red splotches on my meat birds' skin?

[lisalynne]

We butchered 6 cornish cross rocks today, 6 males. 3 of them have red splotches on their skin, most of them being on the underside & breast. They appear to be only on the skin & not on the meat. I read Damerow's book, Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, & the only thing I could possible conclude is chiggers. Has anyone any experience or knowledge concerning this problem?

 

[jaku]

How did you pluck them? It could be bruising if they had a little blood left and were mechanically plucked.

 

[lisalynne]

We dunked them in 130 degree water & plucked them the old fashioned way. But, this is only the third time we've done this & it's been 5 years since we last butchered. Bottom line, we are amateurs. It seemed that the feathers did not come out as easily as they should have though. 2 of the chickens did not bleed out well and there was alot of blood in the spinal cord.

 

[schmije]

This happened to us with our first batch a couple of weeks ago. We butchered two of them a day early, because one had a broken wing, and the other had been hiding under the feeder all day. We thought that they had been beaten up by the others who were crowding into a corner. The two from the first day had red splotches, but none of the ones from the second day had it. It was our first time, so we weren't sure if we did something wrong or if they had, in fact, been beat up a little before being butchered. We did notice that after they sat in the fridge for a day, most of the red faded. We used a tub plucker for all of the birds.

 

[Dennis A]

We are butchering 120 this Saturday. Did 10 larger ones last week and had red spots. Ours are gnat bites, they are just thick this year. The best soulution I have found is a box fan blowing thru the tractor. We also have bees and pesticides are out of the question.
Dennis

 

[Dogfish]

Lisa,

Try 145 degrees next time. dunk the birds for about a miunute, test a wing feather for release, and continue until they come out easily. For us, it was about 90 seconds total.

We got a good bleed on our birds by making a single deep incision on one side of the neck, just under where the head and neck meet. Hang them upside down.

 

[schmije]

Ours could have been gnat bites. They showed up a couple of days before we butchered, and they were just horrible.