This is poultry season at the G & E Ranch. We just moved 100 Corish Cross meat chicken out of the barn where they had been living just long enough to go out to the pasture. They have been relocated to the “Poultry Tractor.” This is a 200 SF bottomless portable pen that gets moved every couple days to allow the birds to have fresh grass to graze on. In the poultry tractor, they have a portable feeder that is filled with grower feed to supplement their diet and automatic water nipples that are hooked to a float system for unlimited water. They also have a shaded area to get away from the UV’s on hot days. It is said that Cornish Cross can grow up to a pound a week, so they are typically harvested between 6-9 weeks in age. We have planned to butcher ours July 6-7th, so feel free to come over if you are interested in helping or watching the action. They are also for sale at $4 per pound.
We received 60 baby turkeys Thursday, 6-6-19. In preparation for them, we cleaned out the stall that the chickens were just removed from and prepped it for the little guys. These were ordered last fall like the meat chickens.
Turkeys are the most fragile of the birds that we raise from chicks. Typically, for the first two weeks of a birds life, they are divided into groups of 25’ish in troughs or bins, but for turkeys we have found that less is better. This year, we have divided them into groups of 15. Each trough has its own heat lamp, water container, and feed trough. The reason they must be divided up is because the birds will literally trample each other to death while trying to stay warm and huddled under the heat lamp. By about two weeks, they have grown enough that they can get moved to the ground and all mixed together. At that point, there are still several heat lamps hanging from above to keep them warm while they grow to about six weeks old. At that point, the Cornish Cross meat chickens will no longer be with us, and it will allow us to move the turkeys into the poultry tractor.
The turkeys will be in the poultry tractor approximately 2 months or until they outgrow it. A that point, they will become one hundred present open range birds. They will have the entire one acre of the poultry pasture to roam. They will still venture back to the poultry tractor for food, water, and shelter if they want. They will grow to be up to 20-40 pounds, dressed. We typically harvest the largest toms about a month or two before thanksgiving. We then harvest the remaining turkeys the weekend before Thanksgiving. This allows people to have a farm-fresh-never-frozen Thanksgiving turkey. All you need to do is brine it and cook it up.
You may not realize that fresh poultry needs to be brined because it is done for you when you purchase meat from the store, but brining helps the birds dissolve some fibers and break down proteins as it absorbs the brine liquid. This will make your bird more juice and less chewy. A brine must consist of dissolved salt and sugar but can also include spices if desired. We have tried several recipes and mixed them up to create one that we like. It is simple and we have all the ingredients on hand.
The G & E Ranches recommended Brine Recipe
(Recipe is for roughly 35 pounds of poultry)
Ingredients:
2 cups salt
2 cups sugar
3 peeled and chopped carrots
2 diced onions
4 sticks of celery diced
1 tablespoon thyme (or fresh if you have it)
4 bay leaves
3 tablespoons on peppercorns
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon fennel seeds (omit if you don’t have on hand)
Directions: Bring pot of water to boil and dissolve all ingredients on the stove top. Once dissolved remove from heat. Fill pot with ice and stir to bring the temperature down. Place bird(s) into a cooler (if they will not fit in the frig.) or a container that will fit in the frig. Pour liquid over bird, then fill container or cooler until the bird it completely covered by water. Let sit overnight, then cool how ever you desire. BBQ, smoke, bake, rotisserie, deep fry, the possibilities are endless…
Play with the recipes, add or remove items according to have you have on the shelf. These spices will not have a strong impact on the flavor added to your bird, that will still come from spices as you cook it.
If you are interested in splurging, because it is a little bit of an investment, in having a farm fresh never frozen turkey on your table this year, shoot us an email GandERanch@gmail.com and we will get one reserved for you.
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