10.26am - Friday 10th June 2016 16,836

Everyone's process might differ slightly depending on your scale and how you're planning to process your birds. The take-aways for this time in your chicken rotation is the feed restriction and packing birds at the right time.

You restrict feed 24 hours before slaughter and give the birds plenty of water to help ensure the crop and the gut is empty for processing. This makes the slaughter process cleaner because there is no feed in the crop and no manure in the gut.

Packing up at night, at sunset depending, or even the morning of is important because you don't want those birds sitting packed in crates in the heat. They are putting off a lot of heat, especially broilers, and if they're packed like that and sitting int eh sun they could overheat and die. You can even go as far as putting a fan on them to increase air circulation if they have to wait in your trailer or truck for a bit.

Worst thing you can do is cover them with a tarp while they're sitting there. It traps the heat and CO2 in and the birds will over heat and or suffocate.

If you follow those simple guidelines then your pre-processing should go smooth.

More at http://farmmarketingsolutions.com