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This week is super busy...
Alexis is in Vacation Bible School and is having a blast...... Jacob is outside helping Joe build the new turkey house......I'm doing paperwork and doing tax stuff...
This is what's exciting though....
A few years ago I applied for the exemption to process poultry.... it was 5,000 birds per year and you couldn't sell to restaurants, cut up the birds etc. THEY CHANGED IT!!! Now I can cut up birds, sell to stores and do all this stuff - I just need a label on my product. No biggie there!! PLUS - not that I see myself doing this - but it's up to 20,000 birds (yep you read that right)
So I am excited about this little tidbit that was shared with me and then verified by VDACS this morning.
Now I get to practice cutting up some birds as well....and since we are going to focus more on poultry - this is a huge bonus for us.
Ok - and we also decided to keep 6 of the breeding ewes (that's sheep talk for girl sheep) and we kept the 1 ram I can go in the pen with and not get hit because he wants to play. They will be for the kids and their market lambs for 4-H more than for the farm sales - but we will probably bring a few back to sell after the fair.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
This post is not for the faint of heart... to some of you - you will laugh..... me..... i did the girly jump up and down and said "GROSSSSSSSS" even with no one around - so I had to call Joe and tell him.....
On to my 2 second story.
Sometimes you have to put an animal down for whatever reason. This happens on farms as well believe it or not - and we usually do it ourselves. Today it was a broiler chicken - but I wasn't butchering it - it's head was so pecked at by other birds, you could almost see the skull. So I had to put this little one down - it was only 1-2 pounds live weight while the other ones born the same day are approximately 4-5 pounds already, so you can see right away that something is not right with this bird. I have learned how to humanely kill a bird fast by breaking it's neck right behind the skull at the spinal cord. Good thing I went to that class!! So I tell it I'm sorry and start pulling like I was told (I've done it a couple times before without a hitch so I'm not hesitant or anything).... but the head popped off!!!!! I mean completely OFF!! This is NOT what I was expecting and frankly just EWWWWWW....
Ok - now on with the rest of the day.....