[Womble]

We killed the first of our Hubbards this week (11 weeks old), and have had a hell of a job plucking them, due to them all having a load of new feathers just coming through at the moment. These are at the stage of being about 1cm quill showing, with just a wee tuft of feather sticking out. These are just as hard to pull out as the fully formed feathers, but there's hardly anything to actually get hold of. Consequently, I'm finding that it takes twice as long to get these wee feathers out as it does to pluck the whole of the rest of the bird.

I wonder if I have killed them at the wrong age or something? They're 11 weeks old now, and the cock bird I weighed came in at 2.7 kg in 'oven ready' mode.

Anyhow, to those of you who have had hubbards before, is this normal, and if so, can you tell me how you deal with it?

Cheers!

Womble.

[Glentarki]

Isn’t  it a pain Womble and dead fiddly too……….....No you’ve not done anything wrong re age its just the way the birds mature they are quick growing..... a mixture of new and secondary feathers growing and a bird that’s developing quickly all at 10-14 weeks old with quick meat gain its normal………………Don’t laugh but we use tweezers to get those quills that you mention out and yes it takes ages!…..Sorry this isn’t much help but rest assured I know where your coming from,..... but the final outcome is worth it despite all the cursing!.......Im sure your very pleased at 2.7kg

Good Luck and Enjoy the final product!

Dave

[daddymatty82]

mainly use a pair of pliers for wing feathers and the quill niggly bits  then a blow torch to tidy up the rest

[princesspiggy]

mainly use a pair of pliers for wing feathers and the quill niggly bits 

not ur eyebrow tweezers then..lol   

[Frieslandfilly]

Agree with Daddymatty thats what we do too. We dispatched our hubbards at about 12 weeks, nice and big but fluffy!! I dont do metric but our first one weighed in at 11lb!!