Big Breasts

The butchering season continues on the farm. I am just now getting around to posting about what I butchered last weekend. I decided it was time for the turkey to go in the freezer. Most of it's food like bugs and grass is gone now that it is getting to be fall and colder outside. I didn't want to have to continue to spend money to buy feed for it so I decided it was time to butcher it. I don't think we are going to be around here for Thanksgiving so I figured I would go ahead and do it now. I have never butchered a turkey before but I have done chickens. I prefer to skin them so I don't have to dip them in boiling water and pluck the feathers off. Since I was not planning on roasting this turkey whole I decided that I did not need to try and keep the skin on it either. I did some research online and found a way of butchering it that I liked. It is kind of similar to how I butchered the goat a few weeks ago in that I didn't gut it but just cut out the parts of the meat that I wanted. The main parts of the turkey that are worth eating (in my opinion) are the breasts and the legs.
Here is what I did... First I killed it by shooting it in the head. Then I cut the skin down the breast bone and pulled the skin back off the breast and cut the breasts off of the bone. Next, I skinned the legs and cut the legs off. And I was done. It was super easy and no gutting required. Now if I wanted to roast or fry the whole bird I would have to gut it and leave the skin on. The skin helps keep the moisture in while cooking. But this way worked best for us since we are not going to cook it whole. It was a super easy and not messy at all.
I was really surprised at how big the breast were on this turkey. I did feed him some feed while I had him but mostly he ate bugs and grass. He was really fun to have around. He would hang out with the sheep all day and follow us around when we were out there. I wasn't expecting to like him but we did. Since we enjoyed having him so much, he was pretty easy to take care of, and provided quite a bit of meat, I think we might get a couple turkeys again next year.

Here are those big breasts