Chicken Butchery - Indian Game

Obviously this post contains pictures of dead animals so please don't read if that kind of thing upsets you. 

I had planned to process a batch of Indian Game chickens for the freezer this week. I was then disappointed when I found out that the day I had planned to do it the children were going for a sleep over at my mum and dads. 

This is how far things have come with the children, it's so much easier with them that I now plan to do it so they can help. So I made sure we all got up early that morning and got cracking before they had to go!

Pasture Pen Nest Box Upgrade

The bucket nest boxes I originally put in the Heras Panel Pasture Pens never really worked very well, They just weren;t quite big enough and could cause hens to break eggs. But because I used these pens more for grow outs it didn't matter too much and I changed the one I used for the layers into a bigger nest box like the one in this post. 

Currently I have all three of these pens with potential laying hens in. So it was time to upgrade the last two pens to have proper nest boxes, which can even stay in when raising meat birds in there as well. 

Own Meat Birds Get A Step Closer

 So with some really poor hatch rates from posted eggs I decided that it was time to buy a few hens so we could actually start to hatch out our own eggs. I already have some fine Indian Game cockerels to run with them. 

There is a Facebook group about rearing meat for the table and through that I got in contact with someone who had some young Indian Game pullets for sale. So I took a trip into deepest darkest Wales (via a small saw mill that had some specialist timber I was after) to buy some! 

Of course I ended up buying more than just this! 

He sold a trio of Plymouth Rock Hens, which when crossed with an Indian Game will produce a great meat bird (And this cross was used in the orginal Chicken Of Tomorrow competition so I have high hopes).

I also got 4 Indian Game POL pullets so I should be able to keep a pure flock of these going as well. But hopefully the Plymouth Rock hens will lay enough eggs in the next few weeks to get another batch in the incubator and replace our need to order in day old Ross Cobbs! 

There seems to be quite a few pens of chickens around at the moment! Anyone else can't help themselves when it comes to poultry?

Indian Game Chickens In Their New Pen

The young chickens we hatched out in February moved into their new pen this week.

The new pen is huge and so far they seem to love it.

A Freezer Full Of Chicken

The picture below is the culmination of a lot of time and work! 

All the meat chickens are now safely processed and in the freezer (this is only a third of it).

Christmas Dinner prep

I managed to get a bit of our Christmas dinner sorted on Thursday.

I picked out the biggest meat bird we have and processed him ready for the table.

Chicken Processing Mk2

I got myself more organised on Sunday and butchered 9 more chickens.

I set up a patio table with chopping boards on that could be scrubbed down (this is waste sheet material that can be thrown away afterwards). I sharpened my knife, had a steel to sharpen it as I went and two bowls of hot soapy water to keep everything clean. 

I also had two buckets, one for feathers (that can be composted) and one for feet and guts. I also had some plastic feed sacks on hand, one to sit on (it had rained in the night) and one to have on my lap to stop the wet birds from soaking my trousers. 

A large saucepan of water was also warming on the BBQ. 

The birds for slaughter were pulled out before they'd been fed and kept in a crate away from the others until their time came. 

I started with batched but found it was far better to do one at a time, slaughter, drain, dip in hot water, pluck. 

None of them went very quickly but I learnt that having the water the right temperature makes a huge difference. Unfortunately my thermometer doesn't seem to work so I just had to guess. One bird was dipped too hot so I ended up skinning that one as the skin ripped too easily. 

Once I had all the birds plucked I then wiped down and set up for gutting, never a nice job but it went quite quickly.

I separated the birds up into ones that looked good as whole birds and ones that were better jointed. I kept five birds whole and cut the others into breasts, whole legs and wings. 

I then used my new vacuum packer to bag the birds up and separate the jointed ones into meal sized portions. Three legs or breasts seemed about right for our family. 

I bagged and froze the stripped carcasses as well so I can make a big batch of stock when I get chance. 

I certainly felt more organised this time and it went without a hitch. That said there as some things I'd change: 

• I'd like a chicken plucker, it's not great doing them by hand. 
• I need a bigger saucepan or something to hot dip the birds into, mine is only just big enough and soon needs topping up with more hot water. 
• The bench I butchered them on was too low, my back was hurting as I was bending the whole time, I proper work bench would be ideal. 
• An outside sink would help an amazing amount, something I might have to consider installing! 

So some hard work, but the freezer has certainly been stocked up! 

I've still got six birds left and I'll leave these a while longer to see how big they get, it would be great to have some big ones to save having to buy a turkey for Christmas. 

What do you think? Is there anything you'd do differently to how I set it up this time?

Meat Birds At 10 Weeks Old

Really hard to get a good picture of these birds but you can see the growth they've had in just ten weeks! 

I think I'll be processing a good amount of these at the weekend as they seem to have reached a good size now.

I think for now I'll just be dry plucking by hand as I have very little equipment to help me, unless anyone else has any advice? 

I have been looking at the pluckers you can add to the end of a drill and using a hot water bath before hand. And by hot water bath I mean camping stove and a saucepan...

Depending on how processing goes I can see no reason why I won't be doing more birds like this next year!

Building A Free Chicken Coop!

My pasture chicken coops are working our great, fresh grass each day, helps to keep the chickens healthy.

My chicken plans change day by day though. At the moment I'm thinking that as well as having my two regular egg laying pens (for sales and for ourselves) and one mobile pen for meat birds (doing a few batches throughout the year to keep us supplied in meat) I also want to set up some breeding birds, so I can sell fertile eggs and point of lay pullets from a breed we'll pick as a family. 

My new coop built for free

For this I want to create some permanent pens, maybe a short row of them, each with a coop and a pair of runs off each that can be seeded and rotated. The idea being to keep a breeding trio or four in each pen, keep blood lines pure and chickens happy. 

I've already got one coop spare:

Spare coop - not the easiest to move! Houses a 10 birds though! 

And my mobile coop that I built a few years ago has been converted into my chick brooder now:

Chicken coop converted into a chick brooder - It might gain a extension yet as I'd like to do 30 bird batches rather than 20 (day old chicks are cheaper if you buy over 25 birds).

 I've learnt a lot from building lots of chicken coops over the years (I've built some at mum and dad's farm in the past as well as one for our old house that got covered in red mites - so I left it there). 

But one thing never changes - they're not cheap to build; wood, cladding and roofing material is always expensive and adds up quickly no matter how small it is. 

So the other day when dad offered me one of these pallet boxes for free I jumped at the chance. In fact he's offered me 20 as he will only burn them otherwise (If you're Herefordshire or Shropshire based drop me a line and I'm sure you can have one or two of them).

Some of what he orders comes in on them but the courier he uses makes it too expensive for him to use for shipping things on in them and many people collect anyway (he's a machinery dealer). 

They're 32" square and about 2ft high. Not a massive coop but ideal for around 3 or 4 birds. 

I took one home and started working on it. Got my eldest practicing her hammer skills one night, knocking nails over, she loved that!

First thing I did was to remove one side. 

It would have been easier to just cut a door way in and build a removable roof but I wanted it easier to clean and get into. Being able to sweep or scrape the droppings out is much easier than having to scoop it up and out. 

I then did what I consider essential for any chicken coop - I lifted it up off the ground. 

I lifted this up around 16 inches, this does two things: Removes anywhere for rats and mice to hide under the coop and give the chickens somewhere to shelter out of the rain without having to go in. 

The kids were helping, honest...

I then made the front removable. As I'm trying to keep cost to a minimum I used a french cleat type system, a piece of wood cut on 45 degrees means it slots nicely back into place.

This picture below shows the stop add at the bottom (one at the top as well) to make sure the front won't push in. 

The boy to show scale

The door was just a bit of scrap ply, I did use two old hinges there as well, a scrap of wood as a catch. 

  I then added the top of the pallet as a roof, adding in a 100mm (4inch) piece of timber to give it a bit of fall. The two open diagonal sides were then meshed to prevent predators entering the coop but maintaining good ventilation. 

 I had some old clear sheet material up the field a friend dropped off for me years ago, I added this on top of the wood on the roof as a waterproof layer. 

Not pretty but practical, much like myself...

 A perch at the back and a divide just in from the door, means a dark nest area. I'd like to make some roll away nest boxes in the future, that could work well in here.

French cleat in action  - saves on ironmongery! 

Nest area

This coop can be easily moved with a sack truck so at the moment it's down in the orchard, to be the cockerels new house - he's feeling a little down after being denied access to his ladies. 

A pin for Pinterest if you're into that type of thing...

Normally I hate when someone says something is built for free because of all the stuff they've got kicking around! But this time it's a waste material (the pallet box) and loads of bits I've got kicking around, I'm sure most could come up with some of these materials - maybe a bit of skip diving! 

I now need to treat the woodwork, but it should last a few years easily

The great thing is that with my eldest and youngest we built this coop within about an hour or so, it's well ventilated, big enough for 3 to 4 good sized chickens, is high enough off the ground from pests but also provides a bit of shelter under it, has a perch, nest area and can be locked up at night to keep foxes and badgers out. All it cost me a handful of screws! 

I have a feeling I'll be building a few more of these if my plans for creating some breeding pens for chickens takes shape, if not it's always handy to have spare pens for sick birds or if some need separating due to bullying or hatching out too many chicks, etc! 

What do you think to the coop? 

Would you use it or do you prefer something a little more pleasing to the eye?

Easy To Build Mobile Chicken Tractor For Under £120

I'm really pleased with my lately creation. 

I set myself a design brief on a good movable chicken coop, that's easy to construct and costs under £120 if you buy everything.

I'd been seeing a lot of chicken tractors in the states (on Justin Rhoydes YouTube channel) and I've always like the idea of having movable chicken tractors. The trouble is I end up leaving a pen in one place too long otherwise. 

One pen really caught my eye and that was one moved by a sack truck, why I'd never thought of moving them in this way before was beyond me. Suddenly I could move a much bigger coop easily and make it so it could fit a reasonable amount of birds in (the video that inspired me is here)

The trouble is they built it out of cattle panels, which are really popular in the states but not over here. 

That got me thinking about what we could use as an alternative, it was only when a friend came round and he suggested Heras panels, that the solution had been right in front of me the whole time (and was evening forming the pen for the chickens at the time!). 

Also they're cheap, strong(ish) and readily available. 

So I set about making the rest of the pen in the easiest way possible. 

Here are some key points:- 

• Easily houses ten birds.
• The roof is just a tarp (nowhere for red mites to hide) also easy and cheap to replace.
• Wheels on the back make it easy to move.
• Small access door on the front means you can get in if you need to.
• Food suspended with a spring feeder so no wasted food or grain left out overnight.
• Anti predator netting as a skirt around the outside so no need to shut the chickens in at night.
• no floor to the coop means no cleaning out and pastures are improved as it's moved along.
• Nest boxes easy to construct as they're made from builders buckets.  
• Perches are just cable tied to the heras, making adjustment easy if you need to. 
• Chickens are moved each day so the risk of picking up parasites is minimal, food consumption is reduced and pasture is improved. 
• Nest boxes are easily accessible from the back - my children now collect the eggs each day. 

I've been using this coop for over a month now and it's been great. You can see where it's been over that time and see the grass coming back at different rates, it's great that the hens are moved from their dropping each day. 

Moving it is easy (although I need to improve how it turns), so much so I've made up three of these coops, two for laying hens and a third for meat birds. 

Watch the video above to see it in action and let me know what you think. 

I'll draw up some plans and share them for free on here as well at a later date (when I get time) as well as doing a video on how I made it if people are interested. 

Always More Cockerels...

I'm not sure if it's true or not but there always seems to be more cockerels than hens when you hatch out chicks! 

Take this batch of chicks for example. Five hatched last October (very late - not planned!) and it turns out four are cockerels and only one is a hen!

The hen I'll keep as a laying bird but the boys have a different destiny, I can see four Sunday roasts, a few curries and at least a couple of risottos in front of me! 

Who else thinks that there seems to be more male than females when you hatch chickens or am I just being negative due to this last batch?

Wasted Eggs And Cleaning Out Chicken Coops

I'd rather naughtily left my mobile chicken coop full of dirty bedding since the chickens moved out from it last year. 

There's been no chickens living in it for the last six months and I just hadn't got around to emptying it out, although I had left the pop hole open. 

 It turns out that when some of my hens were free ranging over the winter one of them was using this to store her eggs! What a waste, but I've only got myself to blame and in the future I'll make sure I'll clean them out as soon as they're empty and to shut the blinking door! 

On a plus note I did build this coop big enough for my largest helper to fit in to clean it out! 

Where's the weirdest place you've ever found a clutch of eggs?

Killing A Cockerel For Dinner

This post contains pictures of dead animals and may offend some. 

Please don't read if you feel that it may upset you as it's not my intention to offend anyone or be controversial. I only want to give a fair account of my lifestyle and the way I'm trying to live. I use this blog as a diary and a record of what we've achieved here and I think this is an important part.

The cockerel is the light coloured chick by the hen.

This Sunday I killed a cockerel for our dinner. 

This has been done for thousands of years and yet when I tell people about it they think it's somehow "odd". My wife's friends at work can't believe that we do it, but I can think of little better than caring for something it's whole life that we're going to eat. 

This cockerel was largely free ranged most of his life, hatched with one of our chickens, from one of our own eggs back in July. He' had a good life, fed well, was looked after and cared for, with a nice patch to roam as he sees fit. 

He was always destined for the dinner table though as we can only really keep one cockerel at the moment and he started to become aggressive towards my girls, trying to attack them when they're in the garden. 

Killing an animal is not something I undertake lightly and it's not something I enjoy. My aim is to do it as calmly, quickly and painlessly as possible, I don't want the animal to be distressed.

I've killed many chickens over the years and I can do it instantly. The cockerel had been isolated the day before, making him easier to catch. I set myself up making sure everything I needed was close to hand and then I killed him first thing in the morning.

Tail feathers removed straight away

Hung to drain

Plucked whilst still warm

 I plucked him whilst he was still warm and found it much easier than normal. He was a good sized bird but the shape of the carcass is so different from the birds you buy in the supermarket that you wouldn't believe they were the same animal. They don't lie flat on the roasting dish and have much, much more leg meat and much less breast meat. There was also a lot more fat on this bird due to the natural grain I've fed him compared to concentrated feed he would have had on a commercial farm.

A real difference between leg meat and breast meat.

I roasted him for an hour and half, whilst he was roasting I also dug up parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes and leeks and got a few squashes from the shed. The only thing I didn't grow for dinner was the potatoes which came from an organic farm a few miles away. 

The leg meat was a bit tough in all honesty but it was perfect in a curry later in the week.

A chicken raised how we wanted on our own little homestead. Meat for two meals, bones for a stock and feathers for compost. 

Almost a closed circle. I need to increase how much food I produce for the chickens on our own land and grow quite a few more of them.

Anyone else raised any meat birds lately?