Lorihadams-- hi guys...been busy!

[lorihadams]

Okay, as promised, here is a pic of the second six broilers in preparation for processing. We don't have a killing cone but as described in the above post here is our mobile processing station (although Chad saw a video of Joel Salatin's set up yesterday and now wants a spinning rack of killing cones ). We use this for deer, we have a pulley to lift them up that attaches to a stretcher bar that goes through the back legs. For the broilers we hang the metal bar across the shelves (we could actually do 2 bars, we have the room) and put one foot on either side of the bar and zip tie the legs together above the bar so that the bird hangs securely. Takes two people to hang them but they don't go anywhere once it's done. Then we bleed them out all at the same time and processing goes really quickly after that. We have a picnic table that we put next to the station and just move the birds to the table where we have water, knives, pots, and a 5 gallon bucket and trash bags for the feathers and scraps. We skinned out all these birds and are freezing them in pieces because that us how we usually eat the meat, we don't do a whole chicken but I think we are going to do some in the next batch because we have "orders" for about 30-50 more chickens from the guys that Chad works with. Crazy!

So, here is a pic of the station with the birds hanging in preparation for slaughter. No blood yet....they are all still alive in this pic.

 

[lorihadams]

Thursday

Our running total for the birds right now is $210. We lost 3 birds, one to smothering and two to predators (they escaped the tractor somehow). We still have 17 birds left to kill but they should be done this week so I don't know how much meat we have in pounds but right now we are at $7.25 per bird. When you consider that a whole rotisserie chicken at our local supermarket will run you $7-9 I figure we are probably breaking even. I don't have a scale so I don't know what everything weighs but we are estimating that each bird is between 5-7 lbs.

It is worth it to us just for the teaching experiences we have had. Last night our neighbor's children came by and both wanted to put on gloves and help! They are in 4th grade and 2nd grade, I think. Maybe 5th and 3rd. Their son kept asking his mom if he could take various parts to show and tell tomorrow! They got to see all the parts of the chicken and we let the two of them butcher one bird a piece. We cut open the craw/gizzard and let them see what was in it (LOTS of green grass, btw) We showed them what each organ was and told them what it did. Then we sent them home with one whole chicken that I had already frozen yesterday morning. Their mom was very pleased! Neither one was skittish or grossed out, just curious and very excited to get to use a knife! Especially their son who is very hyper and doesn't get to do a lot of hands on stuff cause of the attention factor.

It is pouring down rain today so we are hanging out. I have to bake a loaf of bread later. I am going to cull 6 more birds tomorrow morning and freeze the last 6 we did. The kids want to do a deer next! We told them that if either one of us got a deer this weekend they could come and help

We are also talking about going to Polyface Farm in the spring for a visit. Chad is very interested in Salatin's setup and wishes that he could "get up every morning and just go out my back door to go to work". We would love to have a big farm and pasture raise animals and do some sort of camp for kids so that they could come and stay for a week or two and learn how to garden, raise and process their own meat and milk products, and maybe tend bees and make soap.

Ahhhhhh, it's nice to dream isn't it???

 

[Farmfresh]

I posted my final weights and records for this years chickens in my journal last night. My final costs this year were $175.32. It figured out to being $1.47 per pound.

I do like the rack. Looks like you could get a regular assembly line going with that!

If you are going to keep doing this stuff you really need to get a kitchen scale. One that accurately weighs 25 pounds will be good enough. That way you can keep good records and keep costs down as much as possible.

I usually package my birds cut up as well. Then we package them like we eat them, so our last 27 chickens turned into 49 packages of chicken ready for meals!

 

[lorihadams]

To quote Britney Spears....."Oops, I did it again!"

This one is much better, he was chasing a doe right at dusk and I was able to drop him where he stood with a good shot in the neck. Beautiful deer! Chad had a good morning too, he guided a hunt this morning and they saw an estimated 700 birds, really good for this area and they were able to limit out in two hours. His clients were very happy! One brought his 12 yr old daughter and she got her first goose so Chad was very pleased. I'll share a couple of pics, I posted them in the hunting and fishing section too.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

whoot!!!

 

[Farmfresh]

Beautiful deer! You should make up some jerky from this one.

 

[modern_pioneer]

I am happy to see you have some more meat, sweet..... So whatcha gonna do with all this meat?

Can't go around having roast and jerky all the time...

 

[Beekissed]

WOWZA, lori!!!!! WHAT a great big buck!!!! Sooooooo glad my boys can't see this! No...I wish they could so they would get off their rearends and kill something!!!!

My real hunter is in Alabama right now playing with explosives or I would already have some tenderloin on the table.....he would just die that cute little ol' gals like yourself are out their cleaning UP on the hunters!!! :bun :bun

Wish I had my own bow or even a deer rifle.......

 

[dacjohns]

Yay Lori.

 

[lorihadams]

Sunday

What happened to a day of rest???

Got up this morning and sliced up all the meat from the deer into pieces to grind, thawed out some fat from the freezer and sliced it up to grind with it, got it all ground and put in the fridge cause hubby insists on mounting this deer Guess what's taking up ALL the space in my freezer??? I had to put all the meat in packages in the fridge for now and hopefully we will be able to take the deer to the taxidermist tomorrow so I can rearrange my freezer again.

After getting the kitchen cleaned up we sat down for about 5 minutes before the neighborhood boys showed up to slaughter 5 more broilers. Then we did the meat dance all over again......got everything cleaned up and sat down for about 20 minutes before we left to pick up one of the neighbor's boys to go to the family farm one county over and get hubby's climbing tree stand out of the woods and cut tree limbs down along the tractor road so that we could actually get a vehicle into the back side of the property to retrieve a deer instead of having to drag it out by hand. I had a bunch of dead limbs that were hanging in front of my tree stand so we trimmed those up and also scouted a new place to put one of our ladder stands down in the creek bottom. All of this with my 4 yr old whining about how he needed to "get bigger quick" so he could keep up with my husband cause he was walking too fast..... Bless his little heart.....I love that boy! He hung right with us and even used the hand saw to cut up some "trees" of his own. Too cute!

Then took neighbor's son home and got all the animals taken care of and locked down for the night and made a taco salad from some of the deer meat.....yummy!

It was a good day but I am exhausted. Granny is bringing Maddie home tomorrow, Tyler has a dentist appointment, we have to take the deer to the taxidermist, drop off the rental car (had to have the radiator looked at on the truck last week), pull 6 more broilers to slaughter, do some laundry, change the sheets and clean the house cause my MIL is coming for Thanksgiving Wednesday. Gonna be a busy day.....I'm tired already

Oh, and did I forget to mention that a squirrel pooped on me while I was hunting yesterday.....yep, raining turds on my library book.