Well since since the chicken story was starting to take a long time to tell, I thought I would just skip to the ending, which is
after all the best part. Below you can see the chickens on there big day, they ended up reaching about 7 lbs or so in like 8 weeks. My buddy Jon came down to help out with the butchering (only fair since half the meat is his). Mini turkeys really at this size. The breasts are huge. You have to fillet them in half to get them to grill up decent, but they are still melt in you mouth tender and juicy. Here is our butchering setup, the weather cooperated nicely so we just worked outside. After relieving them of their heads via the chopping block and axe, we let them drip dry a bit from the ladder on the left with some pieces of wire. A good rinse with the garden hose followed, and then off to the table in the center. (actually the table was a big chunk of plastic decking I bummed off my dad. He got a bunch of it used last summer and had some extra pieces laying around) We just filleted off the breasts, took the legs, and called that good enough. Probably like 85% of the meat or better, and no messing around with plucking feathers or taking out the guts. We tried getting some of the wings, but that proved to be more work than a few fork fulls a meat was worth. We also saved a bunch of livers, since I have heard that chicken liver is the best catfish bait around. As you can tell from the 15 gallon tub level full of meat, the yield on these little buggers was excellent. We ended with approximately 350 lbs of meat (boneless, no carcass included) at a cost of $1.78 per pound. Which is like 1/2 price of what
Walmart sells chicken for, so economically, it works out well. The total amount of feed these guys ate was around 1800 lbs, just shy of a ton. You sort of realize how many resources go into meat production when you try your own hand at it. We boned all the leg meat out (yep that took a LONG time), and ran it through my grinder,
making some of the tastiest, healthiest burger you can imagine. Just enough fat in the leg meat that the stuff sticks together pretty well, and it tastes fantastic. I will
definitely grow some more next year.
Well since since the chicken story was starting to take a long time to tell, I thought I would just skip to the ending, which is after all the best part. Below you can see the chickens on there big day, they ended up reaching about 7 lbs or so in like 8 weeks. My buddy Jon came down to help out with the butchering (only fair since half the meat is his). Mini turkeys really at this size. The breasts are huge. You have to fillet them in half to get them to grill up decent, but they are still melt in you mouth tender and juicy. Here is our butchering setup, the weather cooperated nicely so we just worked outside. After relieving them of their heads via the chopping block and axe, we let them drip dry a bit from the ladder on the left with some pieces of wire. A good rinse with the garden hose followed, and then off to the table in the center. (actually the table was a big chunk of plastic decking I bummed off my dad. He got a bunch of it used last summer and had some extra pieces laying around) We just filleted off the breasts, took the legs, and called that good enough. Probably like 85% of the meat or better, and no messing around with plucking feathers or taking out the guts. We tried getting some of the wings, but that proved to be more work than a few fork fulls a meat was worth. We also saved a bunch of livers, since I have heard that chicken liver is the best catfish bait around. As you can tell from the 15 gallon tub level full of meat, the yield on these little buggers was excellent. We ended with approximately 350 lbs of meat (boneless, no carcass included) at a cost of $1.78 per pound. Which is like 1/2 price of what Walmart sells chicken for, so economically, it works out well. The total amount of feed these guys ate was around 1800 lbs, just shy of a ton. You sort of realize how many resources go into meat production when you try your own hand at it. We boned all the leg meat out (yep that took a LONG time), and ran it through my grinder, making some of the tastiest, healthiest burger you can imagine. Just enough fat in the leg meat that the stuff sticks together pretty well, and it tastes fantastic. I will definitely grow some more next year.
