I reduced these beautiful girls to parts yesterday and today:





After all, parts is parts.

Good color on them birds.

Geno Mengele

gulag experimentation

Your butcher have Parkinsons?

They were fat bishes.

I wanted to save some to make schmaltz, but I wasn't that enthused after the butchering work.

Even after washing my hands twice, the whippets wanted to lick my hands.

One goes on the grill tomorrow, another in the freezer for me and the wife, and the third will go to the neighbor who provides us with wahoo, bluefin, yellowfin, yellowtail, and he says he's got some rockfish waiting for us in the freezer when he gets back.

Experiment with some Freedom Rangers (ironbender recommendation as I recall? ) but I've decided I don't like all the work, set up, etc. Maybe if I went big and did a dozen or so, but then I'd need to expand the Gulag even more.

Easier to do a mammal of some size I believe, for the amount of meat gained.

We Dagos are good with a blade.








On humans!

Yes.

Chooks are lots of work for what you get.


Rabbits are easier. At least you can skin em fast.

Exactly what I told my wife.

A did a javelina a lot faster than these birds what with the setting up the boiling water and plucking and stuff. Wife would have been OK with me skinning them as she usually doesn't eat it, but I love chicken skin, so plucking was the order of the day.

Might have to build a rabbit Gulag???

Kudos on a couple of counts.

Barnyard to table is great! No better.

Swapping your bounty for another's is a great move as well.

Good observation on yardbird, quite a bit of work for the poundage. I understand why so many pull the skin back on a turkey to take the breast.

Yessir, and you’re welcome.

Lots of setup and cleaning for three. Are you familiar at the term “economy of scale”? 👍

We kilt out 20 last month.

How old was them little ladies?

Oh yeah Mike,

I was discussing that scale thing with the wife this afternoon. We like our few hens and the eggs they give us. What little surplus we get I barter some with another neighbor for sausage he gets from his kid's pigs.

I've got a hen brooding a batch right now as replacements for the 3 we've lost out of the eight "hens" we started with, one of which turned out to be El Feo. But we're pretty sure we don't want to set up to do a dozen or more every year. If we went that route, I'd have to have her out there helping and that would never go over. My department you know, along with the grill, shoveling snow, and the like.

I really wish the gooberment wasn't so involved and maybe someone out here would start a chicken operation for the farmers market crowd. No one wants to go through the permitting stuff. I'd love to buy some good local chickens, already plucked etc. We can get pork, I got a 1/4 beef from the neighbors' ranch this year, the one neighbor fishes long range boats and spreads the wealth. I wish there were more pheasants around too. I've thought about raising a bunch to release around here. On the ranch. If they "escape" the confines and end up on the BLM land......................oh well?

Oh, I think they were 13 weeks or so. I wanted to get to them last week but dragged my feet trying to see if I could integrate them into the flock as dual purpose birds. Failed experiment, so I set up the new cookstove in the garage, got a pot of water going, and said goodbye to them.

If the brooding hen is successful, we'll have some new layers in a bit and I can tackle the one hen that is rarely laying now and any male chicks that pop up.

Not much better than home raised fried chicken.

Put that woman to work, Geno!

I handle the neck whack and the scald. My wife is fully trained and certified on catching, plucking, and gutting. Then while I clean gizzards and hearts, she does the tertiary pluck in the kitchen sink. Gotta have assembly line production.

Chicken would be too much like a pet to me.


Probably couldn't kill one.

It’s not that bad Sam. The look of surprise they have always makes me laugh!

Ha! back when every farmer had red chickens runnin' loose, when a car hit a chicken, chicken was the next meal!

Wife's golden-doodle mutt got in the chicken pen yesterday. "oh lawd, she's done kilt a chicken, oh lawd oh lawd oh lawd, she ain't breathing, she ain't moving, she ded".

I get done doing whatever I'm doing, thinking we are going to have chicken for supper, get back there to start the cleaning process, and all of all the dang luck, its a Christmas in July miracle, all the chickens are standing at the feeder eating.

Lost track of this thread for a bit.

Sam,

I think of them like pheasants and quail.

But instead of death by shotgun they die by a knife.

Either way, they are dead and turned into tasty bits.

Mike,

no can do. She will not do it. I raise 'em, I kill 'em, I butcher 'em, I cooks 'em.......................

She eats 'em.

It's OK, she's richer than I am and does other stuff around the place.

OH my, what do we have here?

Mesquite coals and marinated chicken drippings make for some nice smoke



Well, these look tasty:



And plated with some local (farmed) wild rice with steamed broccoli, that bird made for a very nice meal:

Butchering chickens is nasty work.
They sure don't make it easy like a cow or pig.
Then there's hot water, stinky wet feathers, and finally the
cold water that's soaking you. Guts smell real special.

When you are done, you smell like all those smells.
And you only have one done.


We used to take poultry to a former private producer.
He was big into it by local standards, nothing by today's places.

But they had a Mom and Pop slaughter set up.
5 kill cones, a scalder an automatic plucker,
And a cutting room with a bandsaw.

He killed 5 at a time. Once he got going, 5 went in the scalded while five bled out. He dumped the plucker, pushing them done the line to his wife to dress and cut. Then he transferred the scalded ones to the plucker, tossed the ones from the cones to the scalded, and 5 more got cut.
His wife kept right up with him, knife, bandsaw and chicken pieces all a blur.

Show up there with 50 cluckers leave in (maybe) 2 hours with cut up chicken.

$.75/bird Then. I think it's over $2 now.

Asked my grandfather what the metal cones mounted under his lean too behind the barn were for, he says ones for chicken stew and the other is for fried chicken.

Looking good Geno!

Dillon - it’s a little better by removing the food the day before jihad day.

[quote=Valsdad) I wish there were more pheasants around too. I've thought about raising a bunch to release around here. On the ranch. If they "escape" the confines and end up on the BLM land......................oh well?

[/quote]
Several decades ago my father placed several pheasant eggs under a broody Banty hen in a coop built with chicken wire. Shortly after they hatched the chicks ran thru the wire and never returned. That was the end of my dads pheasant raising enterprise. Then he raised Mallards. He was going in to clip their wings when the flock took off flying and made a circle around the yard and then flew off in the direction of Suisun Bay. They did not return either.

My neighbor done tried a poultry/quail gulag.

Bears make a helluva mess.

LOL ..... I knew some Italians back home that kept large pigeon coops in the back yard. Them birds weren't for racing.