RAISING MEAT CHICKENS: The Whole Process

big approximately about a hundred and sixty almost 170 square feet in here and we got it all ready for a hundred meat chickens coming corners crosses they'll be here in two days actually they got shipped out today there are some feeders and stuff we got some bedding for the first week we're gonna have them on bedding and then after that we'll use just regular hay but we're excited yeah I'm very excited there is some feed to get started for the first week we're gonna use some just starter grower we went all natural I know a lot of people want recommend medicated feed but we're gonna try to do everything as natural as possible there's a couple hundred pound bags of feed that they'll start after the first week of starter grower and so even ordered them from a place that we felt real comfortable and being as natural as it could be so but they'll be here in two days and what I'm I do is I'm gonna do a video series actually it will all be one but I'll do some clips here and there of from start to finish when they come here to butchering and so should be a pretty neat video when I'm all done gonna take about seven half eight weeks but there we are all right guys I'm gonna introduce you to our new go check them out back here and there they are hi guys whoop door slam scared him a little so that's a hundred and four chickens we had 105 but one died and but they all the rest seem to look pretty lively right now well that's what they look we kind of barricade him actually this whole thing here is part of the coop but we barricaded them in here with these bales and boxes because they keep trying to get out and they keep running all the way over here and I want to keep them under the light for the first week at least and but there they are take a look at hi guys nice and toasty down there supposed to be a nice hot weekend too so it should be pretty good all right week two actually it's been about nine days and we open the poop the whole poop up to them but this is a week to update and they are pretty big they're about three times the size or wings all have feathers on them they're getting tail feathers as you can see and they're pretty active now they eat like crazy drink like crazy that's the water off the ground but okay here is our weekly update on the chickens our meat chicken these guys are four weeks old now they're getting a lot bigger running out of room in the coop eating non-stop so they're looking good well it is week number five actually it's a little over five weeks about five and a half weeks I didn't get a chance this last weekend to do a video but as you can see they are just getting big this compared to my hand but they are growing yes they eat so much food at anybody but they are growing big overtaking the coop now so we are approximately two and a half weeks from butchering day so we're getting all ready for that we're pretty much ready for it you've got to do a few little things get you know our packing they're all nice and healthy we have ninety nine still quick they have mostly have all their feathers I've been leaving it open at night because it's been so hot I'm leaving these two windows up week seven okay week seven update one more time one more time week seven okay here's the week seven update of our meat chickens and they are fat and they're dirty [Music] they're waiting almost every single week they were cleaned out now it's almost time to go so there's a week 7 update on our meat chickens today is butchering day i'ma show you our setup there are our killing cones well we'll do is drain them into buckets and from there they'll go over to here this is just a basic turkey fryer we use it will heat it up to about 150 degrees and then from there they get dunked about 30 seconds or so they'll go over to here the plucker and this is actually brand new so it's never been used before then from there they'll go over here to the butchering table there'll be two of us over here and we'll be sitting here and got plenty of knives I got a hose here to rinse off with as well but then we will butcher them and then these we will pack with ice and cold water and we'll put them back in here to soak once they are all cleaned up so pretty pretty neat little system here we'll go from the cones to the to the scalding to the plucker to the table there and then after they soak we're gonna take them in the garage and we'll pack them all in in plastic bags so we're getting ready to butcher these are called killing cones and these are this is how we butcher the chicken we do two quick slices [Music] what we do is you dip it in here about a hundred forty hundred fifty degrees for about 20 to 30 seconds each other I want to you want to get all the feathers all the way down we all won't come off as good in a flutter I don't want to stir it around and return it all [Music] good girl [Music] [Music] yep got a few left on there but some of the bigger ones you can pluck off it's pretty good pretty clean right then go over the table and I'll show you how we cut it up first thing I'll do is we'll take the legs off and if you want your legs like that you can go backwards these two knuckles here I'll try to do this one a little better you want to get right in between them and it almost comes off by itself all right I'm gonna take the head chopped off now we have to bird we have to got it what we do is see this little face here can pull the skin up we'll make a little incision you'll want a big incision because you'll cut into the breast rip it apart now we didn't feed these chickens because we knew we were gonna butcher umber right here you can see this part up to get this close right here is a crop they're not eating today this part right here would be full of food so we don't feed them because we don't want that full so what you want to do is separate though the windpipe and esophagus then you pull them right out like that bra your esophagus and windpipe all together like that so what we'll do is then we come around to the back and you see the rear end here we'll pop it up and you want to come just a little bit up from that and make a little incision and what we'll do is we'll stick your thumb in and a lot of times this will come out with it not all the time but most the time if you can get it you might have to do a second there are your long are you want this right Kristen all right Kristin takes this man in here also I didn't bring it out usually it comes out without is the this is the heart so in there is left you can look in there the only thing left in there there's a long on that side and a long on outside so you go in there Jer one long out maybe I can get a hold of it my fingers are all slippery and then you'll tear the other long sorry I'd like a smaller neighborhood are using this one no that's a long there's the other piece of alone so we're all cleaned out inside the next step is we'll go down here you want to leave this fat if you can you want to just make a small cut down here a small cut down here and around pull that out then also you can either remove two things you can remove the sack off the top here that's an oil sack or you can remove the whole thing I remove the whole thing because we don't use it so and there you have a butchered chicken and that is a your chicken then we take it over here well throw it in with thank you all right well we officially are done we did what was our final chicken count 96 my core 95 96 chicken so we got them all butchered today we're just cleaning up now as you can see there's some on iacs or something something for taking home legs and stuff like that but wait at 96 butchered clean on ice those are just a few of them but we did it

Channel: The Cook Family Homestead

Views: 2,157,679

Rating: 4.4874825 out of 5

Keywords: raising meat chickens, meat chickens, homestead chickens, cornish cross, raising chickens, egg to table, chick to table, raising cornish cross, chickens, how to raise chickens, homesteading, homestead, modern homesteading, living off grid, self sufficient living, clean living, raising your own food

Id: 1CBfORVzpnU

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2018