the ideal time to harvest a duck and have an easier time with the plucking
is right at the seven week mark right before their pin feathers come in my ducks were getting
close to eight weeks old but they were a lot smaller than i thought they should be
should i harvest now before the pin feathers go in and have smaller meat yields or wait for the
ducks to grow bigger but then have a harder time with plucking because the pin feathers grew in
to help me with that decision i had my duck breeding friend ray come over and take a look
what do you think of those ducklings ray they're a little bit small but i mean they're growing good
we are about to hit eight weeks on them okay i remember the picture that you shared with
me you holding that duck and that was right at harvest size that was about five weeks old yeah
and that's gotta be like twice the size of these guys yeah do you think you should hold off i would
hold off on butchering for a while let them get to full growth i had the ducks for two more weeks and
in that time they grew to a more decent size i decided it was time for harvest they were
almost 10 weeks old by this point so i was pretty curious how the plucking process was going to work
i gathered the ducks into a dog crate and loaded them into my truck to bring them to
ray's house for the harvest since he has the equipment you know i kind of don't want to
kill the ducks because they're just cute i feel you on that buddy i have actually
a little reservation about the harvest as well i really like the ducks i had grown quite fond
of the ducks perhaps a little attached so the idea of a harvest for them was a little difficult
but this is what they're here for it's the plan right yeah
ray had the equipment all set up when we got there i unloaded
the ducks and prepared for harvest ray also planned to harvest one of his geese
this would not only be my first duck harvest but also my first goose harvest i have never
harvested waterfowl before ray this is your first time as well right it's my first time but i did
do a little bit of research this stuff uh we're definitely using that soaked in the water there
to uh that'll help break the oils cuts back on the oils and just helps it to be more easy to pluck
i guess the skin is a lot more tough than your regular broiler chicken so we're actually going
to be leaving it in the hot water for about 90 seconds and then doing a dry pluck in the
plucker for about three minutes and then you'll do a little bit of rinse afterwards but you want
to do a dry pluck so it's a lot easier to pluck the feathers we got quite a bit here on the belly
but we can hand pluck that it did take a lot of feathers out yeah it did take a lot the plucking
at first glance appeared to be pretty successful but upon further inspection there were a lot
of pin feathers embedded in the skin it was quite tedious trying to remove them all by hand
we used our fingers to pluck for a while before we finally gave up and called it good enough we've
been at the plucking for a while and we're calling it we did the best we could but there's just
too many there's a little pin here so we're just gonna move on to the evisceration part now
definitely not the prettiest bird i've harvested or eviscerated but it'll work
this is the emden e b d e n it's just the typical the white basically factory you know meat
goose so the uh more ideal times to
uh butcher a goose i think i read it was about 10 15 or 20 weeks and it's just an easier time
to pluck and he's about 15 weeks ago right now we got the goose in there now i'm pretty curious
as to whether the goose is gonna be easier to pluck because it's at its ideal time so see
if it fits
there's a lot less small ones
so some pin feathers but not nearly as much as the ducks yeah
the goose was a lot easier to pluck because it was at the ideal harvest age
but also because the remaining pin feathers were much larger than the ducks and easier to pick out
so
the ducks stayed in the cooler in the ice bath overnight i bagged them up this morning
i put three in the freezer and one in the refrigerator because for dinner tonight
we're having some duck i decided to keep it simple with the duck dinner i made a compound butter
using thyme and sage i applied salt and peppercorn to the duck followed by the compound butter
and put the duck over a bed of potatoes i roasted the duck in an unleaded dutch oven at 3 25 until
done there it is right out of the oven beautiful we're going to plate this up with some kale and
give it a taste test all right little buddy here you are this will be your first tasting of duck
i'd give it a 7 out of 10. i regret roasting the entire duck it's
actually my least favorite way to eat any sort of poultry it was good but i
prefer a seared duck breast or duck confit the good news is i still have three more
ducks to go so next time i'll definitely be using one of those methods for dinner