ilultham

 This posts contains pictures of dead animals, if you don't like that then please don't click to read more of the article.  Despite the bad weather this weekend just gone we needed to prepare the chickens for the avian flu lockdown. This meant lots of shuffling of chickens to different pens and the processing of 6 cockerels. The girls, as ever, were keen to help. We've got it down to an art now, so long as the water is at temperature we can do six birds in about an hour - which was a good thing as it was pretty cold on Sunday!  If you read this blog then you'll know that having the children help is nothing new, in fact I've got to the point where I won't do it without them if I can help it. They work hard, are good company and make the time fly.  I haven't weighed the birds yet but I'm so pleased with the size of them. Full breasts and great legs, one of these birds will be our lunch on Christmas day. I love that they didn't have much fat inside them...

Obviously this post contains pictures of dead animals so please don't read if that kind of thing upsets you.  I had planned to process a batch of Indian Game chickens for the freezer this week. I was then disappointed when I found out that the day I had planned to do it the children were going for a sleep over at my mum and dads.  This is how far things have come with the children, it's so much easier with them that I now plan to do it so they can help. So I made sure we all got up early that morning and got cracking before they had to go! I had considered keeping the hen from this batch but in all honesty they were so wild. I don't think I've ever had such a wild hatch of chickens before, even thought he children spent so much time with them when they were younger.  As a team we've become pretty quick at processing the birds. I normally set the water to boil while we're having breakfast, ready to scald them to make plucking easier. So by the time we've disp...

Now I would have preferred a better hatch rate but considering the incubator jammed and it was some days before I realised it wasn't turning I'm surprised we got any! So we had 7 hatch, one unfortunately had to be dispatched but the 6 that are left seem healthy and happy.  No matter how many times we hatch chicks out I'm always excited. These are some pure breed Indian Game, after setting up the breed flock last year (and doing some miles to do it!).    We'll have to see what we get from this batch. The hens they came from are mixed colours run with a dark coloured cockerel so it'll be interesting to see if there is much of a mix. We might put another set of eggs in the incubator straight away to hatch some more, as these are much slower grown than Ross Cobbs we will need to keep some hatching through the year to supply us with meat.  Anyone else hatching eggs at the moment?

 This post contains pictures butchery of poultry, so if you're not someone who wants to read about that then I'd suggest you skip this one. Theh boys from our Indian Game x Colobian Plymouth Rock crosses we hatched out last year have reached around 24 weeks of age and it was time for them to join freezer club.  I probably should have done this a few weeks sooner, but so long as I rest the birds once prepared and cook them properly it shouldn't make much odds, they're still plenty young enough and we do prefer to have to chew our food!  The girls have also really started to earn their keep in this job now. I got set up (water boiling, big chopping board cleaned and ready) and when they came out to help we started to process the birds. I'd catch a bird (one would open and close the gate for me) then dispatch and leave for it bleed and clean the meat. Once I had about 3 birds done I'd scald them and leave them for the girls to start plucking while I dealt with the ...

###This post contains photos of dead animals and meat prep### With the Avian Flu lock down yesterday we decided at the weekend to thin our flocks a little bit with a few birds that were going off to go to freezer camp.  The girls have their favourites! No way were these going to the freezer! We had two cockerels (Legbar and a Maran) from a small hatch we did in the summer, leaving us with two layers and two silkies from that hatch. And three ducks - all drakes - to leave us with what is a breeding trio from two sources so next year any that hatch should be unrelated.  The girls had made me promise that this was a weekend job so they could help with the prep. I was utterly impressed with them, they know the process and just get on with the job in hand, 'The only bit they struggle with is the wings and tail feathers, other than that their birds are plucked as good as mine.  They get involved with the gutting of the birds now as well - I know plenty of adults that can't do t...

  Growth is way slower on my Indian Game x Colombian Plymouth Rock meat birds when compared to Ross Cobbs but they are such different animals. Also although growth is slower, at 5 weeks they're only half way through their second bag of feed - Cobbs would be on the 5th by now. And just a picture of on of my Indian Game cockerels - they're just built like units! I love this breed. These pen is pure breeds and I'm hopfull to get some really good birds from them next year.  What meat crosses would you like to try? 

 In the last post I talk about processing a few of our Indian game hens for meat. One was a bantam and a respectable 1.3kg. But as they say the proof is in the eating - so on Sunday we had a little roast chicken for tea.  We spatchcocked the bird to reduce cooking time. This isn't the first bantam we've eaten this year, earlier in the summer we had six young bantam cockerels that were spending their days fighting and worse so we ended up having them for a BBQ. the lightest weighed in at 330g but we all had one each for our tea and it seemed far better than wasting them.  This bantam was on a different level - the others were more like eating a quail whereas this had some good meat on it. It fed all five of us, but the bones were picked clean by the end!  One thing I really love is the difference in leg meat and breast meat - the light and the dark. Unlike supermarket birds (or even home raised Ross Cobbs to a certain extent) you can really see the difference in two m...

The children and I processed three of our chickens the other day. These were the purebreed Indian game cockerels - two full sized birds and one bantam.  I decided it made sense to do it after some canning so the hot water from the water bath could be used to scald the chicken for plucking.  As usual the kids get stuck in straight away. We had a bit of a rain show half way through but the kids are getting pretty good at this job now. In the time it took me to pluck two birds they had done one - I'd call that some good help!  They seem to really understand the process now and know just what to do. They have no fear of any stage of it.  We finished off inside, gutted them and kept them as whole birds to rest in the fridge for a few days.  I was pleased with the size of the birds - the large fowl came out at about 2.69kg each and the bantam was an impressive 1.3kg.  Looking forward to eating these! Hopefully we'll be able to do a few more of these now we have s...

 So with some really poor hatch rates from posted eggs I decided that it was time to buy a few hens so we could actually start to hatch out our own eggs. I already have some fine Indian Game cockerels to run with them.  There is a Facebook group about rearing meat for the table and through that I got in contact with someone who had some young Indian Game pullets for sale. So I took a trip into deepest darkest Wales (via a small saw mill that had some specialist timber I was after) to buy some!  Of course I ended up buying more than just this!  He sold a trio of Plymouth Rock Hens, which when crossed with an Indian Game will produce a great meat bird (And this cross was used in the orginal Chicken Of Tomorrow competition so I have high hopes). I also got 4 Indian Game POL pullets so I should be able to keep a pure flock of these going as well. But hopefully the Plymouth Rock hens will lay enough eggs in the next few weeks to get another batch in the incubator and repl...