This last Saturday was out yearly Cornish Cross meat chicken butcher party. We originally received 100 meat chickens. Through the course of the last nine weeks, we lost 42 birds. This is a huge loss when each bird initially costs $4, the effort to raise these birds is significant, and the feed costs are high. Let me tell you that these birds can eat!
In the past, we have had losses because of over-crowding and suffocation, but we have learned to separate them into small batches to alleviate that issue. This year was due more to crazy weather. The poultry tractor is half covered, so when it rains or is too hot, the birds can go under the cover for protection. However, these birds are not bread to be smart and often don’t understand self-preservation. They basically just eat, drink and sleep. When they’re bigger, they aren’t even interested in moving much.
In June, we had several days of cold rain. One night, we went out to check on the birds and found nine dead chickens, and the rest were soaking wet. So, at about 9pm, we loaded the remaining birds into the trailer and moved them back into the barn with four heat lamps. After a few days, we moved the birds back outside. Three weeks later, we had one or two days of hot weather and lost 12 chickens in a single day. The day before we butchered chickens, we think 4 died from heart attacks. These losses are frustrating and heart-breaking. It is understandable why this breed of chicken is kept in small cages and in conditioned spaces, but we have tried to fight this approach with raising them on pasture. There are obviously risks to raising pasture-raised meat birds. By the time butcher day came around we had 58 birds to process.
This year, we had an amazing crew of 7 volunteers and ourselves. We started at about 8 am and finished about 2 pm. It was a lot of fun and exciting to be able to use the new lean to as our butcher center rather than being out on the lawn. Things ran fairly smoothly, and we could not have asked for a better day.
After we were done catching, killing, scalding, plucking, gutting, cleaning, wrapping, and weighing the birds, we enjoyed lunch together (chicken of course) before most volunteers left. For those that did stick around, we went and butchered our last emu.
Most have probably heard about one of our two emus killing itself by ripping its own esophagus. At this point, we had no use for just one. We had eaten the other one and decided it was time to just put him (or her, you can’t tell) in the freezer. It hung in the walk-in cooler for a few days before Greg cut and wrapped it.
That was the excitement of our weekend, and our volunteers are already exited for the next butcher party coming up in November. Turkeys, one lamb and a cow are scheduled for November 21st
Put it on your calendar if you want to join!
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