Post-morteum

Wet, wet, wet

After weeks of endless sunshine, the great North-"Wet" lived up to it's name and dumped buckets on us this past weekend.  Which was lovely if you were fighting a fire somewhere in our great state but not so wonderful if you were planning on an outdoor chicken butchering extravaganza.  Thankfully we got a bit of a reprieve on Sunday morning and got the bulk of the work done before the rain re-materialized and the wind kicked up.

The set-up

As I mentioned before, we did not plan ahead well by reserving the chicken butchering paraphernalia in a timely manner from our local extension office.  Thankfully we were able to work with the extension office from the next county over and after a late Saturday evening trip to another farm to pick up the gear, were able to get set up for our Sunday morning exploits.  It was basically all the same stuff except for a nifty cone stand and blood collection basin that made the process go a lot more quickly.  Jon, dear man that he is, manned the cones and defeathering station while the husband and I handled the eviscerating table.  It took just under three hours for three people to butcher 41 chickens*.  Of course it took another hour+ to clean up and tear down.

Final tally was 41 chickens out of the original 42 birds*, averaging just over 4 pounds dressed weight per bird.  Total amount spent was $303.36 so about $7.40 per bird or about $1.80 per pound. 

Not bad for organic, pastured chickens.


* You may have noticed that the number of birds here is one less than we've been talking about all along.  We miscounted the chicks when we originally got them - have we mentioned that they're fast little buggers and all look alike?