preserving hackles and saddles

[Tracy Chimenti]

Hi, this is Guido... my neighbors are havin, what you might call, a little prolem with a few roosters. Well, I'm gonna take care of it tomorra. These birds have beautiful saddles and hackles. When I skin them, should I just rub the hide down with borax and let em' dry out a little? I was gonna build a nice trio of cement shoes, but decided instead to use the pellet gun.

Tracy

[Jay Murakoshi]

Tracy,

What I use to do with the "barnyard" critters is skin them real good, wash the hackles in a liquid detergent and the stretch the skin on to a piece of board, tack it down, cover it with borax to dry. Once dry, it use to rub some gliscern on the skin, this should help keep it soft. I'm sure nowadays, this is old school.
Maybe someone else has a better solution

Good luck and don't let the "cock of the walk" get behind you

Jay

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

About 30-40 years ago we did not have these hybrid chickens like Metz and Whiting.

Everything came from India.

Some of my customers use to go to the farm auctions and buy live old rooster for $2.50?

Eric Lieser had a book about taking care of fur and feathers.

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There was no such thing as blended package dubbing either. It was all natural fur on the skin. No synthetics yet either.

We stopped and picked up "road kills" of birds and mammals back then to.

Fly fishers that hunted too would drop off entire hides of deer and elk and even moose at times.

[Darian]

I've always used the same process that Jay describes. Works very well. Be sure to scrape any fat off the inside of the skin before applying the borax.

You may have to put the necks in the freezer for a period to kill any infestations after curing. :cool::cool:

[Tracy Chimenti]

Thanks alot guys for the quick response. They've been washed, stretched, and nailed... now where the hell dod I put the borax?

Again, thanks,

Tracy

[Mike O]

if you already nailed them down with skin side in, try to get borax down on the inside. then cover the outside with borax, working it down to the skin. If you did skin side out, borax the heck out of the skin, after getting rid of any fat.

At least that is the way I did my pronghorn skin, deer skin, duck skins, etc.