Our business is a partnership with yours. At the end of the day, we love to see a great quality product out the door and headed for a supper table near you!
Thanks so much for working with us! BC Meat Inspectors are on site and they perform a pre inspection of your birds and do a visual inspection of each bird as they go through the processing line. Inspectors have the final say on what is deemed fit for human consumption. If your poultry is condemned you will be provided with a written reason from the inspector. We take care to be gentle with your bi
rds, unfortunately transport, heat, stress, old and new injuries impact the final product. The BC Meat Inspector may request that parts of the bird be removed due to excessive bruising, wounds and breaks.If your flock is condemned before we begin processing you will lose your deposit, if a few are condemned after the process has begun your deposit will go toward your processing costs and each condemned bird is $3.00.
Ensure your poultry has been off their feed for 24 hours. The reason for this is their crops will be full. While they are in the plucker food is ejected and sticks to their skin which is really hard to get off. What is left has to be manually removed from both ends before the bird is opened up. which increases the risk of contamination. You will be charged an extra $1.00 per bird.
Black pores are thought to be caused by mites and mites love to hang out on your birds, the bird is itchy and pulls it own feathers out and flock mates help as well. The feather is broken and blood, dirt etc clogs the feather shaft. Other reasons that pores get filled is from dirty bedding, being in pens with no bedding, overcrowding, not enough feeders or not enough feed, low protein (the birds eat each others feathers and then dirt clogs the open pores). What you can do:
Inspect your birds, are they pulling each others feathers, try to give them more space, add more feeders, clean the pens and add lots of clean straw so they can peck away. As these birds are for human consumption do not medicate. If there is a few black pores we will remove them, if possible. Sometimes there are so many that the best thing is to skin the bird. As this is done manually, this takes a lot of time, and it will not be perfect. Unfortunately, once the chicken cools to 4 degrees and the skin tightens more feathers/ black heads come to surface, sometimes making it easier or harder to remove. We will give it a second look over before they get bagged, but be forewarned they may not be a nice resalable bird. So look at your flock daily and make adjustments to prevent mites. Depending on the level of work required you may be charged between $1.00-$3.00 extra per bird.
With feathers on : After plucking/ before manual removal:
Once the birds are processed they will be in packed in ice until we bag them and label them. They will be placed our coolers until your arrival.
Drop off and pick up
Poultry needs to be dropped of not later than 7:30 am the morning of your processing. We have crates for chickens and an area provided for turkeys on site. When you pick up your birds ensure you have ice chests, and coolers to transport them home. Please make arrangements to have someone come get your birds with payment. PAYMENT WILL BE IN THE FORM OF e transfer OR cash
We will not be doing cheques in the 2021 season
Your birds will be bagged, weighed and labelled with their weight and total cost. If you have stickers with your farm name we will gladly put them on for you at the same time
