It's hot. Lower 100s and as you know...these meat chickens don't do heat well. So Steve and I were talking on Tuesday that we ought to go ahead and process them as quick as possible before we loose more (we've lost two).
So yesterday morning, he set five apart and took away their feed...still had their water, of course.
I made sure they had water all day but at 4 pm, I went out to start setting up for the process when I saw THREE of the five in the throes of dying! ACK!! Steve had piled up all this 1” thick 4x8 lumber on top of the cages (they have hinged lids for access) and had jammed a big cedar post into the fence to hold the lumber on (we were expecting thunderstorms), so it was extremely difficult for me to get that lumber off. I started pulling at it with my bare hands trying to get to them chickens and cool them off before they died.
Two of them literally died in the minutes it took for me to get the lumber off...I was frantic and felt awful. I did manage to get one and hose it off and save it. About that time, Steve came home. He buried the two dead ones and then we processed the other three we'd set apart.
Very disheartening after all the work I'd put in to them, but it's the chance you take letting them live this long in this heat.
We have four left and they're getting processed this evening. Lord willing.
You need to set a small sprinkler upside down in the lid and just crank it up whenever.
Oh gosh...I hate that. I’m sorry. We’ve decided to do ours earlier next year too. If we start them at the end of April, then they’ll be done the end of June.
How’s your BP?
Mrsnad
Hey 2J! Pardon my stupid city-dwelling question, but why were the 2 chickens that died while you were trying to get to them not just processed like any other chicken that was freshly killed? Does the stress do something to the meat or something? I just don’t have any experience with home grown meat so I’m totally ignorant of the process.