Processing My First American Bresse
(November 7, 2021) - Getting to the point where I could process my FIRST American Bresse chickens myself was no small feat and was the manifestation of probably the nerdiest chicken dream that anyone has ever heard of. In May, I wrote a blog about how I was going to move to dual purposed birds in the future and I was nervous, yet excited, about the challenges that raising, breeding, and finishing a heritage bird required.
In 2020, I felt like I had gotten the “perfect” sweet spot in regards to raising Cornish Crosses. What started as a simple 600 bird operation to raise quality meat for my family and neighbors during the shut down of our local Foster Farms plant, turned into a “I’ll never buy chicken meat again” moment. As a part of a variety of Sustainable Chicken/Bird groups on Facebook and a specialty American Bresse Facebook Group, I found a virtual mentor by the name of Mandelyn Royal.
Literally every time she posted, there was so much information to glean. I began taking notes, creating my own e-book of sorts, from the wisdom, experience and research (plus data) of others in these Facebook groups. After raising a set of Maran for their eggs, I wasn’t very impressed with the meat of the birds. In fact, all of those “pan fry special” roosters (the roosters were from straight runs of laying hens) I ended up saving for future crab bait rather than for eating. I was worried that the American Bresse would be the same way as the weights on pictures and reported in the groups were between 3.2 to 4.3 pounds.
Raising Chicks
This set of birds were picked up from Pivot Farms in Washington. Of the twelve that I ordered, seven hatched and of that seven, only one was a hen. I raised them in a small pen until they had lost their down chick feathers and could handle the elements.
Moving Outside - Foraging Tractors
From there, they were raised outside in a 10’x10’ tractor with a tarp over the top (hole in the center for rain water to fall through) and one side covered (west). They were in a wooded area of our lawn that included pinecones, acorns, pine needles, bugs, the occasional field mouse, frogs, worms, and grass. I made sure that they never got to bare dirt and the grass quickly recovered in even better condition a few weeks after they had been moved off of it.
With only seven in the pen, I moved it once every other week until they were about 3.5 months of age and then moved it to weekly and then twice a week. For most of their life, they were raised on flock raiser crumble at 20% protein. I started cracking organic corn for the last 2 months. You want to make sure you crack any seeds or grains so that they don’t volunteer start in your yard.
Finishing Meat Birds
For the last 18 days I finished them on a 1:4 ratio of flock raiser crumbles and cracked corn, respectively, soaked in whole cow’s milk that I purchased by the gallon at the store. I really enjoyed this process and had to find that perfect spot of just the right amount of feed; for me that was about 1 cup of grains per bird to 1/2 cup of milk per bird. I used a small rubber feed pan for livestock to mix the feed and gave it to them every morning.
While some individuals recommend putting them in finishing cages, I didn’t feel like I needed to do that right off the bat. I wanted to do my own research and development on the meat taste/flavor before I decided to confine the movement of the birds for those remaining days of their life. Therefore, my birds spent their last few weeks out foraging everyday.
I fed them 75% of their normal amount on the last day and made sure to pull their feed so that they would have empty crops for processing the next morning.
Processing Day
While the processing of a bird can be nerve-racking for many, I firmly believe that having a good processing set-up will make all of it better for both you, your volunteers and, most importantly, the animals. When we were first preparing to butcher chickens ourselves, my fiancé and I would ask those who had done it (all of which had bad memories), what kind of tools they had used.
Utilizing kill cones and an automatic plucker will make your life SO much easier and the meat that much better. I catch the birds in the early dusk and place them in a dog kennel where I can easily and stress-free grab them when it is their time. I cover the dog kennel/crate with a blanket or tarp so that they can’t see out or see the kill station.
I do a simple kill cut in the kill cone and let the animal bleed out into buckets (use the blood afterwards on the roots of fruit trees or other trees). I place all of the heads into one bucket and that’ll either go to the “hot” compost pile (5 years out) or to a planned ahead raw-diet canine owner. Scald the birds at 165 degrees using welding gloves so you can dunk the whole birds with your hands into the water. Swirl the birds around to loosen the feathers and when the skin on the feet start to peel off with the rub of your thumbs, place them either one or two at a time (depending on their size) into the automatic plucker.
We added a foot lever and a nozzle switch to the water which makes this a lot easier. Maybe it’s because we are tall, but we didn’t like having to bend over every time to turn it in. Additionally, we make sure to not leave them tumbling around with the rubber fingers too long to damage the skin or accidentally break a leg or wing. We will then quickly clean the rest of the pin feathers off and the legs/feet of skin while the bird is still warm.
After that, we remove the legs (keep for freezing to put in chicken stock), remove the gizzard, heart and liver (keep to sell or for raw diet canine owners), remove the intestines, lungs, crop and everything else inside.
I let my birds sit in ice water for 3 days to really soak out any impurities, we do that with our wild game meat as well. I rinse them off and bag them in heat-shrink bags that use boiling water to do with a straw through the cavity out of the top of the bag to let air escape and then zip tie shut. I was all alone for these birds so I sealed them off the best I could before freezing.
Through different forums, I have heard a lot of good things about storing them in a fridge for a couple days instead of ice bath. For my next set, I’ll probably try out soaking for a half day at least or even over night before moving into a hanging room. I am currently repurposing my old college dorm room mini fridge to hang birds.
