We’ve been really bad about posting on the site, we think about it but don’t always get to it as often as we might like.
Last time we posted about our new chickens and turkeys. The chickens and turkeys have all grown up now. The chickens aren’t quite at the egg-laying stage but the turkeys are big. So big that this last weekend we decided to butcher one of the males.
We didn’t take any pictures.
Ryan grew up with animals and has been around to help pluck and watch when chickens, turkeys, and rabbits were butchered. But we hadn’t done it ourselves. But we got everything together and went out to select the turkey to butcher. Ryan had set up a ‘gallows’ to hang the turkey upside down (reused the sign holder that the real estate agent left on the place when we bought it) and we did what was necessary.
Clearly we’re inexperienced. We had printouts to follow along and the process took longer than it probably would in the future but there were no mishaps. We noted that a mental transformation took place from the ick-factor of butchering, to the point when the turkey was all cleaned up and going into the fridge. Once it looked more like a turkey as we usually see them from the store suddenly it wasn’t so icky anymore and we were able to look forward to the roasting (tomorrow).
At about three months old the turkey weighed in at 13.8 lbs, so not huge (although I’m not sure that our weighing it using the Wii Fit is the most accurate method of weighing, we could use a better scale).
I’ll try to post more soon, maybe some pictures of our new dog, Worf!
