Our FIRST TIME Raising_ Processing MEAT BIRDS On the Farm 😬

Like most people, we went to the grocery store for everything. Cereal, chicken, you name it. We never really thought about where our food came from or how it was produced. Everything was just bought with a really uneducated mindset. Now unfortunately, today's generation has become used to convenience. Fast, easy, and processed without even thinking about how it may affect our health. But if you start looking into it like our family did, you'd be surprised at how much of difference it makes when food is raised and processed the right way. So in today's video, we are going to be taking y'all with us through the whole process of raising meat birds. From day one to day 49, you will get the chance to see how these birds were handled, fed, and what we learned through this first-time experience on our farm. Now on day 49, we will be butchering and processing these birds, so please stick around. Let's get started. All right, it is June 5th, 2025 today, and the baby chicks just arrived in the mail. We have ordered 60 of these birds, and the breed we bought are called Cornish Cross. Okay, today is day one for these little chicks. They arrived in the mail this morning. We just picked them up. They are absolutely adorable. They don't even have their feathers in. They're just little fluff balls. We got all their little coops ready. They're in little like incubator coops, and we have a little heat lamp over them. We dipped their beaks in apple cider vinegar water just to make sure they were all drinking, and they're also eating, which is really good. They're doing very well so far, but this is day one for our little meat chicks. Me and Maddie will keep you guys updated on week two, so that is where we're at. Day one. All right, everybody, it is currently week two for the meat chickens. They're getting really big. Now, since it is week two, and they are much bigger than they were the first day, we have our chicken tractor all set up, and we are actually going to go introduce them to it today. They're not going to stay in there all day and night. This is just temporary for now, but yeah. We're moving it over to like a shady spot under the trees, and Madison's going to help my mom and my sisters push it over there. Okay, so you move the pin, and you can move that up or down, and then if you want to move the feeder up or down, like we're going to pretty much have to probably bring your baby feeders in for now. If you put that on the ground, they might roost on this right now. Yeah, so that's a waterer. Yes. Oh, so it comes out like that. And it comes all the way up and goes from the water box. This is off. This is drain, okay, and this is for water to go in through this. Right. See if he can drink out of that. This is, this is our testing tip. Come on, guys. I can't touch him. There he is. Look at him. He's so tiny. There you go. Go kiss them. Yeah, I think they're enjoying themselves now. So my sister is actually going to get food for this right now, so we're just waiting on her, but we did get their water set up, and they have lots of grass to just munch on and lots of room to run around in. Are we enjoying ourselves? Yeah. Okay, food is here. Now, this is a 17% protein organic pullet feed, and yes, it is expensive. This was week two, okay. I think we're going to wait all the way till one month now, so we'll update you guys in about one month on how much they have grown. We'll see y'all in one month. Yep. It is time to do an update on the meat chicks. Now, I did skip a couple days just because I didn't think they were growing that much, but they're pretty big now compared to when we last did an update on them. Now, they are about six weeks, okay, a month and a half old, so I know I said a month, but I kind of made a little longer to a half. Also, I know in the last clip they were just out here temporarily. Well, now they're out here permanently, so they get to live in the chicken tractor all day every day. We've been moving the chicken tractor all around the property just so they would have green grass and it'd stay nice and fresh under there. They are big, big, big chickens. All right. Hello. We did have one with a broken leg. We're not sure what happened to him. We think he got stuck under the chicken tractor when we were moving it, but he's all right. He's alive. I just got to find him in here. I'm not sure where he is right now, but this is our progress right now. Some are bigger than others, but they're all pretty big. They're all growing, so that's good. I think that might be the one with the broken leg. I'm not sure though. Here is what we're looking at at six weeks old. That's crazy. That is just crazy how big and meaty these chickens are. Hi. He's all dirty, but I mean, look at the size. Look at how big their feet are and how big their breast is. That's just crazy. Now, this is our first time doing meat chickens, so it's just crazy how big and size they get because we're just used to regular chickens that just lay us eggs, but this is a whole different story. Also, another thing, we did buy all of our supplies for their butcher date. We bought our plucker and everything else. Now, before I show you everything, we have to go. We have to put it out on the table. We have to set everything up. We have to bring our big pot down, so when we do that, that is when I'm going to show you guys everything we bought and what it does. Now, my mom did say we are going to take one today and we are going to weigh it and just see where we're at on the scale and then go from there. So, that is where we're at today, six weeks. Today is July 19th. Let's go to setting everything up and showing you guys what we bought. All right, the first few things that I'm going to start with are the stuff we actually had on hand, starting with our vinegar and antiseptic. Now, both of these things are very important because we use these in our hot boiling water to dip our butchered chicken into to loosen its feathers before entering the plucker. The next things that we are going to be needing for this process are our Ziploc bags for the chickens we are going to butcher and not keep whole, and then right next to this is our culling cone, which is self-explanatory, but if you want to know how it works, definitely look it up on Google. Now, we have our butchering apron and our heat-resistant gloves, which will help us when we shrink wrap our bird's hole. And again, right next to these things is our shrink wrap kit, which we will explain during the process. These next couple things are our bone shears and our pots for the hot water, along with our propane stand, which we will be using to heat the water. And last, but definitely not least, we have the wonderful chicken plucker. We did buy this big guy off of Amazon and it works wonders by de-plucking them under 15 seconds, which is absolutely crazy. All right everybody, it is Monday, July 28th today, which means today is the official butcher date for these chickens. It has now been seven weeks and these chickens have grown rapidly. Now, I do want to point out it has been severely hot out over these last weeks and we've had to put out some fans and we had to take some in under the porch just because they were kind of getting overheated, I guess, and we've had some that actually got hurt while we were moving the chicken tractor. They got stuck under it, broke a leg, and now they're being kept under the porch in a little chicken coop. Tonight at five o'clock, our friend is going to be coming over. She's going to be helping us with the butchering process here. She's going to help us process all these chickens and get them all ready and in the freezer. So yeah, this has been quite the experience, I will say, because these are not your average normal chickens. They cannot live long because they do grow oddly. Their legs don't form correctly. Their body doesn't form correctly just because they're meat chickens. It's just been quite the experience, I'd say. Okay, so it is currently five o'clock right now. We are starting to set up. We are getting our little stove thing ready. We are getting our pots ready. We got the chicken plucker all ready and set up with hoses and everything. We're just waiting on our friend to get over here and we are going to start butchering these chickens. The propane tank is all set up for the burner. We got our hoses all ready. We got our water filled, so we are all set. Now, we are not going to be showing the actual killing process just because we have a bit of a younger audience, but after we got our first bird killed, we soaked it in our vinegar and antiseptic water and then we did cut off its feet and then we threw it in the plucker and as you can see, it comes out perfectly clean, which is amazing. No hand plucking for us. Now, after that process is done, it is officially time to butcher the chicken. So, what she does is she cuts it open. She scoops all of the innards out. She does take the gizzard because we are eating the gizzard. We love gizzards and we're actually going to be shrink wrapping this one whole, so we have a rotisserie chicken. Okay, when it comes to shrink wrapping, it takes three easy steps. The first step is to grab your bag. You place your chicken in it. You place your little, it's like a bendy straw almost. You place it in the chicken. You then go and close the bag by twisting it a couple times, leaving the straw to where it's sticking out at the top. Then we go and we take a Ziploc and just tie it around the straw in the bag. Not too tight, but tight enough to where the straw stays in place. Then we take our heat resistant gloves. We are going to place it in our hot water and what happens is as it goes into the hot water, all the air will come out of the straw and the bag will seal onto the chicken. After that's done, we are going to take the straw out very quickly and then tighten our Ziploc all the way. Now we are going to dry our chicken off and we are actually going to be weighing all of our whole chickens and we're going to be writing them down. 721! Oh my gosh. Spot on. Wow. We also have our big cooler full of ice for our chicken and every time we're done with the chicken, we're going to stick it in there until we have to bring it out to our big freezer. Now, like I said, for our Ziploc bags, we have our actual butchered chickens. So right here, we are getting the breast off of this chicken. We are getting the legs, the wings, and the tenderloins. 21 ounces. 7 pounds. That's great. That's a good looking meat there. And we're going to repeat this process over and over. still doing this until it was dark outside, so this really shows y'all how long of a process this took us. Now we still have a lot more chickens to do, so tomorrow we are going to finish. Very simple. Yeah. But for now, we're going to hit the hay because we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Okay, so it is the next day, but right now it is about two o'clock. Yeah, it's two o'clock. Before we start processing the rest of the chickens, we actually are going to vacuum seal a bunch of the chicken breasts we got from yesterday, the legs, and chicken wings, and some tenderloins. So we're going to start that, and then when we're all finished, we are going to go out and we're going to get ready to finish processing the rest of the that bad. It's nothing. It's like, okay. Yeah, but I haven't done it yet. We got our tenderloin right here. I'm going to stick it in the fridge with the rest of the chicken. I am so excited to cook this and try it. So next up, we're going to do the thighs. So I'm just going to stick this in here and then, yeah, but we'll see. All right. We just got finished vacuum sealing everything. It's all done. Everything went well. We got everything in the freezer. So we are set. We are going to go out to the porch. We're going to start setting up and getting ready to go and process the rest of the chickens. So that's what we're doing. I will keep you guys updated. So let's go finish processing. There you go. No, she's right. We are making a dent. I'd say that. I got to grab another one. Oh, he dropped it. Grass fed. He dropped it again. That's some warm grass there. I grass fed a week last time. I am going to grab some more chickens. We've got about like 20 left, maybe. There's quite a few. All right. What is that? The chicken. We're butchering chicken. Hey, that's Randy there too, Randy. Though, because I haven't heard that yet. All that air coming out. I have, but the way it's positioned. Right. Sticks. Fries. Me too. Three left. We're starting to get full, so we got to bring these out to the garage freezer. And that is all the chickens, you guys. We have officially processed all the chickens right before sundown. This is kind of some happy tears. And it all comes down to fresh, real meat in our freezer for our family. This was a very, very interesting experience because like I said, this was our first time ever raising and processing our own birds. We now have a freezer full of chicken. It is right behind me. This is our freezer full of chicken. Absolutely beautiful. We've got breasts right here. We've got drumsticks. I mean, really big drumsticks. It's crazy. Got more breasts. Like I said, we did save the gizzards because we love eating these. So we've got our whole bag of gizzards and we have tenderloins in here as well as chicken wings. So we are stocked up. We thank these chickens from the bottom of our heart because now, like I said, we do not have to buy the fake meat from the grocery store. We have farm fresh chicken for our family. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I know some parts were a little graphic, but that's just the reality of where your food comes from and if it's been raised right. Since it was my first time, I was a bit like, whoa. I mean, we've killed animals before for food, so nothing different. But anyway, unless you're vegan and skipped this video, I guess that's fine too. Anyway, that is how we raise meat for our family. Beef, pork, rabbit, soon chicken, everything. If you did enjoy this video, this amazing educational experience, please make sure you like, comment, and subscribe if you have not done that already and hit your notification bell. Shout out to our friends for helping us process all these chickens because his wife has been doing it for, was it six or eight years? In between there. But she did an amazing job. She taught me and my sister and it was just, it was amazing. So thank you guys so much for watching and we will see you guys in the next video. Bye!