We thought we were going to take our huge meat birds up north to an Amish man to butcher. But when we went up to make the arrangements, he told us that he needed 50 birds to make it worth his while and that we may have to wait a couple of weeks until enough people came up with birds for him. Well, we couldn't wait two weeks. We had two die on us last week and I think that they were so fat that they broke their own legs and couldn't reach the waterer.
So a very very very good friend said that he would help us butcher them. So we took him up on his extremely kind offer. He came to our house looking like this.
Our birds were so big and heavy that Nathan couldn't hold them or even pick them up to move them over to the execution area. Our friend's son had to hold them.
The first bird about to die. And yes, it would have run around without its head if we hadn't held it down. Very weird.
Our first taste of plucking feathers. What a difficult job! And what a lot of feathers these birds have! It took us a long time to pluck them. In all, it was about 30 minutes per bird to go from live bird to freezer.
I had the inside job of picking off the pin feathers and all the ends of feathers that the outside folks missed. I now wonder why skinned chicken in the grocery store is more expensive. It is a lot harder to leave the skin on these birds and pluck them than it would be if we skinned the birds. The finished product. They do look like they will make lovely roasts. And they were huge! The biggest one we did last night was 11 pounds, 8 oz. The smallest was 9 pounds, 11 oz. As our friend said, they look like turkeys.
So since it took 30 minutes per bird, we didn't get them all done. In fact, we only got 6 done last night. Our dear dear friends are now coming over tomorrow night to help us finish up. But this time, I think we'll only pluck two more and then skin the other 8. I think we owe our friends big time.
4 comments:
Fascinating work. I remember as a child once watching a lady in Puerto Rico butcher and prepare a chicken to cook for our dinner. What else did you do besides pluck the feathers? I seem to recall she removed certain parts from the inside, while keeping others that she deemed "tasty."
Betsy
I didn't do much except do the final check for feathers that hadn't been picked off. The guys did all the nasty gutting for us.
We don't save the gizzards and other parts. We don't like them and though I know that you can make good stock out of the necks and legs, I didn't want to take valuable freezer space for them. Plus I didn't want to make chicken broth when it is 95 outside. These chickens were big enough that I will do well just get them all inside my freezer!
when you say "dear dear friend," i think what you really mean is, "dear dear dear DEAR DEAR friend."
that's some kind of friend all right.
You are definitely right about that!
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