Saturday, September 25, 2010

Guess what we did yesterday?

It was the end of the line for the chickens.
Well  the end of the line with us, and the start of the conveyor belt for them. I'm sure I completely traumatized Nathan as he watched the chickens get hung upside down on a device that resembles those spinning dry cleaners carrousel's, but the chickens just disappeared through the wall never to be seen again.
Not until we pick them up frozen and bagged on Monday anyways.

I know we bought the chicken plucker and spent hours putting it together.
But the fact is, we couldn't coordinate Chris' time off with enough good weather to get the chicken processing done ourselves. (especially knowing he would probably take us hours per chicken)

I'm also pretty sure that chickens should be "finished" at about 16 weeks, and these guys were nearing 5 months. I'm hoping we don't end up with stringy nasty meat. I guess there may be a lot of marinated chicken in our future if we did wait to long and have "18 STEW birds"

And...I have a horrible confession...
at 6:30 this morning Chris and I were rounding up the birds and shoving them in the dog crate in the back of the truck. *** Our dog crate is the greatest thing EVER BTW. I was convinced we needed an old horse trailer, but we've managed to move all our animals in this over sized metal cage and the back of the truck- so Awesome- especially considering a horse trailer isn't really in the budget for awhile***  Anyways, The Chickens were not very impressed that we were scooping them up, and taking them somewhere. And that the somewhere didn't seem to be to their outside pen. A few of them got right cranky. Or more like a few of the roosters got territorial/defensive/aggressive??? One of them literally attacked my boot. I'm not talking pecking at the toes. More like full on fly towards me with wings beating and start pecking at my shin.
Luckily my rubber boots go nearly to my knee so it did no damage.
~Except making me shriek like a girl, side stepping (or running-whatever) away from insane rooster. And then refusing to pick up any more of the roosters.~
In my defense I did haul the rest of the hens out to the truck.
By WOULD NOT go back near the Roosters.
Yeah, not my proudest "I'm a true farm girl" moment.
My only excuse is I was incredibly tired and this seemed really really early to be chicken wrangling.

I really don't think I could work at the chicken processing plant. You can't see him really well in this picture (the combination of bad lighting and me not wanting to be a total freak getting in every ones face with my camera- although I'm sure they all thought I was anyways taking pictures) But the dude is carrying 3 of our chickens at once upside down towards the scary looking chicken loading machine.


And here's a closer (as close as I was willing to get) picture of the chickens being loaded for their "last ride" on the conveyor belt/dry cleaners rack/ medieval torture device.

I have to admit I'm pretty relieved that there just gone. Without me having to stick my hand in a freshly slaughtered chicken and remove...well you get the picture.
And the really, really, really best part. It's like having my chores cut in half. Not having to feed and water them anymore.

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