Killing Time

I killed 36 more chickens this week. all our meat chickens. I'll have 19 turkey's to do in a couple of months.

I don't know if 36 sounds like a lot of a little to you but I found it to be a real chore and I didn't even like those birds. All they did was eat, grow, poop and sit. They were a chore to feed and water and a chore to kill, a chore to pluck and a chore to eviscerate. They do taste good and we might even break even on the costs and have a few left over to eat ourselves for "free" but there wasn't much "fun" to them. I think next year we might try another breed just to increase the entertainment value of the actual raising process. Of course that might depend on what it's like to kill the turkeys - who are a highly entertaining bunch.

It took three days to kill and process the birds, 8 the first day, 10 the second then a day off and with some help from the Boss' Dad we did the last 18 in one day. The real time consuming part is the plucking so I ordered a feather plucking drill attachment. For real, here's the link:

http://stores.powerplucker.com/StoreFront.bok

I'll let you know how that works out after the turkeys are done.

I'll spare you any photos of the processing and just give you a quick summary. The killing is the most tiring and unpleasant part. I think that it's because there is a lot of stress leading up to the killing stroke as you really don't want to mess up and try to give every animal as quick and clean a death as possible. Plucking is not bad just tedious and time consuming, and I'm not very good at it (fingers too big). Evisceration is what you expect but stinkier and it takes practice, practice, practice to become efficient at it. Eating is, well you probably already know that part.