cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4413694

These Cornish X meat birds arrived on our farm on August 3. That makes them 30 days old today. We ordered 40 and got 45 (the hatcheries always give you extra in case there are any losses during or immediately after transport.) We have lost only one so there are 44 out there now.

My wife has Chicken Day on the calendar as September 30. They will be 59 days old at that point and should average between 6 and 7 pounds dressed.

We had a confluence of events that resulted in our cancelling our original order for 60 birds with one hatchery and ordering 40 birds from another hatchery for delivery a week earlier. That means that we lost our slot at the abattoir. We normally have half of the birds done at an abattoir and do half ourselves. We can’t sell the birds we do ourselves so we eat those ones. With the situation this summer we decided not to grow any birds for anyone else this fall and will do all 40 of the birds here on the farm for ourselves.

Butchering day is NOT my favorite day of the year but it is part of farming livestock and it has to be done. We’re likely going to offer a workshop for anyone local who wants to learn how to process chickens on their own property.

I gave their bedding a toss this morning.

Our meaties always have access to outdoors from the time they’re about 3 weeks old. They will continue to go outside right up until the day before they are processed.

  • jetAEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Great write up! Thank you for sharing

    • MapleEngineer@lemmy.caOPMEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Thanks!

      The thing that many people don’t know is that you order your birds months in advance and have to make the appointment at the abattoir at the same time. We book our birds in to the abattoir as much as 5 months in advance. Not only do we book our appointment but we get our drop-off time at the same time. So my wife makes the appointment in February or March and the birds go to the abattoir on September 30 at 9 AM. The hatcheries plan to have the right number of eggs ready to set three weeks in advance of the hatch date one to two days before your delivery date. So, everything in our lives is scheduled around delivery day, the first week or so when they are little, keeping them warm in the spring and cool in the late summer, dealing with issues, and getting them to the abattoir on time. Things didn’t work out this year so we made changes. Fortunately, we know the system and the players involved well enough that we were able to make it work.

      Early in the pandemic when everyone panicked and people got chickens so that they would have a stable food supply they didn’t know that there was no way in hell that they were going to get an appointment at an abattoir and were stuck with their chickens. That’s why we started offering the workshops. I just let people know the date that we’re processing and one or two can come out and watch and help. It’s not free labour, they definitely slow me down, but it helps other people who are going through what we went through 10 years ago.