Last Monday was butchering day. The first step started the day before. Instead of giving the chickens their usual afternoon feed and water, they are only given water. Essentially they are on a clear liquid diet for the 12 hours before butchering. This insures that there is little or no food in their digestive tract. That will make an easier and cleaner job the next day. The next morning they are brought to the area where we will kill and butcher them. Because they sleep in the mobile coop, this job is very easy and does not involve chasing or catching or stressing the chickens. Heidi drove the tractor to the field, hooked up the mobile coop, and towed them back. It's a really simple way to "round up" 124 chickens.
From the other side of the coop you see can the chickens all at the anxious to get out. It is a simple matter to open the door and take one out at a time to butcher. One feature of the mobile coop that you can not see from the picture is that the floor boards are spaced so that much of the manure falls out. This means that the coop doesn't need constant cleaning. The manure that falls fertilizes the cow pasture.
NOTE: I'm wondering if this chicken butchering series is going to bother anyone. I plan to indicate in the title what will be covered and have some text before the pictures so people have a chance to leave if they don't want to look at the pictures. What does everyone think? I really don't want to upset upset someone who is unprepared. For those of you who are really interested in the process, another blogger has created a really great video clip of the process which you can see here.
Wow! That is quite the mobile home!
ReplyDeletePlease keep posting! We are just about to "process" a couple of our surplus roosters this week. woohoo! I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteK
You guys always get chicks in the spring and butcher in the fall, don't you? The mobile coop is attractive for a lot of reasons but would be too cold for us in winter. You don't have to mess with egg boxes either, do you? Still, I might ponder this same idea with modifications. It's so healthy to have chickens move about. Makes parasites and diseases less of an issue. You're dead on about withholding food. We've only butchered a very few so far. Once we neglected to withhold food and gosh that was a stinky ordeal!
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI'm a young businessman from India. I've my small firm. I've recruited few needy women for processing chickens. The problem is that they don't want to kill chickens but agreed to make peices and other processing jobs. As I have a small firm so I cann't afford to recruit a few one to kill chickens. Hence, I'm requesting Kristianna,Leslie and Urban Agriana to send me few small clips so that I can make them understand that women also can kill chickens. Otherwise, I've to discharge them from their jobs. Pls help those poor women and send me clips. My mail id is- sidhu167@hotmail.com. Thanx.
I have tried just withholding the food and that is pretty standard practice. I wonder if replacing theur water with some really cheep beer would make the meat better and also make them far less stressed when the magic time comes.
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