Monday I said that I was going to be gone; I’m in Phoenix at a workshop with the Arizona Association of REALTORS®, so I was holding back on what happened over the weekend. I’m sure you’re all wondering how it all went. Well, even if you’re not, I’m going to tell you anyway! We learned some things, we remembered some things, and we decided that we’d make some changes before we processed the RR#2’s. It was a really long day and we were just both so happy when everything was done and over. I won’t get into the nitty gritty of everything because we’ve already done that once and you can look it up on earlier posts if you want. There is still going to be some talk about the process, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, you may want to just skip this post.

This time we had decided to move the chickens into holding areas in the morning, rather than the night before. We took the food out of the tractor and just left the water in there. We thought it’d be easier to get them in the morning, just let the goose and ducks out first thing then we could round up the chickens when we were ready. Well that didn’t really work as planned and we wasted too much time trying to get the chickens. We decided we would go forward with getting the chickens in the evening and crating them until morning. Much easier on everyone. We tried to process two at a time, because that’s the way we did the last ones, but then – as we were doing the first two, we remembered that they were Banty Roosters and we needed two in the plucker at a time, or they would get too banged up. With these larger birds, doing two at once left one hanging around too long, we felt. Thereafter, we went back to doing them one at a time. We ended up taking care of one every 11-15 minutes. Depended on the bird. We also always have trouble figuring how long to keep them in the scalder. That’s a really fine line and we can’t just go by a predetermined time – we have to check periodically each time, starting around about 10 seconds, and we have to keep the cooling bucket colder through out the day, or the chickens just get too hot and then they get too trashed in the plucker. It did take us until around 12:45 to get everyone processed and dressed. Then we cleaned up for a while, together, I left at 1:30 p.m. to take eggs to Bisbee and Sue continued with the clean-up and then started on the chores. By the time I got back, I was able to help finish up the chores and then we took a much needed supper break.

Already tired, we worked together to get each bird really cleaned and vacuum packed. We didn’t check the scale before hand, so found out that it needed batteries. Sue ran into Hereford “town” while I continued cleaning. We just kept at it until everything was done and cleaned up again. It was 7pm when we actually sat down. Dang! That’s a long day. In the end we found that these guys were about a pound lighter than we initially anticipated. We still ended up with some good sized birds and even the smallest will still be just great. I believe that we’ve decided to let the RR#2’s go another week longer and see what we end up with; it’ll be a good comparison. Of those we took care of this weekend, so far we’ve sold 10 of the 15, and I haven’t contacted everyone who was interested, yet. We’ll see how it goes. That’s how the afternoon peters out. and the report finishes.

While I’ve been away, Sue has been really busy and I promise to fill you in on everything she’s been doing and what we have coming up for the weekend on Friday. I’ll even throw in the egg report for the ENTIRE week!!! Can’t wait can you? Well, until then~ as always,
Thanks for reading!

---

Today’s Weather: Sue told me that we’re having a wind storm! Winds between 27-45 mph – YUCK! Hate those days. It was 101° this afternoon. My phone says that it’s currently 71° (at 9:30 p.m.) and partly cloudy. Tomorrow looks like cloudy and partly cloudy all day. Friday sunny, maybe rain over the weekend. The overnight low will be 67°. Doesn’t say anything about more wind, but it’s never correct about that anyway.