My son and I raised 25 cornish cross broilers. We processed them at 8 weeks old. The smallest dressed out at 4Lbs 6oz and the biggest at 6Lbs 9oz. We’ve already put 2 on the smoker. They were some count too. We raised them in two 6’x6’ chicken tractors. We moved them all over the yard. We put them in the tractors as soon as they grew feathers. We will be growing a lot more in the future.

Thanks!
Been meaning to try the tractors for a while.
I heard some people say they put them between the rows in their garden.
Weed and fertilize garden while growing chicken.
👍

We raised our first 15 this year as well. We did well until we dipped them into the water before we pulled the feathers. We got them a little too hot.

I like the garden idea. As far as the scalding goes, we warmed our water to 150 degrees. It worked perfect. We bought one of those Backyard Chicken Pluckers. Worked great. We had one broke leg and one broke wing out of 25 birds. Not bad I don’t think. That thing plucked them in about 10-15 seconds.

Cool deal. My brother and his wife grew some for a couple years and stopped for some reason. The best ones he grew were named Freedom Rangers. They were tasty and tender.

What did you feed them?

We did 150 as well but plucked them by hand. I think we left them in the water a little long. When we do it again we had considered buying a plucker. Where did you get the one y’all used.

I'll find out what kind my brothers friend has too.

Thanks.

We have used the Whizbang Chicken Plucker by Herrick Kimball. It works great on 2 chickens that have been in 145 degree water for about 25-30 seconds. It did not do as great on 22-24lb turkeys that we just did.

https://www.planetwhizbang.com/poultry-processing

Jeremy

That's what my brother used.

Okay, reading this brought back some serious funny memories for me!!! The first time I was involved in a chicken pluckin' I was about eight years old. My two cousins and I were staying with my grandparents for the weekend, and my granny decided to teach us all about harvesting a chicken. Granny and Pop had a huge chicken yard and sold eggs and chickens. FIRST... she had us catch one of those nasty mean [white leghorn] roosters from the chicken yard. After that ordeal, she grabbed that mean old bird by the neck and commenced swinging it in a circle. Well, we were all kids and did not know what the heck was happening. Granny slug that rooster around and around for the longest time and slung it down on the ground. KA-THUNK!!!

It lay there about a minute and then it jumped up drunk as a skunk and ran across the road staggering the entire way. Needless to say, she never snapped the neck!! All of us kids thought it came back to life!!! LOL!! Granny told my boy cousin to run down the road and get Mr. Singleton, a family friend, and ask him to catch the rooster. After an ordeal chasing that drunk rooster, Mr. Singleton brought it back and snapped its neck.

Granny had a big old black cast iron cauldron over a fire and dunked that rooster in it!! Then the feathers were flying!!!! When that was done, she cut that rooster open and described every vital organ in that bird and told us what it did. I will never forget that lesson. We were gobsmacked at her wealth of knowledge.......we had fried chicken that night too!!
..

A tually bought the plucker off of Amazon. We fed them the starter from Tractor Supply for about 4 weeks then switched to the meatbird feed. We fed them twice a day. They grazed on the grass and clover too.

Not counting the cost of the processing equipment you bought, have you figured up how much money you had in each bird?

Yes. $5.60 per bird

That's not bad at all. How much did the chicks cost?

Chicks costed $1.50 a piece.

We bought them from Valley Hatchery.

Thanks.

lol

We use to have chicken killings about every third summer. Grandpa would chase them down and wring their necks, pulling their heads off. The women folks would do the processing and plucking. We boys were responsible for hauling the washtubs of guts and heads off and dumping them down in the woods for the varmints to eat. In the middle of this deal, we'd have 4 or 5 headless chickens running around bumping into trees, the storm cellar, each other, and whatever else their path crossed.