The meat birds are 7 weeks old and we've started planning butchering day. Papa and I think these are the nicest birds we have ever had!! They are beautiful!! LOL. Well sort of. No really they are. They are healthy, active, large breasted, clean and alert. They have been out on pasture for the last 3 weeks. Moved to a new spot daily and are great grazers!! They love being moved and rush out and gobble up the new grass. They chase bugs and scratch at the earth and are generally happy little critters. So far the loss count is about 14 out of 218. Not super wonderful but not bad either considering they are all cockerals. (which grow faster and often have worse heart problems because of their fast growth.) They are still getting milk daily and gorge themselves on it. Lately the milk has just been offered in rubber maid 4 inch tubs, instead of being mixed as wet feed as several were hogging the wet feed and getting it all every day. I called these my 'milk babies' and they would follow me around and beg for milk every time I went in the pen. Now more of the birds are getting milk even though we are still giving them the same amount. Butchering day will be a bit of a turning point here this year as the cow is dry and the meat birds will be gone and all we'll have left is the pigs, and layers. It's perfect timing as my side of the family's "Camp out" also called the "Fehr Family Rain Out" is coming up in July and we'll be able to feed everyone and leave for the weekend without worrying about getting some one to feed and tend all the meat birds or milk the cow. How sweet will that be!!
Anyway back to butchering day. We're going to try and get as many as possible done in one day and what ever is left the next day. We also bought 6 'clean' garbage cans, I wrote CLEAN on them, for cooling tanks so we now should be able to fit most if not all of the birds in cooling tanks. This has been a space problem for several years and limits us to how many birds we could do in one day. We wanted to do 100 one day and 100 the next but everyone can only come the one day so we are going to try and get most done that day!! So now I got to make my 'to do before butchering list" and work to get it done before everyone shows up. Butchering around here is a bit different every year. One year we had the use of a 6 bird tub plucker which was lovely and a 6 bird rotating scalder.. also lovely. But the last 2 years we've been using a old hooded chicken plucker, borrowed from a friend, and a maul gropen or a large round tub that you put a tiger torch under to heat the water for a scalder. One year we scalded in the maul gropen and plucked totally by hand. I sat and plucked and cleaned and Papa did everything else. So all in all a plucker AND a scalder is really easy. Really it is. I don't mind chicken butchering days so long as we don't plan for more then we can handle. This year we have had 6 couples offer to help and so far 3 are for sure coming. One couple has a teenage son who loves to be our catcher!! With him there will be 9 adults. :) That is a big help. Last year J helped and loved it. I'm sure he'll want to help again this year. Maybe he'll be a chicken catcher 'helper' this year. Once we get everything set up and working the day flows by pretty smoothly. Papa and I have been butchering chickens together for years and have a pretty good system worked out. The hardest part of the whole process is trying to get the helpers to fit into our system. But I think we'll find that easier this year as we've butchered with some of these people a few years in a row. Several of the couples, both or just one of them, have NOT ever butchered chickens before. Or have not done it in 15 or more years. Thankfully they all are willing and able to take directions. One couple wants to help butcher just so that they can say they have done it. That's fine with us!! They are a younger couple and she is very interested in how we raise our birds and would like to raise her own some day. The T family has their own birds this year and we are planing on trading with them. They'll help us and we'll help them. We'll all use the same equipment!
Part of my 'to do' list is done. I sorted through and cleaned out the 3 freezers and am feeding some of the old (2006, 07, there was NO 08:) stuff to the pigs. Boy do they love that. I also rendered lard yesterday in the 'mual gropen' or big cook pot outside. I got 39 quarts of lard and 8 of cracklings!! A good days work!! The T family is bringing lunch for butchering day and I still have some pies left over from Sunday so all I have to figure out is supper. I think I'll do a roast on the BBQ and potatoes and a salad. And if I can hide some eggs from Papa maybe I'll be able to make some chocolate chip cookies. He has a habit of using every egg in the house when ever he cooks. But I do love it when he cooks.
The kids are all excited about butchering day too. J and L are on count down. Counting down how many sleeps til butchering day. They are also looking forward to the T's coming over for the day. The 7 of them have a blast!!
Anyway I'll let you know how it went and I'll try and post some pictures later. We are still having Internet problems and it has slowed me down some.
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