Quoted:
That is outstanding. How long does it take you to process your chickens from running around to in the freezer? That would make a great how to thread by the way, a chicks to fried chicken kinda thing, with a break down of time and total cost vs total lbs of processed and stored meat. My hat is off to you.
There is already an outstanding chicken thread right here in the forum:
Chickens 101
but I'll interject a couple more cents-worth.
IMHO, chickens are one of the most valuable survival/preparedness "items" you can add to your collection. They are an almost self-sustaining supply of high-quality, low-fat meat, eggs, soup stock, and garden fertilizer. They're easy to raise, help keep down the bug population in check, and in a survival situation would be valuable trading material. More and more towns and even small cities are making exceptions to livestock rules to allow people to raise two or three laying hens (roosters are less well accepted), so a lot of people who might think they can't raise chickens may find that they actually can... and should.
A confession: the two birds pictured in the OP weren't technically processed within 200 feet of the house; I'd forgotten that for this particular batch we took them to a Mennonite neighbor who processes live poultry for several folks in the surrounding area. But I don't feel bad about the seeming deceit - this was actually the first batch we've had processed like this, and we can and do do it ourselves so I don't think I was violating the "spirit" of the post
. I believe part of survival/preparedness is using your time efficiently, and if I can pay somebody $1 a bird ($50 in this case) to save me two days of work, I'm all for it!
When we do process them ourselves, it usually takes my wife and I two days to do 50. The first day is spent dispatching, plucking, cleaning and cooling them, and cleaning up the mess. That's good days work - my old-ish bones are feeling it pretty good by sundown. They cool down overnight in refrigerators or ice water, depending on how much room we've got in the fridges at the time. The next day we cut some of them up (usually leave 10-15 whole), vacuum-pack and start freezing them. We also start a huge stockpot (a 104-qt. jobby that I got from Army surplus, on an outdoor propane "banjo" cooker) using all the bones, necks, and other bits and pieces that don't get packaged up or thrown to the cats and dogs.
One of the things I'd caution a beginner to watch out for if trying to do this many birds at once (and it can be done - the very first batch I ever did was 50) is to make sure you've got a way to keep everything cool when you need to. 50 chickens takes up a lot of refrigerator and freezer space, and you can't just plop 'em all in there at once and expect them to freeze quickly enough. You have to have enough airflow and overall cooling capacity so that you're not raising the temp of the coolers by too much at any one time... we generally put in as many as we feel comfortable with to start freezing, and keep the rest on ice. Once the fridge/freezer has had a couple of hours to catch up, we'll rearrange a bit and stick in a few more - etc. etc. We've got three refrigerators and three freezers of various capacities, all together.
We estimated this time that we had between $4 and $5 in feed in each bird, because we really try to fatten these guys up quickly. They do free-range for some of their food, but this particular breed just isn't all that great at it - they want lots of food, and want it fast! Our layers and the heirloom breeds are another story... they'll actively wander around all day, and can easily find 90% of their own food in the spring, summer and fall.
We buy the Cornish X chicks from a hatchery, so we've got another $1.25 in each of them there too. The layers and heirlooms we raise from our own eggs, and have an incubator setup so we can control what's hatching when.
If TSHTF, or some other catastrophe befalls us, we probably won't be raising mail-order Cornish X meat chickens. But all of the ones we have are edible; they just don't put on weight quite as fast (or as much total) as those do. Some of the ones we have are actually not too many steps removed from jungle fowl, and would do just fine turned out to completely free range in the wild... the Longhorn cattle of the chicken world.
If you can't tell, I'm a fan. The funny part is, I'm not all that fond of chicken - I'm a ribeye guy at heart
. But I've got a great deal of respect for them as a survival tool, and they're easy enough for just about anybody to raise.