They had reached the ripe old age of 10 weeks and were huge!
It's hard to see from these pictures but these birds, guts all in, weigh about 12-15lbs.
Here's the makeshift abattoir. I made some "killing cones" out of plastic buckets. These are meant to calm and restrain the chicken while it's being killed. It's not an easy thing to do by any stretch but you do get used to it after a few birds. The cones keep the bird upside down, which calms it, and once their throat has been severed they bleed out quickly.
From the cone the bird is immersed in a 180 degree pot to loosen the feathers for plucking. I don't have a photo of the plucker in action but it is something to see!
Paul's job was to eviscerate the birds. After watching a few videos on YouTube we felt we were educated and ready. Over the course of the day Paul got so fast at this that I couldn't keep up. To make use to his time, and because I had ripped the skin of one bird so badly in the plucker, Paul butchered one of the chickens completely. He did a great job of it and butchering is definitely the way to go if there are enough hands.
In the end, we processed 27 birds in about four hours. Next time we'll be much faster I'm sure.
The freezer is so full now I wonder if filling a deer tag would be necessary this fall.
Following the chicken processing I raked up the wood chips and put down a bunch of lime over the area which neutralized the top layer of chicken-innards-sodden soil. There wasn't any time for a smell to develop so it's like it never happened.
On another note, we are inundated with these green squash! We've named them 'Kuiper squash' and though they are tasty we've got too many. We gave Paul a few to use this winter with his dogsledding guests and we've processed loads of them.
The roof over the deck is coming along. I started this project in May with my dad and have had little time to work on it since. When Beth and Ella went to S. Ontario for ten days recently I got it to this point; rafters done, strapping on, angled bracing up, railings up, gates on. Now I just need to convince a couple friends to come over to help put on the steel roofing.
