I raise meat! We processed or harvested our first round of chickens!
I raised livestock my whole childhood for 4-H but we always sent our animals to auction. We never had to deal with that end of the process- the slaughtering and butchering. You have a different appreciation for meat if you raise it and butcher it yourself.
This experience of raising these chickens for meat has been something else, I tell you. Like anything else new you try there will be trials and triumphs, I guess. In a previous post I wrote about getting the Cornish Rock meaties. They are super sized eating machines bred to mature in very little time. I originally bought 18 chicks. One died in the first week after getting them. Then one more died after we moved them outside to the chicken tractor. About 3 weeks ago, I got a call from Dave from the ranch. He said he could see a lot of smoke coming from our end of town and wondered if I knew what it was. I went upstairs to our bedroom to look out the window to check it out. When I got up there I could see a dog was after my chickens! I ran downstairs and out the door and told our dog EZ to get him! He tore out after him and chased him under our horse trailer. When I got outside there where chickens all over the lawn! They were in serious distress. I was still on the phone with Dave and I just burst into tears! I asked him if he could please come home to put the poor things out of their misery. (Some day I will tell you all about when I was about 7-8 and tried to put our chicken out of it's misery when our dog Buffy got it. It was not pretty. Which is why I had horrible flashbacks and needed Dave to come home) The whole reason for raising them was because I didn't like the way the animals were treated in factory farms. I didn't want my chickens to suffer. I looked under a wood pile where I spotted 3 chickens,scared and hiding. A little shook up and some tail feathers missing but they recovered quickly and I put them back in the coop. Two others where on the lawn on their backs gasping for air it seemed and three more were MIA. I couldn't find them anywhere. A minute later, Dave came screaming down the street rushing to my aid. He grabbed a shovel and went to end the two on the lawn. He touched the first one and it sprang to its legs and walked off, seemingly unharmed. The second did the same! Very curious, they must have been in major shock. We rounded them up and put them away. We tried to repair where the dog had bull dozed itself under the fence. Out of no where came one of the chickens that had been missing. The next morning another was hanging out around the coop. It had been out all night alone. It was still around freezing at night so he probably had a ruff night. The owner of the dog came to apologize and offered to pay for any of the birds that were killed. Sadly, she said her dog had brought one home dead that she buried.
Since then we had two other casualties. We had one chicken that hoped in the horse trough and drowned and one other had a heart attack.
So we were left with a total of 13 birds. They were 7 weeks old and since we are going to be out of town next week, we harvested our flock. Dave set up a processing area in a horse stall we are re-doing. He made cones out of some aluminum flashing. We got a big 2 burner propane stove for scalding. We had a large bucket for the ice bath afterwards. A trash can for plucking feathers. Tables set up for eviscerating (gutting) and a cooler for the final product.
I was a bit on edge going into it. I suddenly was thankful I had gotten the Cornish Xs because it would be cruel to let them continue to keep growing at this break neck speed. If it were a duel purpose bird I may have changed my mind. I was nervous. I didn't want them to be in pain or for us rookies to do anything wrong, but as soon as we got started and the first bird was killed I calmed down and realized we could do this thing in a dignified, low stress way. The chickens never squawked or squirmed going into the cones. They seemed at peace. All the stories you have heard about chickens running around with it's head cut off are true. There was some flapping around after the deed was done but very briefly. We then scalded the chicken for about a minute then into the ice bath to cool. Plucking came next which is not very hard at all if we timed the baths right. Just time consuming. The eviscerating didn't take hardly anytime at all. That was a surprise to me. It was like biology class! I loved that part of identifying the different organs. Then we cleaned them up and then into the freezer bags!
This morning Dave and I were talking through the events of yesterday talking about if it was all worth it, was it a rewarding experience. I think it was totally rewarding! I enjoyed the process of learning something new. I liked watching the chickens grow, knowing what they were getting fed and what kind of care they received. I liked taking care of them. I enjoyed that they were happy and did what chickens should do. There is a very yin and yang of the whole experience. Life and death. Give and take. I feel a sense of balance that is comfortable to me. It may sound funny but I feel as thought now I truly understand the whole process of eating meat and I respect it. Although before I had raised animals for consumption, my dad is a hunter, and I've always eaten meat I really didn't "know". I am thankful for this lesson and for the chickens that taught me it.
Grandma B was very matter of fact about life and death, but I never felt as though she took life for granted. I'm sure her life on the ranch and just being apart of her generation helped mold her opinions on them. I hope that I may have received some common lessons through this.
PS did I mention I did this all with a 9 month old baby on my back?
