We have only heritage birds and they are 18 weeks old when they go to Freezer Camp. We leave them in the cold room at 38F - 40F for up to 3 days before processing them for the freezer.
The old layers at 18 MONTHS all turn into ground chicken. We used a lot of ground chicken. And I would make enough chicken stock of the carcasses for a whole year and freeze it.
We processed all the birds, up to 90, the first weekend of September each year.
Thanks for sharing. What other steps to take for processing between the cooling and freezing period? At that point, is it just packaging?
Yes, this bird was somewhere between 12 and 18 months. Grinding the meat makes sense but maybe not for just one bird, unless you have the equipment yourself. Just like this brine wouldn't be optimal if you had multiple old birds to rocess at one time.
90 birds is quite the undertaking. My mother-in-law grew up processing 150 chickens every year on their homestead. They did it over 2 days. How long does 90 take you? -Aimee
We could usually do them all in one day with a 9AM sharp start. We usually had several people come in to help.
Our procedure is: bleed out in cones, into the scalder at 150F just until wing feathers loosen, into barrel plucker with 2 - 3 at a time, back to scalder to do feet, into butcher shop (a clean room) for evisceration, to the sink for washing and pin feather removal, to the scale to record weight/age/sex/breed, to the cold room and into huge tubs of ice water, after 20 mins into plastic bags in huge coolers. These are left open and the cold room stays between 38F - 40F for 3 days.
Then we bring a bag at a time into the butcher shop and they are cut up according to what we need for the year: boneless breasts and thighs, drumsticks, bone-in breasts and thighs, legs, and some whole birds, usually the biggest ones. The packages are all weighed again so we know exactly how much we put away in the freezer.
Then my husband would strip all the carcasses and that would be ground. All old layer carcasses were stripped and ground. Packaged ground in 1 lb bags. Then I spend the best part of a week making bone stock and freezing it. Then we are done for the year.
Wowza! That's a lot of work but so worth it for a year of meat and broth!
Wow! That sounds like a very full two days but worth the effort for a year of meat and chicken stock. Thank you for painting a picture of your process. -Aimee