Chicken prices

[TnAndy]

I hear this every Thanksgiving after raising turkeys all summer. A day old poult costs anywhere from 10$ up, and you are sure to lose a couple. By the time I get them raised to slaughter I have about 60$/bird... and the local grocery store sells them in November for around .39 $/lb. Yet the difference in taste is like night and day. Besides, I started raising them after my brother had a heart attack; and one thing his cardiologist told him not to eat was store bought turkeys.

As for chickens; it costs me around 10$/bird to raise them up to around 8 lbs. That includes having them killed, processed, and frozen. Unlike a store bought chicken I can actually taste mine, without adding all sorts of chemicals and spices. I can't even taste the difference between store bought chicken and pork, they are so bland.

I just finished off a drumstick from one of last year's birds before reading this and it sure was tasty. :licking:

Yep......quality of home raised stuff beats store bought time after time.

As for plucking, 30 seconds in the scalding water, followed by 30 seconds in homemade plucker and you've got a perfect naked bird.

 

[MossRoad]

Yep......quality of home raised stuff beats store bought time after time.

As for plucking, 30 seconds in the scalding water, followed by 30 seconds in homemade plucker and you've got a perfect naked bird.

Careful there... this is a family friendly site. :laughing:

I've seen those pluckers before. Pretty ingenious.

 

[TnAndy]

I was really surprised how well they work. Me hand plucking, best I can do is 15min, and don't get it nearly as clean.

 

[Jstpssng]

I was really surprised how well they work. Me hand plucking, best I can do is 15min, and don't get it nearly as clean.

It looks like yours in home built. Did you buy the fingers or make them yourself?

 

[Diggin It]

Sunday, my wife went to Aldi's to buy groceries and saw ten pounds of chicken quarters for $1.97 She grabbed 4 and then later went back and got 6 more. Now she is talking about heading back today and getting another ten bags.

This is why stores place buying limits. For quite a while last Spring, they had a four can per item limit because people had been going in a buying multiple cases of whatever they could carry.

When I find a sale, I get what I can reasonably use, maybe two, three, four of something. I don't take advantage.

 

[TnAndy]

It looks like yours in home built. Did you buy the fingers or make them yourself?

Bought the fingers. I(Actually bought the big pulley, the rotating aluminum plate/etc inside as well..WhizBang Chicken Plucker)

You drill a 3/4" hole and use a pair of Channel Lock pliers to pull them into the hole. They have an indention that seats them firmly.

I changed the design somewhat by leaving the bottom in the barrel and making a chute the feathers and water run out. The instructions that come with their stuff has you cutting the bottom out, so the stuff falls down on the big pulley, and looks to me like would fling everywhere. I just set a 5 gallon plastic bucket under the spout I made, bucket has 1/2" holes to allow the water to flow out. You spray inside with a hose while the chicken is spinning around to wash off the feathers.

This is the bottom plate that spins. I mounted some of the fingers pointing to the underside to sweep the feathers into the chute.

 

[MossRoad]

WhizBang Chicken Plucker

That's where I saw it. Thanks for the memory jar. :thumbsup:

 

[GeneV]

Yup, whizbang. TnAndy, nice! Unfortunately, those don't work too well for ducks. Ducks suck for plucking. I don't even bother anymore, I just harvest the breast and legs and the rest gets buried in the compost pile.

 

[/pine]

Speaking of the cost of chicken...Campbell's sure must get their money's worth out of one when making their noodle soup...!

 

[TnAndy]

Speaking of the cost of chicken...Campbell's sure must get their money's worth out of one when making their noodle soup...!

Don't know if true or not, but I heard that is where laying chickens go after egg production drops.

 

[fried1765]

Speaking of the cost of chicken...Campbell's sure must get their money's worth out of one when making their noodle soup...!

They just send the chicken running through the soup.
One chicken = 1,000 cans of soup!

 

[Jstpssng]

Bought the fingers. I(Actually bought the big pulley, the rotating aluminum plate/etc inside as well..WhizBang Chicken Plucker)

You drill a 3/4" hole and use a pair of Channel Lock pliers to pull them into the hole. They have an indention that seats them firmly.

I changed the design somewhat by leaving the bottom in the barrel and making a chute the feathers and water run out. The instructions that come with their stuff has you cutting the bottom out, so the stuff falls down on the big pulley, and looks to me like would fling everywhere. I just set a 5 gallon plastic bucket under the spout I made, bucket has 1/2" holes to allow the water to flow out. You spray inside with a hose while the chicken is spinning around to wash off the feathers.

Photos removed


This is the bottom plate that spins. I mounted some of the fingers pointing to the underside to sweep the feathers into the chute.

That's a handy looking modification. Thank you for posting it. I've been thinking about building one, rather than pay for processing every year.

Speaking of the cost of chicken...Campbell's sure must get their money's worth out of one when making their noodle soup...!

Probably it would be more accurate to call it "Noodle Chicken Soup." That's one thing I don't buy, it's a lot easier to make my own.

 

[JethroB]

Yep, and cheaper chicken pot pies among other processed stuff. The term is spent hen.

 

[GeneV]

When we buy those rotisserie chickens, I take my large knife and split them right down the back into two halves. We carve the breast off, the wing, and the thigh and leg. I usually eat the thigh and leg, my wife takes 3/4 of the breast, and I pull the meat off the wing and the carcass and make a chicken salad sandwich for lunch the next day. We freeze the other half for another day. So, yep, two meals and two sandwiches out of the one chicken for $5.

That's me too, I break the bird down when we get it, stack it on a plate, and then we take pieces from it and warm them up for the following 2 dinners after the first one. Costco pretty much feeds us all the time. We buy bags of salad (sweet kale mix is our fave), and my wife makes this awesome salad with avocado, aged graded parmesan, and salad toppings, and then I toss salsa on mine coz that's how I like it. And then with the rotisserie chicken, so good. Our go-to dinner, all thanks to costco.

 

[MossRoad]

Many years ago I attempted to make home made chicken soup with no recipe. Never done it before. I plopped in a bunch of chicken scraps and pieces in water, some spices, veggies, etc... boiled it down. Served it to the family. Kids said it tasted like water. Wife asked if I put any chicken bullion or starter or broth in it? Huh? :laughing:

So I saved that recipe in my cook book and called it Chicken Water Soup. Right behind it is now a recipe for Chicken Water Soup Improved.

 

[Jstpssng]

Many years ago I attempted to make home made chicken soup with no recipe. Never done it before. I plopped in a bunch of chicken scraps and pieces in water, some spices, veggies, etc... boiled it down. Served it to the family. Kids said it tasted like water. Wife asked if I put any chicken bullion or starter or broth in it? Huh? :laughing:

So I saved that recipe in my cook book and called it Chicken Water Soup. Right behind it is now a recipe for Chicken Water Soup Improved.

I cheat. A staple item in winter is boxed chicken and beef broth. They come in handy for second and third day leftovers, mixed with chicken or pork and have a bag of frozen vegetables which are always in the freezer from November to April.

 

[MossRoad]

We buy chicken breast, bone-in, in 40# lots. We get about 75 breasts and 75 fingers in that 40# lot. There's a lot of bones and skin, fat, etc... in there. But I bone them out and freeze them, and freeze the bones and scraps for making chicken stock. I get about 5 half-gallons of chicken stock out of those bones and scraps.

What I like about the bone-in breasts in those large lots is that they are smaller, "normal" chicken breasts. When you go to the store and buy boneless chicken breasts, they are huge! I think they grow them down by the nuclear plant! :shocked: One of them will feed my wife and I. I can slice it into 6-7 3/4" thick chicken steaks. Sometimes that's good. But when I want a chicken breast that will fit on a bun, I like the smaller ones VS the slices.

 

[JethroB]

We buy chicken breast, bone-in, in 40# lots. We get about 75 breasts and 75 fingers in that 40# lot. There's a lot of bones and skin, fat, etc... in there. But I bone them out and freeze them, and freeze the bones and scraps for making chicken stock. I get about 5 half-gallons of chicken stock out of those bones and scraps.

What I like about the bone-in breasts in those large lots is that they are smaller, "normal" chicken breasts. When you go to the store and buy boneless chicken breasts, they are huge! I think they grow them down by the nuclear plant! :shocked: One of them will feed my wife and I. I can slice it into 6-7 3/4" thick chicken steaks. Sometimes that's good. But when I want a chicken breast that will fit on a bun, I like the smaller ones VS the slices.

Moss those smaller pieces you like mostly go to fast food restaurants. They buy by the pound but sell by the piece. Nice profitable strategy. Easier to cook quickly and throughly too. They are costly to produce and most retail customers won't pay that premium price. It's surprising too how small a percentage is sold through grocery stores.

 

[TnAndy]

That's a handy looking modification. Thank you for posting it. I've been thinking about building one, rather than pay for processing every year.

One of their parts kit they sell has a sheet of some kind of thick plastic you can buy and form into a round for this if you don't have a barrel......as I said, their design is open bottom under the aluminum finger plate. Just looked to me like a recipe for flinging water and feathers everywhere ! There are enough extra rubber fingers in the package to mount a row facing down to 'sweep' the bottom of the barrel into the chute.

I had a plastic barrel and a 3/4hp motor off something else, and of course the wood for the frame, wheels/etc.....so what I really needed was their large pulley, bottom plate, fingers, etc. Took a day for assembly, best move ever IMHO when it comes to chickens. Allowed us to move from 15 or so up to the 40-50 we actually use in a year.

 

[MossRoad]

Moss those smaller pieces you like mostly go to fast food restaurants. They buy by the pound but sell by the piece. Nice profitable strategy. Easier to cook quickly and throughly too. They are costly to produce and most retail customers won't pay that premium price. It's surprising too how small a percentage is sold through grocery stores.

We get them for under a buck a pound at the butcher shops.