Tips on how to process birds for food

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21

Ahhhh i should try the pressure cooker

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22

I second that.

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23

Think both are good ideas. Best is to raise meat birds and laying birds. When a layer got wacked it was a ‘Soup Bird’. That was just how we did it, I am sure there are breeds that might work for both, but the older they are the tougher they are. Our meat birds were getting harvested before 8 weeks, nice and tender.

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24

We’ve done dual purpose breeds… never again. They weren’t good layers or good meat producers but they did taste good.

We’ve had white leghorns and while not very healthy (they die at the drop of a hat) they were excellent layers. Right now we have brown leghorns and they are NOT good layers.

I think my next plan is to have efficient layers and efficient heritage breed meat producers and an incubator to keep us in chickens. There is nothing like the taste of a slow growing heritage breed with actual dark meat on their bones. They have chicken taste x 10.

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25

Cook it in liquid is the way, crockpot/slow cooker, pressure cooker. Older birds they always seemed to be chicken n dumplings when I was a kid.

Wild turkeys are another one and they are not butterballs. We found that freeze, then brine, then smoker was the best. I always halved mine to make it quicker. You have be able to control the heat like a brisket.

LoL unless you’re starving you can f’n ruin one pretty quick.

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26

Bard rock,
Dominant
Coachine
Nesting hens brooding chickens…

Oh I have brown and white Novogen chicks and i have Aquilla
All are now just a tear old and free range. So… i get a bushel of eggs every day, when I slaughter, they taste great! Just though. Hahahahahaa

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27

Now just imagine a chicken that tasted like a T-bone steak. Now that I would buy.

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28

Yup, that’s a big chicken! Next meat birds I have will be Jersey Giants that are slow to mature for great flavor. OK, I’m an old SOB, but I can remember chickens that actually had flavor coming out of the supermarket, then the growers had to play with hybridizing birds (Cornish crosses?) so that they’d mature in a few weeks just to produce lots of meat, but with little flavor. Those chickens of 60+ years ago also had actual dark meat on them because they actually could use their legs for walking. Todays “raised for fast meat” birds walk as far as the feeder and that’s about all the walking they’re capable of.

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29

A lot of truth to that. Our hybrid meat birds we had to butcher at the most 12 weeks out. We would start butchering a batch around 7 weeks and finish around 10-11 weeks. Otherwise they got too breast heavy. Ours were range fed in tractors so got plenty of exercise and were very tender and tasty. I think diet and exercise has a lot to do with taste.

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30

I tend to feel that free ranging chickens is a significant part of what makes them taste better . Eating bugs , worms etc…

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31

So inwas under the impression that true free range made them tough. :thinking: it has to be the breed of birds I am raising

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