Process Chickens All Day

Phil and I both spent eleven hours today processing 56 chickens. From 6:30am to 6:30pm, with an hour off for lunch, we captured, butchered, processed, rinsed, bagged, weighed, and froze the birds. Despite the fact that they were sixteen weeks old (and some of the females may have been five months: probably not quite large enough to notice the last time, they were right on the cusp of laying eggs), I would guess that half the birds were a good bit under four pounds. Very disappointing.

And, to make it worse, we have a fairly good estimate of how many more birds we have to process (about 70 in the pen, and probably another ten or so wandering rogue), I could get a price per bird estimate in hard costs (the birds themselves and feed: not infrastructure or time spent processing). Our price per bird came to right about $17 per birds, an outrageous, breath-takingly awful expense.

Add on the extremely slow processing speed, which Phil estimated at about $7 per bird (!), and we have 3.5 pound birds that cost us $24 to grow.

Of course, we had heavy, heavy losses. Out of 350 birds we purchased, we expect to process just over 200. Had we brought more to processing, clearly our bottom line would have been better. Probably not enough better to make it worth it to grow and sell, but maybe we'll try again nonetheless.

If we do attempt broilers again, I think we'll keep them in movable pens. The birds will be better protected from predators and, I think, the elements. And we will have an accurate perspective on how old the birds are: no more girls squeezing by an extra month, or large boys dying a year early.

So, live and learn. We keep paying tuition. Life goes on.

Jadon and Isaiah helped with the weighing. They had a little assembly line of writing the weights on the bags and on a reference paper. Initially resistant, by the end we were laughing and having a good time.

And then we attempted no bake cookies. Of the seven ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, cocoa, peanut butter, vanilla, and oats), most are different than I used growing up, and they never turn out quite the same as I remember from childhood. But I cut up homegrown apples and the boys dipped the hardened cookies and ate the apples and had a happy close of day.