The wife and I did 24 birds in 1 day, about 13 hours. No fancy plucker, and very little experience on her part. We killed, plucked and rough gutted batches of 6 then put them into ice baths. Then I cleaned them real good and the wife picked pin feathers that were left. Back into the ice baths. Last step was bagging, that was the easiest part. When we do it again, We will split it into a few sessions. Another set of hands would have been a real help, or a plucker.

Building a plucker is more than worth the minimal cost. It's especially cheap if you have an electric motor laying around you can use. I took one off of an old bench grinder. Could even borrow one from a table or band saw. Me and a buddy did a batch of 23 in less than 2 hours. That was from start time, until the last one was vacuum packed.
As far as profit, unless you are willing or able to go out and find people willing to pay over $10 per chicken, it's just something fun to do. If I was tell someone the meat is considerably better than store bought, I would be lying. It's chicken. There are certainly people out there willing to pay for those willing to find them. It's just not something I like to mess with.

Have friends that have raised chickens for decades. A few years ago I mentioned the entrails for fish bait. They contacted a couple of bait shops and now use small milk carton size containers to fill with the byproduct. The cartons bring almost as much as the chicken.
Roy

Not bad at all. Wood chips changed every other day and a fan to exhaust the dust and ammonia gas. I left the doors open in the day time and let my rat terriers run outside. As you can see they are very healthy. As far as the smell it was a lot better than when I am processing fur bearers. LLL

Have a link to that home built plucker? I just happen to have a motor laying around I picked up for $2.50 just knowing someday I would need it.

Never mind. Looks like a simple search showed many options.

I can get birds dressed out for from $1.85-$2.00 each by the Amish here locally. No mess for me. And their really clean.

Then I bring them home and Vacuum pack them and freeze them.

our meat birds are showing up next week. 25 cornish cross. Will be our first time. Glad to see this thread. I will keep you updated with pictures and how it goes. Hopefully we don't kill them all in the first day or two. lol

I worried too about my first group. Just keep them warm and have water all the time. I doubled my feeding space per bird pretty quick, I had never had meat birds and they do nothing but eat ALL day.

Yeah, there are lots of plans online. I just made one based loosely off of the Wiz Bang plucker. I bought a roll of 1/4" rubber fuel line for fingers, and a pulley. Everything else I had around the farm. It's not super pretty, but it knocked the feathers off in a few seconds.

Just looked up wiz bang on youtube, that's amazing. I would have no issue selling that idea to the wife. Looks like I have a summer project to add to the list.

Thanks for the advice!

Make sure your pen is snake proof the first couple weeks. I lost nine chicks in a couple hours one morning.

I built one , there are also more other options these days , I had a several hundred in my wiz bang 10 years ago my run of chickens I almost broke even on the cost of the plucker as I recall but then I had it for future runs.

since the home bird thing exploded there are commercial pluckers available fairly reasonable

https://www.homedepot.com/pep/Sport...JZrlYfqZusaAuf2EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Well you guys talked me into it. I stopped and got the last 8 (actually 9 as found out when I got home) broilers they had at $1. Parents wanted some and figured might as well get it done all at once.

We are hatching black sex links and rhode island reds. Going to try growing out the roosters in a tractor and then harvest young (12 weeks). If that is fun, we'll get some meaties mid summer.

Got our 25 cornish cross yesterday morning. 24 alive, 1 dead. all 24 eating, drinking, and lively. So it begins.

So how long do the chickens grow for?

I raise 150-200 meat birds a year. I like to do batches of 25-50 and have them staggered in age so I'm always having fresh meat for me and my community. I averaged $8.03/ea on cost of my last batch, a little more than I normally do, but I decided to wait 4 more day to butcher for better weather (80* vs 65*). I usually average out around $7.50-7.75 for a 5# carcass.

Nice looking birds Pintail. Those shrink bags sure make things nice and tidy.

I'd much rather butcher at 65 than 80.

The heat shrink bags are a must in my opinion. They look professional, and are a lot cheaper and faster than vac-sealing each bird. I know when I saw the forecast, I told my wife I'll feed the birds an extra few days to make the job more comfortable. The automatic plucker is a must too. I use to pluck each bird by hand, then I built a plucker for a drill. My wife finally decided to upgrade our operation and got me the Yardbird.