Epinette for Chickens

Epinette for Chickens: These plans for building your own epinettes will assist you in finishing your dual-purpose heritage meat chickens like the French do. 

Prior to processing market meat birds (heritage breeds, not Cornish Cross), especially American Bresse birds, the farmer uses a "finishing program" usually lasting one to two weeks in order to prepare the birds for market.

Finishing American Bresse market birds includes:

1. Epinettes: Housing birds inside finishing cages (epinettes) so they conserve their energy
   
   
2. Dark spaces: Placing epinettes in a dark area so their foraging drive and activity levels drop
   
   
3. Milk-soaked feed: Eating all they want of a mash of milk-soaked grains and water so their bodies will develop the magic of extra fat deposition and flavor

---

If you can put together ALL THREE aspects of the finishing protocol, the result will be, at least in the American Bresse breed (and possibly in some other heritage breeds), enhanced deposition of healthy fat into the tissues and muscle fibers and muscle groups inside the bird. Your efforts will produce incredibly moist, "self-basting" chickens that taste divine.

Ambresse already offers a recipe for making the milk-soaked finishing mash that we call Grand Finale Finish Feed.

And now, we have partnered with Leslee Wooton of Eldervine Farms to offer her tried and true plans for building an effective and efficient epinette so you can finish your own American Bresse or other heritage breed meat birds quickly and simply. 

The rest is up to you - to provide the dark spaces where the chickens will lounge around drinking root beer floats and watching the soaps all day long until processing day arrives. (DON'T get 'em started on politics; it ain't good for the blood pressure!)

Get the PLANS for Building an Epinette for Chickens! 

Epinette for Chickens - the Plans! Leslee's clear plans and blueprints are all contained in her Epinette Plans e-book, an electronic PDF file which will be your guide to building your own finishing epinettes.

Epinettes simplify the whole finishing process. You'll wonder why you didn't think of using them a whole lot sooner... 

What is an Epinette for Chickens?

Epinettes are cages for holding chickens while you "finish" them before processing. 'Epinette' means 'spruce' in French, and because epinettes are usually made of spruce wood in France, they have been called epinettes there, perhaps since the Bresse chicken was a thing for the last 500 years.

The same French term has become generally accepted in the United States, even if our wooden finishing cages are actually constructed of pine or douglas fir in the USA.

Pictured: Epinettes in use at a production farm in Bresse, France. Photo is a screen grab from the video posted below. The Eldervine Farm plans available on this page are modeled after these French epinettes.

In France, the famous, legally protected Bresse chickens are placed in wood-slatted finishing cages for the last 1-2 weeks of life just before processing for market. A French Bresse chicken, excellently finished in an epinette on milk and grains, then slow-cooked and served in a 3-star Michelin restaurant, is an incomparable gourmet feast. Even in French markets and butcher shops, official AOC Bresse chickens command a gourmet price.

The following short video is narrated in French, but even if you don't understand the words, you will see how epinettes are constructed in France, and also how they function as they are used.

---

---

Epinette for Chickens: Plans from Eldervine Farms

Finishing cages make the finishing process so much easier. And now you can easily finish your own chickens like the French do!

Leslee Wooton of Eldervine Farms is a long-time breeder of American Bresse chickens (since 2011!). She has built a number of her epinettes, has worked out the design and building kinks, and has collaborated on blueprint drawings for the plans.

Pictured: The unfinished front frame of Leslee's three-tiered epinette for chickens. The birds will reach outside the slats to eat their wet mash.

Over the last few years she has also shared her prototype plans with other chicken breeders within her circle of influence. They made and used the epinettes and then offered their feedback.

Leslee has now refined the plans until they have become simple, easy, and efficient to build and to use. These are the epinette plans you will receive - simple, easy, and efficient, resulting in your success.

What's In It for You?

Dining enjoyment and increased sales, that's what! You'll eat meals to die for, and if you market your birds to others, this translates into increased sales. But in the short term:

• Your epinette will be uncomplicated to build.
• Instructions on how to stock and manage the epinette are included
• It will comfortably house multiple birds for 1-4 weeks.
• Feeding your birds will be convenient, sanitary, and easy, very similar to French methods.
• Do you raise other heritage breeds of meat chickens? Finishing with milk-soaked mash in epinettes may help improve their carcass quality, and your dining enjoyment.

Purchase the Epinette Plans!

---

How an Epinette for Chickens Works

American Bresse meat birds usually spend the majority of their lives outside on pasture, building a strong musculature by foraging to their heart's content.

But during the finishing period (the last one-to-four weeks of life depending on the meat product), they need a dark quiet space, in combination with a finishing diet of whole-milk-soaked grains, typically corn and wheat.

Pictured: American Bresse flock of Rebecca Cahill-Kemmer, in eastern Washington.

Placing them in a dark quiet space results in a dramatic reduction of activity, meaning the birds need less personal space during the finishing period.

Delivering unlimited food and water in front of the birds results in happy birds content to eat and rest. 

Just like the French do, Leslee's epinettes include feeding troughs on each level in which one can easily deliver finishing feed all day long to seven cockerels per tier. Easy, simple, not labor intensive!

---

Is it Essential to Finish Chickens in an Epinette?

The short answer is no, of course.

Plenty of American Bresse breeders opt not to finish their birds at all. They raise the birds on pasture until they are 12 to 16 weeks of age, and then cut straight to the chase - they fetch them out of the coop and process them straightaway. And, they say they taste great!

(They might also not know how to build an epinette, which argument is now invalid!)

I've done it both ways. I've processed without finishing, and I've finished, even over-finished, birds.

It's not that unfinished birds are flawed. They're not. But the "self-basted" finished bird is next-level moist and a little more flavorful, which is saying a lot, since every American Bresse bird seems to be "a little more flavorful."

Cornish Cross and Epinettes??

If you're raising Cornish Cross meat chickens, you will not need to finish them, and they will not require time in an epinette. There's no time for it. Their genes code for double-muscling, which occurs very rapidly. They grow so fast they can't feather in fast enough. And if you don't butcher by 6 weeks flat, you may lose some to death by cardiac insufficiency or other catastrophic health challenge.

Below: A 7-week old American Bresse chicken (left); 6-week-old Cornish Cross market-ready meat chicken (right). American Bresse grow fast, but not as fast as Cornish Cross.

Photo credit: Faith Hoffmann, breeder of American Bresse chickens and occasionally Cornish Cross 'mutants,' to use her words.

Is it Healthy to Use Epinettes for Chickens?

Is it healthy for humans to eat chickens that have been "fattened" in epinettes?

The American culture seems to have forgotten that there was a time in American history, 125 years ago at the turn of the 20th Century, when butter and cream were eaten freely at nearly every meal. Apple pies were made with lard, and there was no such thing as trans-fats such as margarine and mayonnaise. People worked hard, walked a lot, and ate almost no ultra-refined sugar.

This was also a time when there was virtually no such thing as auto-immune disease, diabetes, cancer or heart disease. Today that's hard to fathom, but I've seen and studied the 1900 death statistics.

In the intervening years, we were slowly but surely hornswaggled - swamped with relentless propaganda - and this has led to the current epidemics of sickness. We collectively lost our way nutritionally. (We SHOULD have been avoiding refined sugars.) Our bodies need healthy fat, but many have lost their taste for it. We have forgotten that fat is not bad for us. 

Don't be afraid of healthy fats! 

Don't be afraid to finish your meat birds! 

About Leslee Wooton and Eldervine Farms

Translate This Page
Traduire Cette Page
Traduzca Esta Pagina