OUTDOOR CHICKEN PROCESSING SETUP..EQUIPMENT DETAILS, SETUP AND PLANNING

hey folks this is Josh Stern a rich farmer welcome to the farm blog today today is going to be different just like every other day we've got a beautiful North Carolina day here the weather is about 75 degrees and we're getting set up for our chicken processing so what we have here is a three base stainless steel sink and we have a prep table a stainless steel prep table and right here in front of me we have one of those folding tables like you can get from Costco tomorrow is the day we're going to harvest our Birds our meat birds and they are approximately nine weeks old maybe ten weeks old we're a little bit late the birds have gotten a little bit big I've got some really cool equipment I want to show you today and I'm going to show you how we get everything all set up and then tomorrow we'll do the chicken processing video so come along today we're going to show you all the equipment and everything we're getting set up and how we're setting up to process our chickens all right [Music] all right so first things first I want to show you what we already have set up our stainless steel prep table a three base sink which we're gonna fill with ice and that's where our birds are gonna go a table for working on or working off of we'll have a couple cutting boards down here so that we can use those to remove the feet and so we can open up the gizzards and clean those out our chickens are right over here we'll walk over and show you them we're going to detail all this equipment here in the next video and maybe a little bit today so we've got a pallet of goodies to show you so we're going to open those up today we've been working with Meijer hatchery and a company called coops and more check them out coops and more calm there'll be a link down in the video description and we're going to be using a lot of coops and more equipment and a mix of Meijer hatchery equipment we're going to use killing cones we're going to be using scholars pluckers all kinds of fun stuff so guys be sure you watch that video let's go check out the chickens so folks these are our Cornish cross meat birds these are the hybrid Cornish cross meat birds they're going to dress out somewhere in the neighborhood of eight pounds apiece they've been out here on pasture they're a little bit hungry right now and for today what we're going to feed them is just straight cracked corn okay and the reason we're going to be feeding them straight cracked corn is because this is going to be a whole lot easier to handle when we start dressing the chickens out this will be what's in their gizzard versus a bunch of mushy old mess from that high protein feed that we feed them this is the most awesome feeder and water setup will probably do a little something different with water next year these birds know when it's food time they are really really motivated by food I'll see you I think about one's foot they're too lazy at this point to even get up they are huge huge birds and you'll see tomorrow how big they dress out let's go right here buddy they're just so big they're just so fat these guys are absolutely 100% only motivated by food and water and what's so awesome is that every day they get moved out to new paddock of grass now I know what you're thinking man those birds look really crowded Josh well they're not crowded let me tell you they're grown-up they're big it's time it's slaughter time they're not crowded they move around all the time so these birds get more space than any bird you've ever put your mouth on okay unless you're letting them run around out in your yard these birds are getting more space than any bird you've ever had there's a hundred and twenty square feet in there there are 50 birds and they get moved every day to a new 120 square foot area so if you think about it you multiply that times seven and eight and nine weeks these birds are getting a ton of space and a ton of awesome awesome food all right folks this is the pallet of goodies that has come from coops and more now coops and more is not a real sponsor of the channel but they did give me a bit of a price break on this stuff so that I could show it on the channel now I'm gonna be honest with you I'm not gonna lie to you I'll tell you if it's great I'll tell you if it's crap so we're gonna bust it open check out what we felt we got killing cones we've got a scalding pot we've got a rack for our killing cones and we have a plucker so let's get it open all right I'm excited this appears to be the rack for our cradling killing cones yep gonna have to do some assembly on this guy heavy heavy stuff this stuff is built to last a lifetime right here guys open rolling up here oh yeah nice so this is part of the rack that we're going to be using for processing our birds nice powder-coated good stuff I'll spare you the assembly details but we will get a little bit of a review once we get it assembled and we'll show you everything and tomorrow we'll really get a review we'll get to see it all in action so good stuff these should be our killing cones I do believe you get this opened up they're a little different than the Meijer hatchery killing cones they sent me a couple different sides this year let's see and a cool catalog all right so in this box is in the baggies that you put the chickens in and got to do a little bit of research give a shout-out to Lum na Akers he's got a cool video out there on how to do this and we also got killing cones these are galvanized killing cones and they just hang up by this hook right here this is the extra large for like a turkey and this is I think this is a large or this may be a double extra-large this is a large you can see the difference in the sizes here either extra-large or double X extra large or large and then the next smaller size is this size right here and I guess that's probably a medium or a large I think the one we'll be using the most is the middle size I think that'll pretty much cover any size bird that you're gonna raise on your place unless you raise a turkey and then you've got these big guys cool now let me explain to you what these chicken hugging cones do chicken huggers okay so you take your chicken and you pick them up by his feet and you lay them down in here and his head sticks out the bottom and you dispatch the chicken and let them bleed you want all the blood out of the meat before you start processing them these are made of galvanized and they're made right at Wright farm product so an American company making good American stuff let's show you the one that came from Meijer hatchery it's a little bit different it's stainless steel so comparing the two the stainless steel one that came from Meijer hatchery it's a little bit well it's more expensive it's about the same size everything's pretty much the same it's welded in the back and it's stainless steel so you know it's gonna last forever and ever the galvanized one it's good to keep it clean and use it forever it's not gonna rock by the time you rot that'll write a lumen is right there on the catalog Congrats Allan the fam those guys are good people you haven't checked them out go check them out there'll be a link right up here to a Luminas page it's called Lumina acres pretty cool okay we got some metal stuff and a lid and a burner I might be able to make moonshine with this thing oh yeah so this is our scalding pot and pretty cool coops and more offers a scalding pot that's powered by 120 volt I do believe and I know they provide one that's powered by 240 volt most people don't have a dryer plug out off their back porch so this one right here is designed to run off a propane tank and that's what we'll be using tomorrow without further ado this is the scalding unit this is your I there's a I built in down here we'll get you some better close-ups tomorrow as we work with this but you've got a great big scalding pot right here and a thermometer this is a brand new product that's just now coming out from coops and more and in here is a scalding draining putt so you can put your chicken in here drop him down in the warm water 150 degree water or a few seconds and then come out and pluck them we'll get this guy and we'll sit him outside in our outside processing area now for the belle of the ball here we're gonna open this big guy up see what we've got this is our plucker this is the thing that's going to make our lives so so much easier we have a small tabletop tight plucker down there that we got from meyer hatchery and we'll show you that one to case you're on a little bit more of a budget and I'm not gonna lie guys this chicken processing equipment is expensive but it's a one-time purchase and if you're considering starting your own farm or starting your own set up like this then it's a one-time purchase it's well worth it in my book so having the right equipment makes all the difference in the world let me get busy here and see if I can skin my knuckles getting this box open I think it was made by the same guy that invented the rubik's cube i think his name was Rubik not to be confused with rupert [Music] good gracious as big as this box is this thing has to be preassembled I'm about to just hit the box and open it this may void your warranty that's American back there get out of here put a box we can clean up later not a bee came out and got me I've never opened the box like this but I think I've got it figured out alright here we are [ __ ] nice let's go wheels on it man impressive very impressive I can't wait to see this thing in action tomorrow this is a 120 volt machine it has wheels on the bottom it gets you a lot more detailed tomorrow we're gonna go over here and set this up in the area where we want it and that way we'll be all prepared for early early in the morning my dad's gonna come up and help me so we'll show you the final setup hopefully in the morning I'm gonna walk you around everything one more time and then we'll see you back to mark alright we've got everything put together down here we're gonna walk you through this whole setup this whole scenario it's really really cool so let's go from start to finish right here is a stainless steel killing cone and this is a right farm's product galvanized killing cone or hugging cone is what we're going to call them tomorrow and this one is available from Myer hatchery down here is where we'll catch all of our hugs from our birds when we dispatch them for our consumption right here is our scalding pot and inside the scalding pot there's a thermometer here and there's a little scalding trough that will be filled with water tomorrow right here is our plucker this thing this apparatus and the bottom here will spin and basically shucks all of the feathers out of this little vent right here in the back we'll show you all that tomorrow it's going to be quite the messy experience now we have another type of plucker this is a tabletop type plucker and I'm not really sure where the feathers will go with this one but we're going to try it out you can see how it does this one is from Meyer hatchery and this is for more of a budget type plucking operation now here we've got a couple cutting boards I've got a couple specialty knives this is called a pinning knife and this is for getting the feathers out of the bird's wings we have a couple paring knives this is the killing knife these are two paring knives butcher knife of some sort don't if you're a chef correct me on these knives and also an oyster shucker so I brought the oyster shucker out because it's pretty similar to our pinning knife so if we've got two people pinning we can use it poster shucker all these are Dexter knives these are awesome awesome quality knives these are our shrink bags livers and gizzards all the chickens and processing out to the freezer in the building so guys I hope you had some fun today going through all the stuff that we're going to use to get started in processing our chickens it's really interesting to me thanks again to Myer hatchery for sponsoring all these videos on chickens and also thanks a lot to coops and more coops and more they'll be a link down below that's where we got the big plucker and the scholar and most of the killing cones don't forget guys click that like button subscribe to the channel if you want to see more stuff like this and thank you a whole lot for coming and I think you'll enjoy this chicken processing video we're gonna make tomorrow well show you a couple different ways alright see you next time ringing Wow [Music] Pierce we've had some ways those Denise Tony Reed Oh