Our First Butcher Day

Although I would love for this post to be full of lots of information and details it will mainly be "a day in pictures" of Our First Butcher Day.

BUT please feel free to ask questions about our process and I will be sure to get back to you with answers.

It was a full day for our families.  It was a learning day for our families.  It was a day we plan to relive again soon. 

We all thoroughly enjoyed it (for the most part).  This is of course coming from one who did not have to do the killing.  The brothers did the killing.  And both having a love for all of God's creatures said killing was the ugly part. But a task they knew had to be done.

We started roughly at 7:30 am and were done processing 47 birds by 11:45.  This included killing, scalding, putting in the homemade chicken plucker(video below), processing, final cleaning and in chill tanks (ice chests). 

The first batch took about two hours since this was all new to us.  Everyone was all eyes watching each step and trying to gain a little insight as to how each step was done.  Our second batch went much faster as we developed more of an assembly line. 

After lunch we finished up by bagging the chickens.  And the clean up ended our day. 

So here is our 1st Butcher Day in pictures.

A quick note: There are lots of pictures.  If any are showing up with green lines across them try refreshing your screen.  We have found this to help.  Seems to be a "Blogger" issue I find with many blogs through Blogger.  Sorry for the inconvenience.


The morning before the kill-

Catching the chickens-

Killing-Brant said, "Killing was the most distasteful part of the whole day, but it had to be done".

Scalding-we learned later on this is a "one man" job.  AND a pretty crucial part for the chicken plucker.  If the water is too hot the chicken plucker will tear the skin as you will see in a picture below.  The temperature is really important.

Chicken Plucker-this was by far the most fascinating part of the day.  Even after forty-seven birds I still can not get over how this took all the feathers off the chickens.

Processing the chickens-

Chilling the chickens-

Saving the organs-

Fruits of our labor-

As Brant stated in our first post here on the blog,
"We do not contend to be experts on any subject. The main objective of this journal is to record only one aspect of our journey to disengage from the industrial food system: the raising of pastured poultry for meat for our families’ consumption in an ethical, honorable and humane way.

We are two brothers and their families, who by the grace of God have been given the skills, abilities and desire to provide for ourselves some of the food we eat, and in doing so, to be less reliant upon the factory providers of the Frankenstein food products that have inundated our grocery store shelves."

Our first butcher day was certainly a learning experience.  There are things we will do differently next time and things we will still learn when we do our second batch.  It truly is trial and error, but one we intend to do again. 

We are thankful to our Heavenly Father for the blessings of these chickens.  And pray we will have the same results next time around.

For now we will likely take a break and do another batch at the end of summer. Thanks for following along and keep watch for our next journey in raising pastured poultry.

 

Chicken Plucker and Killing Station

The guys were busy this weekend building the chicken plucker and killing station.   The killing cones were made months ago and you can read about them HERE . 

 

 

Time gets the best of everyone and unfortunately I only have pictures to share.  With both guys working full time jobs during the week and only weekends to play "catch up" it leaves little time to go into detail on the plucker.   If you should have questions please feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to get the answer back here on the blog. 

Enjoy the Lord's day.

6 Weeks Old and 6 To Go

 

 

 

The chickens are six weeks old now.  They are eating machines!  They are going through 100 pounds of feed every 5 days. We will soon begin planning our butcher day which is just six weeks away.  Freezer space and chicken recipes are fresh on my mind.  It will be nice to have a stocked freezer full of pasture raised poultry. 

Since the beginning we have lost three due to over crowding in the brooder.  With 49 birds still alive we feel very blessed.  They are not the cute little chicks anymore, but an amazing sight to see none the less. 

God is good.

Freedom

Freedom is a good thing!

Well it's good until little boys catch you!

The chicks are now four weeks old and have spent one week of freedom out on pasture.  They are growing fast, eating like crazy and seem to be perfectly happy in their new freedom. 

Growing!

Today the boys and I left the "city" and made a trip out to the farm to see the chicks. 
They are growing like weeds!  We have not seen them in a week and I was amazed at how much they have grown.

The wing feathers are beginning to fill out, their feet are huge and overall they just look awkward to me.  I am a city girl longing to be a country girl so this is all new to me.  But I am learning and loving every minute of it.

 

They are eating like crazy too!

 

Look how big they are this week!

 

I stood looking at the chicks realizing we will be eating every last one (we hope and pray!).  And it is exactly how God planned it to be, but oh, those sweet little chicks.  I then turned to see my son holding a chick and saw his shirt and it all made sense to me.

 

NO FARM

NO FOOD


*T-shirt from Homestead Farms  in Keller, Texas*



The Chicks are Here!

Just a quick update on the delivery of the chicks.

The chicks arrived this afternoon.  We all were anxiously waiting their arrival.

All sixty little chicks in that little box.

After about a 2 day trip from Pennsylvania to Texas through US Mail they all appear to be doing fine in their new home.

Eating, drinking, sleeping and staying warm. 
  

When Brant has some extra time he'll give details on the cages for the chicks.  They will live here for the next three weeks.

For now we let them rest from their road trip and watch them grow. 

First Batch is Coming

French Freedom Ranger Chicken

A quick update on our pastured poultry operation: 

Our chickens have been purchased and are set for delivery on March 6, so we should receive them on March 8.  We were hoping to get them a couple of weeks earlier, but evidently there is a big demand for this breed of chicken.  The breed we chose are French Freedom Ranger chickens because they are most suitable for free range pastured poultry operations such as ours.

After about 3 weeks of life, the chickens will be ready to move out to pasture (around March 29), so our next purchase will be the electrified poultry netting and energizer in preparation for that.  We are also in the process of acquiring the needed parts for the chicken plucker, among other things.

A more lengthy update will be in order after the birds arrive in a few short weeks.  As always, your questions and comments are welcomed.



  

A Lot Done and A Lot to Do...

 

Winding down the work week from my wage slave job over homemade pizza, I have finally been able to carve out some time to give a detailed progress report about our ongoing preparations to begin raising pastured poultry.
 
The framework for the broiler house was completed a few weeks ago. The dimensions are roughly 16' L x 10' W.

Broiler house framework.

This past weekend we installed the lath strips, the galvanized aluminum "R" panels and ridge cap, which completed the roof structure. 2"x4" blocking was also installed between the rafters in 2 places on either side of the house before the roof panels were installed to create a mounting surface for the hanging feed troughs. 

2"x4" blocking between roof rafters to hang feeders can be seen in upper right hand corner.

The feed troughs were fabricated from pieces of 4", schedule 40 PVC pipe approximately 24" long and capped off on each end with a 4" PVC cap, glued and screwed in to place.



PVC feeding troughs.

The feed troughs were then hung with screw hooks from the 2"x4" blocking that was installed between the roof rafters and hung with lengths of chain, allowing the troughs to hang a couple of inches above the ground (just high enough to create an unstable condition to prevent the birds from roosting on them).

PVC feeding troughs being hung.

On one end of the broiler house, holes were drilled through the framework and wheels were installed utilizing carriage bolts and 3/4" spacers between the wheels and framework.  The opposite end of the house was outfitted with a tongue for towing purposes. A 4"x4" was lag screwed to the bottom frame-work from the middle of the house, and allowed to extend approximately 4' beyond the front of the house, which will afford us enough room to mount an 18" length of 4"x4" on either side of the tongue to create a 12" wide platform for mounting the 32 gallon feed storage drum. 



The "tongue" is the white 4"x4" attached to the bottom framework extending from the center of the house to the left.  The 32 gallon feed drum is sitting on the top of the tongue.  It will eventually be bolted in place, which will allow for the entire operation to be moved at one time.

A hole was drilled near the end of the tongue and an eye hook was bolted in place which will allow for the house to be chained to the box-blade of a tractor and easily moved.  5 gallon waterers will also be hung from the middle rafter on either side between the feed troughs, making the entire operation self contained.  Chore time should be minimal, with only the feeders having to be replenished with feed once a day and the waterers refilled every couple of days.

We were able to move the broiler house around my brother's property with the tractor to test how it worked. Everything seemed to work fine except for the wheels. We used galvanized carriage bolts to attach the wheels, and the weight of the house was just too much for galvanized fasteners. We will need to replace those with stainless carriage bolts, which should solve the problem. This was the only problem encountered, so we consider the overall result of the house to be a success.
                                          

Broiler house ready to be moved with tractor.

Looking ahead to processing day, we are of the opinion that slaughtering chickens utilizing the restraining cone or killing cone method is the most humane. Slaughtering is undoubtedly the most distasteful part of processing meat birds, so I won't go in to a lot of detail about it here other than to describe how we fashioned our restraining cones. For those who are interested in learning more about killing cones, you can Google it or search for killing cone videos on YouTube (be forewarned: some images and videos contain graphic content).

Our restraining cones are made of galvanized roll roof flashing purchased from a local hardware store. We obtained directions for one of the many killing cone patterns that can be found on the internet. Once a master pattern was made, we traced out and cut the galvanized flashing accordingly. All edges were rolled over and hammered down to eliminate sharp edges. The flashing was then rolled in to a cone shape and fastened together at the lap joint with a rivet setter and rivets.

Killing cone lap joint attachment with rivets.

 The finished cone is approximately 16" tall with a 9-1/2" opening at the top and a 3-1/4" opening at the base. We were able to fabricate four cones from a 15' roll of 24" wide galvanized roof flashing.

Finished killing cones.

Lord willing, the next step will be to purchase 164 lineal feet of electrified poultry netting and accessories, and 50 Freedom Ranger chickens. Our goal is to have them ready to go from the brooder to the pasture the last week of February, which will give us until the end of May to have the rest of our processing equipment ready to go (transport cages, plucker, scalding equipment, processing table, etc.)

We thank the good Lord for his grace, mercy and provision and welcome any comments or feedback.

Brant Fontenot

Brief Update...

Long hours at my day job have prevented me from updating this space in a timely fashion.  Things are progressing as planned.  My brother and I completed the broiler house this weekend and the feed troughs and killing cones have also been fabricated.  I will share a couple of photos for now until I can properly give a detailed update later in the week.