please tell me about your proccessing

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

i am interested in your small scale on farm proccessing
i have done a dozen at a time by hand before this makes for slow work

what have you done to make it better , i admit i hope to shamlesly borrow your ideas to spped up my line and save myself fristration.

what do you use for a scalder how many birds at a time can you do
what is your per bird time aproximatly
what do you use for a plucker
do you use shackls or a table for eviseration
what do you use for a chill tank
where do you get your bags


My family and a freinds family went in on a run of 100 broilers together
come kill day , i expect to have 4 adults 1-2 teens to run my line
i want to have 4 cones a scald capacity for 2 birds a minute , a wiz bang plucker and 2 eviseration stations

i am thinking a catcher / killer for 2 workers , a scalder , a plucker who keeps things moving down the line when not plucking , and 2 eviserators

and ice i am freezing all the ice i can hope to have several hundered pounds ready for the chill tanks

[chickenista]

http://thehennery.blogspot.com/search/label/butchering

This is how I do it.
I have started skinning lately for personal use and that is not bad either. It is great for piecing it out too.

[mygoat]

I just use a traffic cone, cut shorter, suspended upside down in a barrel for a killing cone. The heads are cut off quickly with a very sharp knife. We keep a couple extra knives and a knife sharpener on hand. We have to use a serrated knife for the ducks that we do. For scalding we have a 150.00 a turkey frier which we also use for cooking and I used to use as a pasteurizer when I raised diary goats. My dad made a homemade chicken plucker by hand about 15 years ago now, still works great. Looks like that sheet pvc, a large section of PVC pipe with rubber chicken plucker fingers, and an old motor we had around. It works great! We even did 150+ chickens in one day with it once. It was pretty cheap and easy to do, he says. Then, we just eviscerate by hand on a table, it really doesn't take long per chicken at all once you get going.

Here are some pictures after we butchered 7 ducks last weekend:






Feeding scraps to the dogs (and cats! ) That's me with the goofy hair! I have short bangs so I have to put it up kinda funky to keep it from falling into my face.

[majik]

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm wondering if anyone has any links or tips for very small scale turkey butchering (I'll have 4 to do)?

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

Originally Posted by majik

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm wondering if anyone has any links or tips for very small scale turkey butchering (I'll have 4 to do)?

our chickens end up almost the size of small turkeys ,with just 4 , i see hand plucking in your future it realy isn't bad especialy for 4 , for hand plucking i found a 2x4 between 2 posts about the hight of your forhead with a few nails in the top of it. i would kill scald and wire the feet to the nails then pluck with a large garbage can bellow then i would hose it of and get what i had missed

turkey may need to scald a bit longer , use the pulling the largest wing feather test, to know when ready

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

mygoat

i like the barrel to contain the blood , not a great working height but good containment

how fast is your plucker is it 6 inch pvc mounted on a shaaft with a dozen or so fingers

[mygoat]

The cone idea works really well. We do have to bend down to cut off the head, but that's not a big problem. The main reason we made that barrel is because every so often you'd get a chicken that would just end up splattering things from amazing distances!

The plucker has more than 12 fingers I think, they're in rows of 3, I don't know the diameter of the pvc in the middle. But yes, it's on a shaft with a belt/motor on the outside.

[Beulah Gardens]

Originally Posted by majik

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm wondering if anyone has any links or tips for very small scale turkey butchering (I'll have 4 to do)?

A turkey holds his heat better than a chicken, we dry pluck w/out scalding at all~ smells better. As soon as neck is cut begin to pluck the large wing feathers because the wings cool faster then move onto the legs and on up the body. I can pluck an entire bird before it cools and begins to hold feathers. and I'm slow ~just ask my boys.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

i just made a cone , i found some galvanized sheet metal at the re-store , tell me about blood every were my old kill method for when we would do a dozen broilers was to get them by the legs and in 1 motion swing the bird and as it flopped against the side of the stump i would slide the blade of my sharp machete across the neck then still almost with the same swing give it a toss this method was developed from two sources

my grandpa who had told me just use the hatchet ,that is what he did , and they owned a hatcher when he was a boy , it was his job to catch and kill all the birds they were proccessing for meat and a book i had read about some of the jewish settlers to a valley in palistine pre isreal , there was a very detailed explanation about how the grandfather would hold a chicken in his left hand by the legs and with one mothing flop it on the choping block and take its head with a skilled swing of the hatchet then just as fast toss it over his shoulder and let it run around

i found thru my own experience that a slice not severing the spinal cord made for much less flapping my theory is that when you sever the spinal cord there is a reflex reaction sendingt he bird or any thing for that matter into convultions (deer do basicaly the same thing when neck/spine or head shot) where if things just pump out the blood like a chicken with only the artery cut there are less convultions as much of the blood needed by the muscle to contract rapidly is already drained.

i realize that my previos method was not particularily well reasearched but it worked while being messy

i later read more indepth about the subject and under stand that the ideal cuts just gets the arteries and does not sever the wind pipe for sanitary reasons

[Sanza]

When we'd do a couple hundred chickens a day we would have 1 to kill, scald and use the plucker, 2 to pluck the pin feathers and ones the plucker missed and cut off the feet and singe them, then 2 to eviscerate and 1 or 2 to wash the carcass' in hot water and then into the cold water. It was all assembly line and works very well.
The killing is done using the hatchet method, the rest is done on tables with pails for garbage underneath, the washing is done in tubs, laundry sinks are great. Cold bath is in an old portable galvanized steel bathtub.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

Sanza thank you , if i could further pick your brain

your hot water wash , what do you use for hot water is it a tub of hot water or constant running hot water from a sink

do you run a hose out from the hot water heater in the house or another building?


we have 3 laundry tubs for washing and cold bath and several halfed 55 gallon drums for chill tanks an i am making lots of ice the goal is that out storage freezers be full up with ice at the start of kill day.

[judehamilton]

We use one big cooler full of hot scalding water (keeping another pot on the stove all the time at the ready if things start to cool), and however many more coolers of ice as necessary for the post-plucking/eviscerating. If we run out of coolers, we fill the bathtub with ice and cool the carcasses in there.

[Sanza]

Yes, it's a tub of hot water, more added by the pail when necessary and changed completely after a few dozen chickens or so. A tsp or so of laundry detergent is added to the water and once they are washed and cleaned completely they are put into a cold rinse and then put into the cold bath for the final cool down. It's a good idea to have sheets to cover them from flies, and up here the smell of the chickens are a wasp and hornet magnet so be prepared for them too. If you can run a hose that saves on carrying hot water but to run it constantly isn't necessary and would be costly.
It sounds like you have a good setup there.

[Sanza]

Ooops, I just reread your origional post....
For scalding we had a huge barrel of water that was set over top of a fire, with more wood added just to keep the water hot.
For the amount of people you have I would say to butcher 5 birds at a time so that they don't cool off too much and stiffen up. Once those 5 are scalded and plucked and are off down the line then get and butcher 5 more....
We use a propane torch to singe them, and it does take a little more time to completely pluck all the feathers if the chickens have a lot of pin feathers - I would say for a inexperienced group that it would take 20 minutes or so for the chicken to get to the cool rinse.

[Spinner]

I haven't done large scale butchering for many years, but this is what I remember from "way back when"...

We first caught a group of chickens, tied their legs so they would be ready to pick up immediately when the time was right. We sent about 300 birds to freezer camp every Fall.

There were 7 of us. Dad would wring their necks, when they stopped bouncing around the yard, the 2 youngest kids would carry them to mom who scalded them. Sis and me were the plucker/eviscerating team. Our "table" was a piece of wood on a pair of saw horses, covered with freezer paper. The paper could be washed off by pouring a bucket of hot water over it every now and then. We each had a "slop" bucket by our side. Every now and then either dad or bro would haul the bucket out and empty it to the hogs.

My older brother did plucking but he didn't do eviscerating, plucking took the longest as it was done by hand, so we needed extra help with that part.

Once we had them plucked and gutted, we would put them in a clean bucket of cold water. Mom carried them inside to singe them over the fire of her propane kitchen stove and drop them into a tub of ice water for fast cool-out. When the tub got near full, us females would bag the cold ones (while the the guys cleaned up outside for the next wave) We got all the air out of the bags by dipping the bag in the water almost up to the top. Twist and tie while in the water to prevent air from getting in the bag. We handed the sealed bags to little bro & sis who carried them to mom who put them in the coldest part of the freezer. Today I would recommend using a vacuum sealer or canning them.

The water for scalding was kept hot enough to steam, but not boiling. Boiling water will start cooking the bird and you don't want that. We used a 55 gallon barrel that was cut down, set over hot coals. The water was brought to a boil in pans in the kitchen then dumped into the barrel. (Today I turn the hot water heater up on high and fill my much smaller barrel with a water hose from the heater.)

I sure wish we'd have had a whiz bang plucker back then, but would have been happy with one of the home made drill pluckers (which I intend to make this winter!)

Once you get started, it won't take long to find out where you need to move people to keep the line running smoothly. You'll usually have at least 1 or 2 people who are "wanderers" because they will be needed in different areas at different times. They should be available to jump in wherever they are needed.

Don't be surprised to find eggs inside the chickens. Some will be soft shells, some will be about ready to be laid, others will be tiny clusters of eggs.

If you plan to keep the hearts, gizzards, & livers, then you'll want a bowl of ice water on the table for them. They will cool out fast and can be cleaned and bagged quickly. The heart and liver is easy, but the gizzards will have to be cut in half, very carefully, and the grit-bag inside removed.

I hope this helps give you some ideas. I know we did it a very old fashion way, but the basic principal is still the same.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

that helps a lot , i like the idea of putting the bags down in water to get the air out , i had heard of making a vacume tube out of some hose or pvc back to a vacume and sucking the air out then twisting and adding the tie but the water would push most of the air out,

i have found eggs in culled layers but never in a cornish cross they are just not old enough at 8 weeks for eggs.

we have a turkey fryer pot on a camp stove for scald but i think we may upgrade to the cut down barrel i like the capacity that gives

[Pony]

Not to hijack the thread, but MyGoat, how did the ducks do in your feather plucker? Did you still have to wax or otherwise remove pin feathers?

As for our method, we use 5 gallon buckets of hot water. We have a fire going in the camp fire ring, and keep my big canning pot in it, filled with hot water so we can maintain a temp of 140*F in the 5 gallon bucket.

We kill 8 chickens (chop their heads off) at a time, then dunk 2 at a time for 1-2 minutes. Toss the 2 into the Whizbang (loaned to us by a neighbor; have to make one of our own soon!) for 15-30 seconds, pull the two out and toss them into a galvanized steel tub (those big ones) of ice water. Do the same thing with the next 6 birds.

Then we sit at the picnic table and each take a bird from the ice water and butcher it. We set a bucket on the ground at the end of the table, and all the scraps the ducks and dog won't eat go in there. The completed birds go into a clean galvanized tub of cold water, the giblets into a clean bowl (covered with a dish towel to keep insects out).

Once all 8 are finished, we rinse the birds and giblets in running water, bag the giblets in sandwich bags, tuck them into each bird, and put the birds into freezer bags and suck out the air with a drinking straw.

If we have more time and energy, we do another 8.

That's what works best for the two of us, anyway.

[mygoat]

Originally Posted by Pony

Not to hijack the thread, but MyGoat, how did the ducks do in your feather plucker? Did you still have to wax or otherwise remove pin feathers?

Waxing? Never heard of it.

There are still pin feathers. But, it still beat dry plucking by a mile. We just decided to leave a few of the hard to remove feathers to get when we prep them for dinner.

[fixer1958]

Ducks don't do as well in a tub plucker as chickens do.
Depends on the duck though.

Swedes and Pekins and mixes of each pluck pretty well without wax. The tub plucker yanks out the majority after 2 tries and hand pluck the rest and it's a very clean bird.

Muskovies are a different story. You can get a clean bird but it takes time.
I just skin those, package the breasts, debone and grind the rest.

4 mature drakes makes #10 of burger, breasts included.

Thats been my experience plucking ducks.

I have recently changed my duck dispatching method.

I used to just go out and shoot them in the head. It freaked the rest of them out too much with them flopping around and blood all over everything including me.

Now I made a 3'x4' covered cart with wheels I pull around and I made one of those hook things that you grab them by a leg. Put them in the cart and move on to the next. It will hold 6 comfortably. If the hook doesn't work, I get one of my boys to chase it down. I'm old, they aren't.

Next I use a kids sock and put it over there head and put them in a road/killing cone. They stay very calm that way through the whole thing. It also helps because the buggers are looking at you the whole time. I don't need that.
Chickens close there eyes, ducks don't, ever.
I do 2 at a time.

[Pony]

Thanks, Fixer. I know you do a lot of ducks!

I really appreciate the sock idea. Didn't realize that ducks don't have the courtesy to close their eyes as chickens do.

That's the problem with ducks: Eye contact.