Butchering Day

Well, the first day of butchering is finished. It was a very long 8a.m. to 10p.m. day, and we killed and butchered 40+ chickens. We still have 18 more chickens to do, but we have some friends who could not be with us for the first day, who want to learn how to do it, so a second day will be scheduled.

This is how we started, after all the setting up, the girls would bring Jeff a couple chickens. In the back of the house they were, killed, scalded, and plucked. Then they were brought into the house for cleaning. After cleaning they went into ice to cool, and in the evening they were packaged for freezing. Our production line worked well, but at the end of the day, Jeff and I were very tired.

Robert is standing ready at the killing station. Although, Jeff did all the killing himself, He will assure you it is not fun.

Here is the chicken plucker. It was worth every penny. We could put two chickens in, and after 20-30 seconds almost all feathers were gone from the chickens.

By the end of the day, it took about ten minutes to get from live chicken, to clean ready for cooling.

Is it worth all the time and effort? I'm not sure yet. We gave several away, and have only cooked one, which was, ok. When we have cooked several, and the reviews of the giveaways come in, then we we know if we will do this again. It is, for sure, a day will never forget.

Recent Farm Activities

Robert, burning old, diseased bee frames. Garden not even tilled at this point.

Six new Pekin ducks.
Mix of meat and egg chickens, four weeks old.

Spring time is a busy time on the farm. In addition to two baby goats and two dozen new egg chickens, we decided to give raising meat chickens a try. A meat chicken is a cross bred chicken, whose sole purpose is to grow meat on its body, and then die. They have a different look and temperament than an egg chickens. They grow so fast and so big that they don't move around as much as others, and they don't feather out the same. If you feed them to much or stress them in some way they will have heart failure, so every morning you first check to see if you have any dead chickens. Also, if they grow to fast, their legs will not develop quickly enough and their bodies will be to heavy for the legs to carry and they will no longer be able to walk. We've only had one like this.

We have only a few more days with our meat birds before several friends come to help with butchering. We did buy a plucker to spare us from the task of plucking 60 some chickens, but it will be a busy day none the less. I'll give an up date on how that went.

As for the remainder of our day, after chickens are tended, we have been finishing school work, putting in the garden, and cleaning winter debris from pastures. Yes we are fairly busy in the spring and most of the summer, yes the fall can be busy, and winter brings it's own set of chores, but what else could we be doing with our time? The mall, computer games, or TV? I'll take the farm any day.