GOT MEAT BIRDS AND PROCESSED THEM!

We got our meat birds in and Skylar went and picked them up.

Bless her heart as she had to finish getting the brooder area ready and dunk 102 beaks in water by herself.

So proud that my daughters can handle things on the farm.

These birds are getting big enough to be put in tractors.

We moved them out after about 2 weeks.

Four chicken tractors up and running. They will be moved daily.

The time came to process them. We loaded them up in the truck from the pasture.

We put them in tractors by the butcher station.

We are working on getting the station setup.

This is the dunk tank that Tim made.

It heats the water up to the correct temperature to make the plucking process better.

We used this last fall when we did our turkeys. It works wonderful.

Heating element is in the bottom.

The chicken plucker.

This machine makes the job tons easier.

Turn this baby on and the rubbery fingers move and bottom spins while taking off the feathers. Making them chickens bald as ever.

Water goes in the inside tub and washes the feathers out to ground.

Kill cones

Gutting station

I try not to work this area. My girls are really great at this job.

They have taught many people.

Once they come out of the plucker the go on this table.

We are in full swing of butchering a little less than a 100 meat birds.

I don't think it would ever be right not to have Aaron and Tony here on butcher day. So glad to have wonderful friends to do this with.

It's not a easy day butchering but it does fill up our freezers for the year.

On to DAY 2..........................

After letting the meat rest for a day in icy cold water.

We start parting out our meat birds into legs, thighs, chicken breast and wings. We will leave a few whole that we have already sold.

We were so blessed to have helpers come and learn this process.

It just amazes me that a big days worth of work that would of taken hours to do we have been so blessed to have people come out and help.

((Heather, Brian, Skylar and Kaitlin))

They are cutting up the last of the birds.

Skylar is like this is DONE!
Another successful butcher season. Not sure if we are ordering more. The rain made it a tough year for us working in the pasture and moving tractors. Now we will be ordering our turkeys to sell for Thanksgiving.