Processing saddles and capes

[pipco]

Howdy,
I recently acquired a bunch of fly tying material from a farmer friend. The feathers and hackles look great but happen to be attached to a dead chicken. He failed to tell me this until handing me a bag out of the freezer.


I was wondering how to process the skin and feathers.

So far, from what I've read via the interweb it says to skin the bird after freezing and thawing twice ( to kill parasites) or skinning, scraping as much fat off as possible and then do freezing process.

-wash and dry skin/feathers
-stretch skin on a small board after appyling borax
-store for a few weeks in plastic bin
- move to another bin with silica to remove any excess moisture
-add some moth balls to dry storage container and cured skin/feathers

( the mothballs I understand as I've recently had a friggin' infestation in my tying room that has destroyed some beautiful, expensive hackle capes and other material but that is for another thread)

That's the basics.

Any other info I need to know? If you can provide any information it would be appreciated.
Thanx,
Stan

[Don Andersen]

Stan,

You got your work cut out for you. The process you posted is the best one.
However, for the work involved,the birds are rarely worth it.
You might want to pluck the decent feathers rather than skinning. A lot less work.

Don

[AlbertaCutthroat]

I've prepared many birds with a simple method, best to do a few at a time. Skin and scrape off as much fat as possible (an old spoon works good). Then wash in warm (not hot) very soapy water (grease cutting variety). Rinse then dry with a hair blower or sawdust with a touch of varsol in it. Re-blow dry feathers then rub borax into the skin side, let dry. With this method i have had no issues with silverfish/ bugs eating the skins. Some of the pheasants I've done are going on 15 years old. Good luck, you can source some awesome material by preserving your own skins, especially if you know a few bird hunters.

[pipco]

Thanks for the replies Don and AC.

[Bjay]

I have done dozens of birds. Skin it, pin it to a pieces of cardboard skin side up
. Scrap of all the fat you can and coat in borax and Alum if you can find any. Borax is just fine. leave till it is dry. shake off the borax and or Alum and put in a plastic zip lock bag. The borax will kill anything that gets into the bag in the future.As the fellow said ,,, good for just about forever.
BJ

[burningfreak]

My method is very similar to the ones already mentioned. Skin and scrape. Wash in warm soapy water, but include a good amount of dissolved borax. Rinse, blow dry. tack to a board or piece of cardboard skin side up. spread a 50/50 mix of salt and borax on the skin. After it's good and dry(this may require the powder to be removed and more added a time or two) throw it into the freezer for a week. Take it out of the freezer for about 48 hours for any possibly dormant eggs and the like to have a chance to activate then toss it back into the freezer for another week. The last thing I do after this whole process is to hit em with a quick nuke in the microwave for 15-20 seconds. Be careful with this last step, you don't want to overdo it. I've done this with some nice grouse capes and they have kept great! Never have I seen any little creepy crawlies in with them. I do keep all the stuff I've collected separate from my store bought materials however. Just an added precaution.