Turkeys

Well a few things need to get ironed out as my posts to the blog appear as coming from Sarah.

The turkey processing went okay but took way too long, nice to have the family together and the food afterwards was great.
We plan on building a whole new processing area for next year to get us out of the mud and make the job easier as we hope to do 100 birds.
So a shelter needs to be built and a raised floor with more hoses for water,(we have 2 now) I had to wait at times for my hose, also we need more sinks (we have two) one for each position, another thing to add would be another burner for the bag shrinking, it took too long to get the water hot the second time. Also we need to come up with something that will hold the bird (like a mini cage) while it is being dunked to shrink the cryovac.
I want to get rid of the chill tank and go to something that uses chilled air, this will reduce our water that ends up in the bags at the end, sometimes it is a bit bloody which looks bad, so we need to work on that.
We use medical clamps for pulling pin feathers and cleaning the cavity, we need a pair for every station.
Finally we need to use hog rings for these bags as the special stapler does not work too good, I think it is due to the extra volume of air which tends to blow the staples off the bag.

Lots to do this winter, will hopefully be able to build 10 more chicken or turkey tractors as we believe pastured turkeys to be the absolute best.

Cheers,
Craig