From Egg to Egg

Budaman5000

This is awesome...look forward to hearing more about this

Eoin

kl8ton said:

What a day.  I am beat.  I will post soon.  All meat birds butchered including the 4 turkeys. 

Lots of lessons learned.  

Well done, hard work butchering turkeys, big birds.

kl8ton

Butchering day was last Saturday.  It was a ton of work.  I got up at 6AM to fire up the scald tank burner.  Sunrise was at 8:05.  I learned a lot of lessons and will change some things on the next go 'round.

The above pic is the basic layout.  I did not get many pics as my hands were usually very messy.  Also, not pictured is the shrink bag setup inside.  My wife handled that.

kl8ton

This is the scald tank.  After killing the birds, they get dunked in 145 degree water (or hotter) for about a minute.  This makes plucking the feathers easier.

kl8ton

This is the home made kill cone setup i made.  4 one gallon buckets for the chickens and a 5 gallon bucket for the turkeys.  An old table leg/base with some balancing outriggers screwed on for support.  Next time I will buy or fabricate my own cones.  The purpose of these "cones" are to keep the bird upside down to drain the blood out.  You slit the throat and let them bleed out.  They pass out almost instantly.  Also the sides of the cone or bucket restricts wing movement so they aren't flapping blood everywhere.

kl8ton

kl8ton

My 6, 7, and 8 year old pluckers.  This moved far too slow.  Many times I had to remind them that they can pluck with two hands.

kl8ton

After some slow production in the plucking department, my wife ran to TSC to buy a plucker.  It was much faster, but I did not care for this model and returned it after the day was done.  Way too much manual intervention required and it did not live up to the claim of plucking two birds at once in 15 seconds.  More like one bird at once in 30 seconds starting and stopping several times.

kl8ton

I bought this evisceration table off amazon for $160 with free two day shipping.  The top is stainless.  You can see the bleach on the bottom shelf.  I sanitized multiple times throughout the process.  This table will now be an outdoor cooking prep table. 




My son got a pic of me eviscerating possibly the smallest bird that we butcher

ed that day.  He must not have gotten to the feeder much!



Also pictured is a Havalon knife with replaceable stainless surgical steel blades for no sharpening.  I really liked having that there.  The sheers were for cutting the neck bone off to tuck inside the birds cavity.

kl8ton

Viewer discretion advised.  Gut bucket.  Feet gizzards, hearts, livers, gall bladders, heads, etc.  

My BIL took the bucket to his bait pile to see what showed up on his trail cam.  No I kept none of these items.  I know some of you probably find these to be delicacies.

kl8ton

Yes, the sun set during the work day.  Here is my 12 year old dipping a turkey in the scald tank.

kl8ton

Here I am with a 18lb ish turkey moments before it met its fate.

kl8ton

final products packaged for sale.  I had two fridges full.  Now I have sold many of our birds and what I have left, fit in two freezers.

kl8ton

Things I would change -

Process entirely outside - no birds going in the house for packaging.

Butchering day would be on a day that was warmer with more daylight hours

Get the birds fatter before butchering- They were supposed to average 5lbs after 8 weeks and our biggest birds were just over 5 lbs. after 9 weeks.  They ate plenty of feed.

Protect the birds better and not raise them with turkeys.  I lost about 30 of the 100 somehow.  A few got out with the kids leaving gates open.  I lost some from suffication with all the birds crowding them into a corner.  I lost some to the turkeys they were living with.  Some were killed by roosters that got in the meat bird pen, etc.  

I also think I would pasture them more and force them to be outside.  Even though they could go out whenever they wanted to, they preferred to be indoors. 

It was a great learning experience.  The last time I did this is when Grandpa raised them with us and I was probably 11 or 12.  The kids got to see how their food gets to the table.  They were taught to respect the animal and treat it with care.  These animals have one bad day in their lives.  Otherwise they have it pretty dang good.  

Thanks for following and I will post a pic of one on the egg when I get a chance to eat one.  I did cook a turkey and it was delicious.  No pics of that.

JohnnyTarheel

Fantastic recap.. thanks for sharing....

kl8ton

The kids worked really hard.  For the most part, they worked from 8am to 9pm. It got cold too. 

ColtsFan

One of the best threads here. Thanks for posting! 

kl8ton

ColtsFan said:

One of the best threads here. Thanks for posting! 

Thanks! 

kl8ton

DO home raised chicken.  I forgot an egg shot to complete the "from egg to egg" thread.  

kl8ton

This is a good way to get kids to love veggies.  They taste great this way.  (like meat)  :-)  The bird doesn't get the color it usually does, but this one was for soup.

Usually i spatch the bird and do an "OVER THE TOP CHILI" style and let the drippings fall into 9x13 of veggies.  That way, you get the color on the bird and the same great tasting taters/garlic/onion/etc.

nolaegghead

Bump because it's a great thread (can't believe I didn't see this before) and tis the time of year!

cookingdude555

amazing