[BlueDaisy]

Not sure if this has been asked before but does anyone know of anywhere round about Angus that does the plucking and dressing of your spare cockerels for a reasonable sum. I keep hearing about these places in England but never anywhere near me!
I know that we would much prefer to be able to just hand over the carcasses (or I suppose live birds) for someone else to deal with, lazy I know but plucking just takes so flimmin long and hubby doesn't do the neatest job of dressing!
I've asked at Harbro in Forfar and East of Scotland Farmers in Coupar Angus - they suggested asking at the local chicken factory, which I will but I would prefer somewhere closer and smaller.
Cheers.

[Fleecewife]

Friends locally did a couple of ours once when they used them as demos in a poultry course they were giving.  They collected the living birds and returned them ready to eat, for no charge.  Mostly we do them ourselves.  A way to avoid plucking is to skin the birds, gut them then divide into portions and cook in a casserole.  If they are not big you can avoid the gutting too by skinning then taking off the legs, wings and breast meat and discarding the rest.  Our cockerels are small so there is no other useable meat on them so that is what I do.  Last time I took the opportunity to peep inside.  Usually the guts are what I pull out in a horrible handful, but when you see everything in place it is wonderfully neatly packed  a marvel of evolution.

[dyedinthewool]

I never thought of fleecewifes suggestion of skinning and just taking off the breast etc - not quite sure of where you would start with the skinning

My hands aren't strong enough to pluck anymore and I hate the 'gut cleaning' side.

I have 2 cockerels that will have to be culled - what would I feed them to put weight on, at the moment they get a mix of grains and are allowed to range out in a small grassed area - they are 8 months old, is that to old to now eat?

[Fleecewife]

I think my OH starts by chopping off the head and flappy bits of the wings, then splits the skin down the middle of the breast and basically takes it off like a babygro (sorry - that's not a very nice image ).  Once he gets to the heel (just below the bottom of the thigh meat) he dislocates the joint and removes the feet.  It takes only seconds as the skin comes off easily.  Oh, you might have to cut a circle around the cloaca when you get to it, just through the skin - no deeper.
To take off the breast meat you need a thin sharp knife as you need to dissect it out a bit.  I start with the bird on it's back and slice down each side of the breast bone, and follow where that leads. If you go at it too roughly you can puncture the guts which is messy and risks contaminating the meat.  Once the skin is off you need to wrap the joints as they dry out quickly - or put them straight into a wine marinade.  If your bird is large, you will also find nuggets of meat on the back, where the wings join.

[BlueDaisy]

Interesting about just skinning the bird - but seems a shame to waste a nice roast if the bird is big enough to warrant it.
Over the last month or so we have done 5 speckled sussex boys. They didn't get any special treatment except because of the snow covering most of the garden they chose not to wander too much and I was giving plenty of grain. We culled 2 at 21 weeks and 3 at 25 weeks. They were all around the 2 kilo mark dressed.
I now have 1 hubbard boy at 8 weeks whose fate is sealed and 2 girls who I may keep or may not. Hubbards are supposed to reach a good weight (and they are huge in comparison to the ixworths and orpys of the same age) so it would be nice to have a good roast.

We'll do these ones ourselves but if I could find someone to process them for me I would be tempted to do them in larger batches, maybe 12 at a time. I just thought with all the pheasant shooting that goes on there must be places that process small batches of birds.
I found one at Lindores and 1 at Rathillet but these are both a fair drive from me, was hoping for closer.