I feel pretty great about our first experience of Coop to Freezer! I'm really happy to have the experience under my belt and hope this makes a difference in our journey to being as self sufficient as we can be! We learned a lot and have since found some great short cuts! We plan to butcher again this weekend with some extra roosters and drakes! Thank you to the birds that feed us and gave us this experience!
Amazing how things have changed since I was young. We had to pluck them by hand. One day my grandfather woke us up at 5 am told us “ rise and shine it’s chicken plucking time” he wasn’t kidding he killed 50 chickens. He bought a huge chest freezer. Thank you for the memories. Yous done a great job 👏 some wonderful eating there. Thank you for sharing
That's what my mom said when she saw the plucker :) ! She said, "no chicken plucking party?" lol. We're hoping to switch to a chest freezer soon! Your so welcome for the memories and thank you so much for always being here for us!
Hey I am 19 I live in South Australia and I am independent living and your video is very helpful because I am now spending zero $$ because I harvest my own food and your video has given me a good direction in a simple life by saving money. ❤❤❤
@@johngross7336 nah I don’t spend a dime that’s what I am saying I’m some parts of Australia you are allowed to well in my situation have free food and fresh produce and I get free land on a acreage . But yeah I get what you mean but I don’t spend a dime and live the life I’ve always wanted
I was raised in the country, raising & butchering animals was a part of life. We always knew that the birds & pigs would be food. We'd have what we called a chicken plucking party. My dad would just put the chicken's head between 2 big nails in the top of a stump, stretch it back & chop the heat off with a big chopping knife. And we plucked by hand, no machine.
It sounds like you had a very wonderful and engaging childhood! Too many of us do not experience or understand where our food comes from! While we've had animals processed, this is the first time we did the entire process ourselves... we were so thankful for the experience! We plan to have a chicken plucking party this weekend again!
I am Processing my first roosters today. Between TSC and hatching my own, I just have too many roosters. I have a rooster fraternity of free rangers. Over 20. My other roosters are in breed specific coops for breeding and protection purposes. I’m equally terrified and excited. Hurricane Helene showed me a lot of holes in my prepping plan. 19 days without power and now 45 days without internet. Processing my own birds is a skill that I need. I’m not quite ready to process my drakes yet. Baby steps. Thank you so much for showing your process. 💛💛💛💛
I realize you had to black out the actual process of killing the chicken due to UA-cam rules, but I really had hoped to see this so that I could learn how to do that with my extra chicks. Anyhow. The rest of the video is extremely helpful. Thanks!
Yes UA-cam is strict. I still have the raw footage of this if you send me an email at the address on my about page I can isolate that part and send it to you. Loopholes 😉
Hey mate great video handy tip for the future when taking the crop out is if you make a cut straight down the back of the neck you can pull the skin and wind pipe ect away and get your finger in and pull the crop out real easy. Little less fiddly if thay makes sense. Just lay the bird breast down, pull the head off and then cut straight down between the shoulders almost pull everything away from the neck which will be attached to the crop then pull the crop out and you may need to cut it once pulled out enough. I work on a chook farm in Australia 🇦🇺 Great to see people doing their own home kill!
Really well made video Ashley. We just harvested 20 Rhode Island Reds over 2 days. We managed to get 10 done each day. After setup it took my wife & I half a day to do 10. I wanted to try a heritage bird and hatch our own all the way to butcher. I just gave them grower feed earlier and harvested at 9 weeks. It worked out ok but I didn’t get all the feathers off in the plucker without tearing up the skin. It was ok for our first time too. I didn’t show as much detail as you guys I did more of a vlog style. Enjoyed the video, You guys did great though and those chickens looked pretty plump. Chad.
Thanks Chad! I think it's a lot more rewarding and fulfilling caring for them from hatch all the way up to processing day! They were given Turkey Grower the first few weeks and while at the fair, that extra protein in turkey feed pushes them to gain faster. They were chunky fellows! We didn't have issues with the skin but I may need to skin the ducks and roosters being processed this weekend. We need to get our ratios under control but some are in molt and skinning will be easier than pulling pins. We were torn how to do the video, but I have done a true "how to" in awhile. Need more Evergreen videos. Congrats on processing your RIR! Self sufficiency here we come!!
Girl I had meat birds but to scared to do them up. I have got to do some roosters I’m dreading it but I watched you and you have inspired me to do this thing. I will be on a wing and a prayer when I do this.
I'm so proud of you guys for doing this! I personally can't dispatch the way you did, I CD instead. You did a great job explaining the process and showing the steps.
It was tough I'm not going to lie! I watched your video on chicken processing after the fact and am still interested in that method as well because sometimes your not as sure with a knife as you think you are. Thanks for watching friend!
Enjoyed your video. Your place looks beautiful. We raised a bunch of Cornish cross last year still have a bunch in the freezer so we didn’t need to raise them this year. Easy fun and satisfying and delicious. Have a great day, lisa@moneypit homestead
Awww thank you! Would you believe it that it was all a corn field 11 years ago!!! That's always so nice knowing that you have meat in the freezer! THanks for visiting us Lisa!!!
I know this is an older video, but just in case anybody reads this - If you keep the feet (which you should out of respect, for dog treats, use in stock, etc), it's really easy if you don't cut the feet off first. Process the rest of the chicken as usual, then at the end, dunk the feet back into the scalder for 15-20 seconds or so. The skin will peel right off. It's a lot easier to do this before you cut the feet off as you can hold onto the rest of the chicken while scalding.
We’re processing our birds tomorrow.. We chop their heads off, definitely a personal preference though. But the crawl won’t contaminate the meat, if you hit it just rinse it out lol.. It’s the hardest thing getting all the lungs out. We’re doing 26 birds, I had 38 but a hawk got ahold of a few 😫. Oh get a set of rubber style gloves for when you’re dunking them, if you want I can send you the link for the ones we have?
ohwow, thanks for the road cone usage. I had wondered if I could use the one I have, my first time today to do birds too, also a couple weeks overdue as life got in the way haha. My chickens are so fat and may not fall into the cone very well but I will find out
better to flip the bird over so that you get the feet in the scalder as well so that the skin on the feet comes off and you can then use the feet for some amazing broth. If you don't want to use the feet there are loads of people who do and will buy them from you.
Good to know! My pups would fight you over feet. We just freeze them and use them as treats and use pieced out bird carcasses for our broth but I’d love to try it using the feet.
about to do some chickens in the near future. Will be making the cones out of 5 gallon buckets but when I seen your safety cone i laughed cause i had that same idea. been watching numerous vids lately cause everyone does things a lil different. scalding temp, knife work, etc . so Im just getting ideas. pretty sure this will go faster then deer and hogs that I have done in the past.
@@MulberryBranchFarm They’re doing great! We’re a couple weeks away still. I need to sit down with Matt to schedule the day so I can make sure we have everything we need.
I would have to have a sharp pair of scissors just for bird butchering purposes. I’m not that confident with a knife and chicken blood lol. Also I like chicken hearts
I've gotten a lot better with a knife lol I'm not as "scary with it" anymore as Mark would say LOL. A good pair of meat shears are worth their weight in gold and would probably be easier with some of the butchering!
They’ve lived a better and happier life than anything you buy at a grocery store. It’s so pitiful seeing the trucks full of sad dirty half dead looking birds that drive by.
@@MulberryBranchFarm they look like happy birds! I hate the caged birds too. Maybe if we hadn’t had chickens growing up I wouldn’t have paid that much attention to the ones in the trucks and knew how different they looked and smelled from the ones we had. I honestly didn’t think our chickens smelled bad, the ones on the truck reek!
You can't be self-sustainable with Cornish cross chickens though. They're commercial Frankenstein breed that can't be bred. Having to run to a hatchery every year is the opposite of being self-reliant. Get into to Heritage breeds and practice selective breeding.
I agree but the purpose of this video is to teach a skill that helps you to become self sufficient. We definitely aren’t singing the praises of this breed. We use them as a 4h project for my daughter and that’s the only reason we have them. The video is to help people learn to process their own birds not to push a specific breed. We’re looking at Bresse’s but I prefer dual purpose birds like Orpington and Plymouth Rock personally. 😊
Even if we were to shoot this fellow in the head he would still twitch even with the brain being destroyed. It’s just the last few twitches. They still twitch and even “run” if the head is completely removed. Also with head removal the heart stops and doesn’t effectively push out the blood. It affects the taste and can cause bruising with the flopping around that they still do even if the head is removed. Now the cone helps with that but the blood sits and doesn’t pump out
Funny story... My husband turned it on and put his arm in (this is totally why women live longer) and he came out with a hairless arm lol. It is a little intimidating but it really is a time saver if you're going to be butchering a lot every year
i very like butcher or hunter girl .and i wish one day marry with this model girl. please if have videos of it animals putting in youtube@@MulberryBranchFarm
I find many newbies are encouraged seeing other beginners complete a process successfully. A “if she can, I can” mentality. For what it’s worth I tripped through 4 birds to get the hang of it before filming
We’ll if we were woke I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be showing people how to harvest their own meat… we’d be pushing lab cultured meats. The term life cycle has been around much longer than anything woke has been. Just another term they’ve stolen and bastardized
I feel pretty great about our first experience of Coop to Freezer! I'm really happy to have the experience under my belt and hope this makes a difference in our journey to being as self sufficient as we can be! We learned a lot and have since found some great short cuts! We plan to butcher again this weekend with some extra roosters and drakes! Thank you to the birds that feed us and gave us this experience!
Amazing how things have changed since I was young. We had to pluck them by hand. One day my grandfather woke us up at 5 am told us “ rise and shine it’s chicken plucking time” he wasn’t kidding he killed 50 chickens. He bought a huge chest freezer. Thank you for the memories. Yous done a great job 👏 some wonderful eating there. Thank you for sharing
That's what my mom said when she saw the plucker :) ! She said, "no chicken plucking party?" lol. We're hoping to switch to a chest freezer soon! Your so welcome for the memories and thank you so much for always being here for us!
Hey I am 19 I live in South Australia and I am independent living and your video is very helpful because I am now spending zero $$ because I harvest my own food and your video has given me a good direction in a simple life by saving money. ❤❤❤
Aww thank you for this comment! That’s our goal for sharing these experiences 😊❤️❤️❤️❤️
You are still spending $$ to feed your chickens but it's better meat for sure than store bought.
@@johngross7336 nah I don’t spend a dime that’s what I am saying I’m some parts of Australia you are allowed to well in my situation have free food and fresh produce and I get free land on a acreage . But yeah I get what you mean but I don’t spend a dime and live the life I’ve always wanted
I was raised in the country, raising & butchering animals was a part of life. We always knew that the birds & pigs would be food. We'd have what we called a chicken plucking party. My dad would just put the chicken's head between 2 big nails in the top of a stump, stretch it back & chop the heat off with a big chopping knife. And we plucked by hand, no machine.
It sounds like you had a very wonderful and engaging childhood! Too many of us do not experience or understand where our food comes from! While we've had animals processed, this is the first time we did the entire process ourselves... we were so thankful for the experience! We plan to have a chicken plucking party this weekend again!
I am Processing my first roosters today. Between TSC and hatching my own, I just have too many roosters. I have a rooster fraternity of free rangers. Over 20. My other roosters are in breed specific coops for breeding and protection purposes. I’m equally terrified and excited. Hurricane Helene showed me a lot of holes in my prepping plan. 19 days without power and now 45 days without internet. Processing my own birds is a skill that I need. I’m not quite ready to process my drakes yet. Baby steps. Thank you so much for showing your process. 💛💛💛💛
I wish I had that plucker. Having to do two roosters by myself and your video is very helpful. Oh. We call that end, The Whistler.
I realize you had to black out the actual process of killing the chicken due to UA-cam rules, but I really had hoped to see this so that I could learn how to do that with my extra chicks. Anyhow. The rest of the video is extremely helpful. Thanks!
Yes UA-cam is strict. I still have the raw footage of this if you send me an email at the address on my about page I can isolate that part and send it to you. Loopholes 😉
First time I take a go at it today! So proud of
myself. Thank you for sharing your video to us.
Congrats! The first step is the hardest! You'll be a pro in no time ;)
@ I made soup with the chicken. It was cross ayam cenami and leghorn so it had to be hidden hehe. Thanks again!
Hey mate great video handy tip for the future when taking the crop out is if you make a cut straight down the back of the neck you can pull the skin and wind pipe ect away and get your finger in and pull the crop out real easy. Little less fiddly if thay makes sense.
Just lay the bird breast down, pull the head off and then cut straight down between the shoulders almost pull everything away from the neck which will be attached to the crop then pull the crop out and you may need to cut it once pulled out enough.
I work on a chook farm in Australia 🇦🇺
Great to see people doing their own home kill!
Thanks so much for the advice! I appreciate it!
Great video! We have to do the duty tonight and needed a refresher.
From 4-H to 4-course meal. I must say, that was quite interesting to watch from start to finish. Well done, you two.
I LOVE that! 4H to 4 Course... gotta remember that for later!!! Thank you so much for sticking around and watching!
@@MulberryBranchFarm My pleasure. Maybe there's a t-shirt in there somewhere for ya all lol.
@@ChristmasOnCrestline I'm feeling the inspiration to create one coming on! LOL!
Really well made video Ashley. We just harvested 20 Rhode Island Reds over 2 days. We managed to get 10 done each day. After setup it took my wife & I half a day to do 10. I wanted to try a heritage bird and hatch our own all the way to butcher. I just gave them grower feed earlier and harvested at 9 weeks. It worked out ok but I didn’t get all the feathers off in the plucker without tearing up the skin. It was ok for our first time too. I didn’t show as much detail as you guys I did more of a vlog style. Enjoyed the video, You guys did great though and those chickens looked pretty plump. Chad.
Thanks Chad! I think it's a lot more rewarding and fulfilling caring for them from hatch all the way up to processing day! They were given Turkey Grower the first few weeks and while at the fair, that extra protein in turkey feed pushes them to gain faster. They were chunky fellows! We didn't have issues with the skin but I may need to skin the ducks and roosters being processed this weekend. We need to get our ratios under control but some are in molt and skinning will be easier than pulling pins. We were torn how to do the video, but I have done a true "how to" in awhile. Need more Evergreen videos. Congrats on processing your RIR! Self sufficiency here we come!!
I like the cone idea! I hang the by their feet, but I will switch to a cone.
Girl I had meat birds but to scared to do them up. I have got to do some roosters I’m dreading it but I watched you and you have inspired me to do this thing. I will be on a wing and a prayer when I do this.
You got this! It's a learning process so give yourself some grace on the first few you do. After that you'll be pro ;)
I'm so proud of you guys for doing this! I personally can't dispatch the way you did, I CD instead.
You did a great job explaining the process and showing the steps.
It was tough I'm not going to lie! I watched your video on chicken processing after the fact and am still interested in that method as well because sometimes your not as sure with a knife as you think you are. Thanks for watching friend!
Enjoyed your video. Your place looks beautiful. We raised a bunch of Cornish cross last year still have a bunch in the freezer so we didn’t need to raise them this year. Easy fun and satisfying and delicious. Have a great day, lisa@moneypit homestead
Awww thank you! Would you believe it that it was all a corn field 11 years ago!!! That's always so nice knowing that you have meat in the freezer! THanks for visiting us Lisa!!!
How do you know when they are ready to butcher?😮
It’s great that you got them all done,
you did awesome with them and now you’ve gotten to try your new feather machine!☺️
We're so happy that they're all processed and that machine was a LIFESAVER!!!
I know this is an older video, but just in case anybody reads this - If you keep the feet (which you should out of respect, for dog treats, use in stock, etc), it's really easy if you don't cut the feet off first. Process the rest of the chicken as usual, then at the end, dunk the feet back into the scalder for 15-20 seconds or so. The skin will peel right off.
It's a lot easier to do this before you cut the feet off as you can hold onto the rest of the chicken while scalding.
Great tip!
❤🎉Great Job. Harvesting and teaching. Thank you so very much again ✝️💖
Thank you kindly!
We’re processing our birds tomorrow.. We chop their heads off, definitely a personal preference though. But the crawl won’t contaminate the meat, if you hit it just rinse it out lol.. It’s the hardest thing getting all the lungs out. We’re doing 26 birds, I had 38 but a hawk got ahold of a few 😫. Oh get a set of rubber style gloves for when you’re dunking them, if you want I can send you the link for the ones we have?
Beautiful! ❤
ohwow, thanks for the road cone usage. I had wondered if I could use the one I have, my first time today to do birds too, also a couple weeks overdue as life got in the way haha. My chickens are so fat and may not fall into the cone very well but I will find out
13:45 13:46 13:47 13:48 13:50
better to flip the bird over so that you get the feet in the scalder as well so that the skin on the feet comes off and you can then use the feet for some amazing broth. If you don't want to use the feet there are loads of people who do and will buy them from you.
Good to know! My pups would fight you over feet. We just freeze them and use them as treats and use pieced out bird carcasses for our broth but I’d love to try it using the feet.
Thank you, great video of the process
Glad it was helpful!
about to do some chickens in the near future. Will be making the cones out of 5 gallon buckets but when I seen your safety cone i laughed cause i had that same idea. been watching numerous vids lately cause everyone does things a lil different. scalding temp, knife work, etc . so Im just getting ideas. pretty sure this will go faster then deer and hogs that I have done in the past.
It’s way easier than a deer! I think they’re super easy to dress out and in higher quantities in a short time!
Well done and great video on the whole process. 👍🏼
Thanks Emma! How are your Grass Raptors doing? You were getting pretty close to processing weren't you?
@@MulberryBranchFarm They’re doing great! We’re a couple weeks away still. I need to sit down with Matt to schedule the day so I can make sure we have everything we need.
I am doing the same 4-H project!
How awesome!!! They're great for a 4H project!
So the feet are okay for dogs to chew up? Mine would probably eat it entirely lol
Suggest you watch Joel Salitan video on chicken processing. Great teaching video.
That is the video we watched 😉. He’s even more amazing in an in person class!
why is dispatch blacked out?
UA-cam is sensitive with that stuff and a lot of people are too so we blacked it out for that reason
I just take head off in one sometimes two swipes of the blade.
lady very good video.
Thank you!
I'm scared too, everytime girl😢
Eating Costco rotisserie chicken as I speak, watching this video. LOL
I would have to have a sharp pair of scissors just for bird butchering purposes. I’m not that confident with a knife and chicken blood lol. Also I like chicken hearts
I've gotten a lot better with a knife lol I'm not as "scary with it" anymore as Mark would say LOL. A good pair of meat shears are worth their weight in gold and would probably be easier with some of the butchering!
They’ve lived a better and happier life than anything you buy at a grocery store. It’s so pitiful seeing the trucks full of sad dirty half dead looking birds that drive by.
Exactly! We always feel bad for the caged birds. Just a very lack luster life and so dismal. These fellows were fat and sassy to the end!
@@MulberryBranchFarm they look like happy birds! I hate the caged birds too. Maybe if we hadn’t had chickens growing up I wouldn’t have paid that much attention to the ones in the trucks and knew how different they looked and smelled from the ones we had. I honestly didn’t think our chickens smelled bad, the ones on the truck reek!
You can't be self-sustainable with Cornish cross chickens though. They're commercial Frankenstein breed that can't be bred. Having to run to a hatchery every year is the opposite of being self-reliant. Get into to Heritage breeds and practice selective breeding.
I agree but the purpose of this video is to teach a skill that helps you to become self sufficient. We definitely aren’t singing the praises of this breed. We use them as a 4h project for my daughter and that’s the only reason we have them. The video is to help people learn to process their own birds not to push a specific breed. We’re looking at Bresse’s but I prefer dual purpose birds like Orpington and Plymouth Rock personally. 😊
"Already gone." [chicken says naw by moving its head]. Isn't there a more humane way that is more instant?
You can remove the head completely but then the heart isn’t beating to push the blood out and can affect the taste.
Even if we were to shoot this fellow in the head he would still twitch even with the brain being destroyed. It’s just the last few twitches. They still twitch and even “run” if the head is completely removed. Also with head removal the heart stops and doesn’t effectively push out the blood. It affects the taste and can cause bruising with the flopping around that they still do even if the head is removed. Now the cone helps with that but the blood sits and doesn’t pump out
I'm gonna be honest that machine is terrifying.
Funny story... My husband turned it on and put his arm in (this is totally why women live longer) and he came out with a hairless arm lol. It is a little intimidating but it really is a time saver if you're going to be butchering a lot every year
What kind of animals have you killed so far?
Deer, goat, duck, chicken, all sorts of other animals out of protection of our livestock like coyotes and raccoons.
i very like butcher or hunter girl .and i wish one day marry with this model girl. please if have videos of it animals putting in youtube@@MulberryBranchFarm
hi not good method of kill chcken
We can agree to disagree ❤️
you can easily kill it under feet . @@MulberryBranchFarm
You need learn first
I find many newbies are encouraged seeing other beginners complete a process successfully. A “if she can, I can” mentality. For what it’s worth I tripped through 4 birds to get the hang of it before filming
Life cycle sounds like pc woke term.
We’ll if we were woke I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be showing people how to harvest their own meat… we’d be pushing lab cultured meats. The term life cycle has been around much longer than anything woke has been. Just another term they’ve stolen and bastardized