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April 7, 2013
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I killed a 10 pound hen this last weekend. It is only the second hen I have ever killed and things are a little different than the toms I have done.
This hen has a nearly entirely feathered head, devoid of caruncles and the “raised lines” running from back to front of the neck. It is smooth. The greater caruncles “wattles” are not visible as they are completely covered by feathers and are very small and flat.
My plan is to mount the head conventionally like you would a grouse or quail. I skinned out the head to the beak and took a #11 pointed scalpel and inverted the snood so I can put clay or apoxy into it and fleshed out the greater caruncles so I can fill the void with clay or apoxie to hopefully keep shrinking to a minimum.
My question is, Is this a doable thing and if it is what can I expect as it dries? If it is not a good idea, can the head still be freeze dried since I skinned it out entirely and removed material from the caruncles and snood?
The bearded hen I did, I used an Anthony Eddy flying hen head. So, I didn’t get experience on this.
As a side note, I inspected her “spurs” and since this is only the second hen I have had the opportunity to look at, I can say that my bearded hens spur is at least twice the size of this ones, maybe more.
The skin on the bearded hen was blue with pin feather butts. After fleshing and degreasing and mounting, I lost four pin feathers and three full feathers. I was shocked. The hen I killed this weekend was fully feathered and had maybe ten to twelve pin feathers. What a difference a few weeks make.
September 26, 2011
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I have not tried to mount a hen head conventionally , but I think it will work ok for you if you follow your plan. At this point it would probably not work to try to freeze dry the head….so if it does not work out you would be better to order a stock freeze dried hen head to replace it. I am sure you will get some shrinkage and distortion as it dries, but it may be acceptable.
Glad to hear you dodged the pin feather bullet on this one !
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April 7, 2013
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Thanks Aaron for the reply. I’ll post the results.
I dodged the pin feather bullet on my other one by cheating a little. I did a breast mount using 2/3 of the body mannikin. I skinned the turkey being careful not to soil the feathers and I used borax to absorb liquid and used paper towels also. I spot washed the feathers and fleshed and defatted the skin with a tool from Research Mannikins. It is a brass handle about 7″ long and has little super sharp pointed stiff wires at one end resembling a rake. It works better than the wire wheel, but it is slower. I used lots of borax to absorb the fat. I then sprayed the skin with water and rubbed Dawn into the feather tracts, let it sit for a while and then used paper towels and a spray bottle to remove the soap which took a lot of time. I then used a lot of borax on the skin to absorb moisture. I used siliconized acrylic caulk as a hide paste hoping it would hold those feathers in place. It turned out pretty nice.
I have it setting on it’s legs and feet that I cut off just above the spur and attached the feet to a limb as if it is roosting with it’s head and neck looking up at a gobbling tom I have on another limb.
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