pics of basic chicken anatomy inside the body cavity and some pics of strategic knife cuts to release certain areas to insure a cleaner processing~around the anus, the gallbladder, the crop/craw.

Here are some more pics of our setup on the cheep....er..cheap!

My bleach jug killing cones mounted on my apple tree:

A closer shot of the area of initial cut...will do a better one for the birds tomorrow so folks can see how easy it is to do:

Scalded and peeled feet for making good chicken stock...no, we aren't going to eat them but the dogs definitely will! You would not believe how creepy it was to peel the skin and have the outer layer toenails slide right off the inner nail core....completely clean and tender feet! No icks from walking in their own poo.

A lady had just given me this brazier the day before...so we loaded it up with charcoal, slipped Mom's copper kettle down in the top of the stove and scalded our birds in it! The charcoal kept the water hot for the entire time we were scalding and plucking...it was the best idea we had had thus far.

Mom and I were amazed at how easy these birds were to pluck and clean up...one can just scrape a knife blade down the skin and the pin feathers pop out~sort of like scaling a fish but easier!

Everything on these birds was so tender that they were easy to dismember. We've been killing chickens, turkeys, and ducks since I was 11 years old and these were the easiest ones yet and yielded the most meat, the prettiest carcasses and had virtually NO smell...even after scalding...which is one of my top ten worst smells~ wet chicken.

 

[Farmfresh]

I LOVE your scalding kettle! How nice is that!

I scald my birds inside on the stove. We learned some time back that adding a few drops of citrus dish soap after the water has come up to temp makes the whole process smell better and the soap seems to allow the feathers to wet through quicker making the time in the scald water shorter.

Another thing I failed to ask you about was the innards. Did you find the hearts of a normal size? The majority of my birds have normal hearts, but occasionally I will find one with a BIG heart. When they grow too fast it damages their heart and those big hearted birds are the ones likely to keel over and die. It is my understanding that enlarged hearts are quite the norm in a commercially raised bird.

Glad also to see you making use of those feet for dog food. What a good idea.

 

[Beekissed]

No diseased hearts or livers that I could tell, Farm. The livers were not as healthy as I would like to see but I've seen much worse on sale in the grocery store.

Everything was proportionate to the size of the bird...there were no skin lesions, bruising(except mild bruising left by the zip ties used to secure the legs) or tears in the skin and no bone deformities.

I had read somewhere that chicken feet and legs makes the best chicken stock...makes it into a jelly. So the dogs won't get them until I have cooked them down for my stock.

These were the prettiest birds I've ever processed...the meat was pink, the skin was pink and gold, the legs were buttery yellow and the feathers were mostly clean and pretty.

All organs, necks, meat scraps, spare fat, soft bones and cartilage are also being saved for dog food preparation, as will the bones and skin left over from making chicken soup.

I know folks don't recommend feeding dogs chicken bones but I always have and my dogs seem to have no problem with them. The only things that went to waste on these birds were the wing tips, tails(and I'm rethinking that one, as they are a great source of fat for the dogs and so I will be saving the ones from the birds tomorrow), heads, feathers and intestines.

Everything else is dog food and you would not believe just how much meat for consumption and dog food we yielded from just these first 12 birds!

 

[Farmfresh]

Back in the day when I had a Siberian Husky those heads never went to waste either. I would break the neck, cut the head off with shears and drop them into a 5 gallon bucket to flop. The dog was inside for this part of the procedure.

When I went out and retrieved the chicken to scald and pluck the dog went out. When I came back out to kill the next chicken the dog went back inside, but by then my bucket was shiny clean and the head had just somehow disappeared!

It is SO nice to have good clean healthy meat when your project is done.

Are you planning on canning most of it or are you freezing some?

 

[Woodland Woman]

Thank you so much for posting these pictures and your experience processing your meaties. I have always wanted to try doing it myself but it is one of those things where you need to see someone do it first. Unfortunately I just don't know anyone who does it. So I am really looking forward to seeing the rest of your pictures.

 

[Beekissed]

I am freezing the breasts as whole/skinless and boneless, freezing some of the birds whole for roasting, the thighs will be frozen for baking, and the legs, backs, misc. parts will be canned as soup or chicken pot pie filler.

The retired layers will more than likely be removed of their breasts and the rest will contribute towards soup and pie filler. Their breasts will probably be diced and pre-cooked and seasoned for stir fryand then frozen in convenient sized portions.

I feel so wealthy right now, you would not believe! Mom says we should buy another small freezer, as I think I have the smallest size one can buy.

When we get done we will have processed over 100 lbs of meat...free ranged, organically raised. We could never afford to buy meat of this quality. Now I see why folks raise these poor, unfortunate birds.... :/

 

[Farmfresh]

There IS something to be said about the breeding. You would NEVER get this much meat from a dual purpose bird. That is why I choose to raise the CornishX most of the time (although I do switch to the slower growing variety occasionally). I believe that proper husbandry can still give even these genetic freaks a decent life, while providing me with better meat. It is all a game of pluses and minuses.

 

[lorihadams]

I agree, we thought they were going to be nightmares but when raised on grass with plenty of room to move around and yes, forage for grass/bugs they weren't that bad. Yes, the poo is stinky but when you have 30 birds in one place it can get a little stinky right? We did ours in a tractor and moved it every day and it wasn't that bad. We would definitely do it again but we did ours in the fall so we didn't have to deal with heat issues. We got ours in September and processed the week of Thanksgiving. Didn't lose a single bird to heat issues.

 

[Beekissed]

Thank you so much for posting these pictures and your experience processing your meaties. I have always wanted to try doing it myself but it is one of those things where you need to see someone do it first. Unfortunately I just don't know anyone who does it. So I am really looking forward to seeing the rest of your pictures.

Hey! Long time no see! I have many pics of the internal organs and such to download when I have the time. I took them to include in my book as I figured folks would like to know what they are looking at when they get in there.

Woodland, if you would like to read about the whole experience, I have a thread on BYC about letting my broody raise my meaties where I have documented the experience. I will be finishing that saga as soon as I download these last pics there and describe each one.

Lori, if I ever do this again, it will be in the fall also. These birds seem to thrive on cool weather.