Butchering All the Birds | Ducks, Geese and Chickens

Okay, okay, they land on their feet. All right, nice. Mr. Brown, where are your shoes? I don't need any. Okay, all right. We'll get some shavings to put in this, put the ducks in this. Flossie is not coming up this morning. The calf is so vibrant and active, she can get far away from Flossie, and then Flossie freaks out and has to go to the calf. She's not falling for it. We can't get her up here. See, the calf just is too active. We got the calf up here. She's on to us. She knows. So what we're gonna do is we need another leash or a rope or something so we can keep the calf here and get Flossie some help through the stanchion. First time milker, or is it? It's your first time milking, Megan?

First time.

She's doing good. She says, is there a trick to it?

Build up your—

you just grab it and squeeze. We just go in there and grab them. They're a little easier than chickens because they're herding. They're herding animals. So we'll just get in there. Don't push them too hard up against the fence, but They can run into some— we're getting the geese too. Hold down their wings. We caught all our ducks and geese. Now we got to catch our chickens. Who's good at catching chickens? Give it a try. You got chickens? I have 4. Yeah, you got chickens?

Yep, 14.

You got chickens? No, no chickens. No chickens?

Yes.

Okay, they've already caught them. They've duped you guys. You might be a crazy chicken lady if you want or have chickens. Okay, want or have chicken. Okay, you might be a crazy— keep your hands up. You might be a crazy chicken lady if you've named a chicken. Oh no, man. Okay, we've lost one. You might be a crazy chicken lady if you have more than 12 chickens per person in your household. Wait, oh, oh, oh, it's me and you. It's me and you. Okay, you might be a crazy chicken lady if you've ever dressed or put a chicken on a leash. Oh, you might be a crazy chicken lady if you've ever sung to your chickens. Oh, okay, I'm gonna have to go for it. You might be a crazy chicken lady if you've ever lived in the chicken run with your chickens for 24 hours. Oh, I'm the ultimate crazy chicken lady! We could put 6 in that crate. These are our old lady hens. They are past prime in production, and our, our new posse is, is starting to lay. We got them on two crates. We kept Kai, kind of a mascot, and of course Rosie. We got some of our fat hens growing up out there. 20 of them or so will come in here and the rest will start following the cows soon. Because it's been wet, the ducks are a little extra— they're a little extra poopy. We're gonna try something different after we kill them. We're gonna get some water in this thing and dip them in it and, you know, just get them a little bit cleaner before they go through our scalder. So it's set to 149 degrees. With ducks, the trick is timing, or else you'll get pin feathers. Hopefully we've timed it right, but you still have to scald, uh, longer than a chicken, probably 2 minutes as opposed to 30 seconds, and then pluck them for about 2 minutes as opposed to 30 seconds. And then you guys can have these tables and, uh, we'll walk you through each and every step. All right, everybody will go away confident. Yes, to butcher ducks, geese, turkey, and you'll have muscle memory. When you go to do it yourself, you'll be able to. All right, what's your name and where are you from? My name is Rob Case, originally from Florida but recently relocated to Elkin, North Carolina. Why'd you come from Florida to Elkin for? Uh, to find affordable land and homestead. Have you found any? Yep, we recently got 10 acres in Elkin. What got you into this? Just wanting to really have a healthier diet, and, uh, seeing all your YouTube videos and others like yours really inspired us to get moving on it. Nice. Rob, what's your number one struggle for doing this and doing this? Well, for us it was finding land, and, um, now it's trying to not bite off more than we can chew. Start slow, and we're just gonna try and start with meat chickens and some egg layers and see how that goes before we move on to pigs and other things like that.

Daphne Cordero from outside of Greenville, South Carolina.

What's your goal for your homestead?

Um, we just want to learn a little bit more every year and find the talents and the passions that my children have so that they can take it with them when they become older. So right now we have a garden, we have chickens, we have rabbits, we of bees.

What's your biggest struggle for accomplishing that goal?

Um, garden. It's hard to know how to— what the right way to grow things are because everything changes every year. Some years we have good harvest doing something, we do the same thing the next year, and then it's a complete failure.

How do you get through that, a big failure?

How you just pivot. You just learn, take notes, and try better next time. Hi, I'm Erica Haskell and I'm from Howard County, Maryland.

Nice. What are you growing?

We have chickens and a garden.

Who's we?

My husband and 3 children. Hi, Lily. Hi, Connor. Hi, Emma. Hi, honey. Love you.

Oh, there you go. So what is y'all's goal together?

Um, my husband would love to get more animals, and for me, my goal is to step outside my comfort zone. Our next step is going to be meat chickens, and then we're going to expand the garden so we can grow more of the food that we eat, so we can have to get less. We try and do as organic as possible.

So how do you push get through the fear and, and over and get out of your comfort zone? What's the trick?

I think just watching videos on YouTube and seeing other people do it, applying for things like this. This was a lot of out of my comfort zone. Oh, um, and just having the confidence that we can do it and we're a team together.

Nice. How is this out of your comfort zone?

Um, this is the first time I've been away from my husband and kids since I was married. Oh, so is that 15 years?

Look at you.

Are you holding up all right?

Yeah, I'm actually really enjoying It's nice to have some me time.

Megan Sanctuary, and I'm originally from Colorado but just recently moved to Virginia.

So why'd you move from Colorado to Virginia?

Um, well, we wanted to start a homestead and, uh, we needed land and we needed water, which is becoming scarce out west.

Did you find it?

Yes, we did. We have a great, uh, 5-acre property and it's got a good spring on it and about 3 to 4 acres of pasture as well.

Who's we? You keep saying we.

Uh, my family and I. So that's me and my husband Eric and our two children, Maya and Maddox.

The ducks take extra long in the plucker. It is, it's getting most of it, but we still have to pick by hand a bit, but it's nothing crazy. We don't have to break out any wax. Did you say your daughter's name was Maya?

Maya, yep.

Hey Maya. Tell me, if Maya were here, what would her goal be for the homestead?

Uh, probably to have more animals. We just got, um, pullets, and her and my son Maddox love chasing the chickens around, and they always want to hold them, and they're really looking forward to collecting the eggs as well.

So what's the biggest obstacle facing Maya and family?

Well, we have the chickens. Our next step is meat chickens, so we want to do that, and we just have to kind of learn more about, um, moving them and how to house them. I think that's our biggest obstacle right now with the chickens we have is keeping them contained. They keep— we have a couple that keep getting out.

So how do you guys overcome that, those obstacles of not knowing?

Um, this kind of thing, coming and learning hands-on from people who are doing it successfully already. We're trying to network with people who are already doing it in our area, so talking to our neighbors talking to people who have chickens or other types of livestock. There's plenty of farms all around us, so we have a lot of resources, and we have a little bit of family in the area too that we've been asking for advice.

This time next year, what's your homestead gonna look like?

Um, hopefully we'll have some garden beds. Um, we want to start a garden, and we want to do meat chickens, and now After coming here, maybe some pigs as well.

Yes, pigs for everyone!

I'll get pigs.

Just 3 geese and 2 ducks left. By the way, YouTube rules, we can't show this butchering, but we have a butchering video in Abundance Plus. It's at abundanceplus.com or link in bio. We're giving away Joel's new book, Polyface Micro, when you order an annual subscription. You can see the whole process us from— if this is something that you want to do yourself, it helps to have a visual guide, and you can do that now through Abundance Plus for chickens or, or ducks even. And geese are pretty much the same. Let's see if we can catch— are you gonna make me go in there? We have worked hard. It's 2 o'clock. Birds are chilling. Okay, we got a bunch of orders. How many we got?

220. And I printed— I printed some of the labels wrong, so I have to go back and reprint them.

220 polyface micros out the door overnight. I told you guys this would happen. Y'all are waiting to the last minute and everybody's rushing to order, get in before the cart closes. We about done? We got quite a bit more. I don't know, I think we're pretty close. Good job. The kids have stepped it up. They're packing a lot of them today. Bagging time. We got everybody out. We've got as many as we can put on our rack, which is 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18. Got our water up to 180. There's something magic about 180. We've already done 4. All right, ready? Got a knife? Cut a knife hole in it. Yep, let's do it. All right, 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4, go! 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, pull! There it is. We are done over there. That was a successful day, weren't there? Some cool people back here.

They really were.

You know, I had a conversation with them and they're kind of— you guys are— I mean, my members are just the dream come true. An answer to a problem. Do you remember when we first had Joel's book? And we'd have questions and we just wish Joel was our uncle. Yes, that is how Abundance Plus is different, because I've become that food-growing uncle I wished I had. We didn't have it at the time and we just had to learn the hard way. And then we're like, how can we help others? And so with Abundance Plus premium level, which is open right now— it's not always open because we can only adequately uncle and aunt so many people— people can text us just something. You can't always find the answers on Mr. Google Pants. You can't always find the answers in the books, but people can text us. Yeah. And so right now you can get Joel's book and get the heart and the foundation of approaching animals in a holistic, natural way. If you have specific questions, get premium membership, text me, get on a live webinar, uh, twice a month, ask your questions. This Sunday We're opening up the webinar to everyone who gets in to Abundance Plus, who gets the book. So if you just get the book— what were you gonna say?

I was gonna say the people who get the book.

Yeah, if you just get the book or if you just get Abundance Plus, both of those are available at abundanceplus.com. Make your choice. But if you get an annual membership, you get the book for free. So what are you making? I just cooked a bunch of pumpkins so that I can freeze them.

I know you You can can it. You can can chunks, you know, because you're gonna hear it.

You can hear it.

I know you can can pineapple chunk, like squares or chunks of it.

Come here, come here. I got you. Say mama. It's been too long. So you're gonna make this?

So I'm gonna freeze this so that we have pureed pumpkin already done and, um, already ready to go. So when I'm gonna make pumpkin pie or whatever, we'll have it.

Nice.