The Judgement is In

So today was rooster sentencing day, and no they didn't get a fair trial and I'm afraid the sentence is death.

We butchered 6 roosters today four of which are destined for the soup pot, while two will either be roasted or fried.. maybe grilled. I did learn a couple things from this batch of birds. First, I had read a number of times about how it is easier to skin your birds instead of plucking them. Yeah... personally? For me skinning them took twice maybe three times as long to do. The biggest problem is the feathers got in the way of me seeing where to run my knife to remove the skin.

The second thing I learned is that turkens are easy to pluck. It took almost no time for me to get the feathers off the body of it. Even better the skin doesn't look like it had the feathers in it over half the body. It was also the largest of the birds after butchering and it was one of the youngest ones we butchered.

Silver is going to make some home made stock from four of them and the feet from the birds (well the feet that were healthy, two of the Leghorns had sores on them). The feet have a lot of cartilage on them and some fat(s), it is simple to clean the feet too once you learn how. You boil some water, take the water off the fire/burner and drop the feet in the pot. Now you take them out one at a time and starting at the nails pop the sheathe off the nail and start peeling the top layer of scales off. As you go to the leg joint it gets more difficult but it is easier to start at the claws.

My biggest problem with these birds (I got them for free so it's only a half assed complaint), is most of them have had feet problems. Two of the white leghorns we got had feet that couldn't grip the pearches, couldn't grip at all and they had sores in the “palms” of the claws. The guinea fowl we had had one badly broken leg that healed wrong. There is a brown leghorn hen who has no toes. These were all in the birds we got for free last fall. Bothers me a bit they were like that. I'm just glad that they are living here now, so they have good lives till they wind up in my stock pot!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

New Birds!

So last evening me Silver one of our interns and two of the kids went over to my rabbit person to catch as many of her chickens as we could get our hands on. We did this around sunset in the hopes of catching them roosting. From the looks it seems most are crosses of some kind. We now have a good number of roosters (I am going to be culling there and I am trying to decide which roosters to keep), there is a few young birds; who keep close together thankfully. One of the youngsters is a guinea fowl, she (I think) has a lame leg; seems to be twisted backwards. I am hoping as she grows she'll be able to walk ok so I can let her loose come next spring to eat bugs for us. We did get some turken's otherwise known as the “naked-necked chicken”. The two adults are roosters and seems we have two young ones of indeterminate sex. I am hoping for at least one hen in there as I want the size of those birds added to my flock. So if we don't have a hen I might be keeping one of those roosters as they seem very vigorous in mating with hens from watching them for a few minutes this morning.

I was also offered to take the one homing pigeon she has. Seems at one point she had more and the rest flew off and left this one female by herself. We are thinking of taking her, we just need to make her a house. I was thinking of buying a couple more to raise as squab maybe, though the birds seem very pricey to buy. Lowest I saw was $50 a bird and that did not count shipping. I'll have to see what I can about getting a few more somewhere down the line.

The guinea isn't the only one with a foot issue it seems either. There is a hen who is missing at least her claws, and a white rooster who walks decidedly oddly like one of his feet don't work right. The woman said the guinea is due to her incubator, that is possible I imagine; I will have to see when we use it. Granted Silver is thinking of rebuilding it so it might not be an issue at all for us. I plan on checking on everybody a few times today to see how they interact to help me decide which roosters to keep around for my ladies. I also have a few that I am still trying to see if they are hens or roosters, as I learned when I had just the Rhode Island Reds and Jersey Giants that the hens sometimes get big combs. So that's it for now, I wish I had a -working- camera so I could snap some pics but that is one expense I can't afford right now.

BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...