Replies

We haven’t gotten them since because they’re more expensive to buy and raise than a store bought bird. We did let ours go a week or two long because of not thinking about hunting season Coming along at harvest processing time and if we did it again, we’d process them in two batches, males one day and females a week later. I like a 4lb bird but our choices were 3lb hen and 4lb rooster or 4lb hen — 5 lb rooster. I think we ended up with 5.5-6lb roosters since we ran late and they were a little tough. We got brown meat birds — red ranger type birds too though. Good thing I suppose though because you can’t go a couple of weeks over on the Cornish Cross. They’d all drop dead by then.

I should have taken a video of my plucker. Not sure I even got a picture. I took the gear box off my finish mower, ran it in reverse to slow it down and bolted a round piece of thick aluminum to the 16” pulley and had plucker fingers mounted into the plate(The moving/spinning part). Had most of a 55 gallon plastic drum, with plucker fingers facing in, mounted stationary. It ran off of the PTO and 800rpm on the engine was just the right plucking speed. Cleaned them up quick and only broke one leg out of 25 birds. I raised the birds when they were 1 day old until they got feathered out and then brought them to my neighbor’s because he had an 8 foot tall dog kennel. When processing day came, I just drove my chicken plucker to his place.

There was one meat bird hen who had different markings and the only bird I found with similar markings is the Buckeye dual purpose breed. Daughter said she’s pretty, we can’t kill her so I stuck her in with our laying hens. She never did fit in personality-wise but she started laying eggs, 2 every 3 days or so. Big pinkish brown eggs. She grew just as fast as the meat birds, kept eating like one but never got oversized. Weird. Coons finally got them all one night. I got the coons though.