Excess birds

[KittieChick]

I'm ordering eggs and chicks for the spring. So far I've ordered Delawares, Welsummers and I'm considering either Ameraucanas or Cream Legbars as well as possibly Dorkings or some other meat bird.

Question is, will the excess egg birds be edible? Have you eaten them?

Thanks.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Yep, they taste like chicken.

I've eaten my spare Welsummer males, and they are quite tasty. If they get on the older side, you want to slow cook them, or make soup so they are not tough. The Cream Legbar I had was quite smaller on meat than my Welsummer males. But he was still edible.

 

[nj2wv]

I have eaten barred rock , Rhode Island Red , light brahma etc. I use the slow cooker. They were hens. Not too meaty in the breast but the legs and thighs were a nice size.

 

[bobbi-j]

They are all edible. Just butchered some Buckeyes, EEs, a Welsummer and a few mutts last week. Canned them, and they were delicious!

 

[KittieChick]

They are all edible. Just butchered some Buckeyes, EEs, a Welsummer and a few mutts last week. Canned them, and they were delicious!

As in pressure cooker canning? Do you have to de-bone them? Do you gut them and all that first, or do you skin and then cut the meat from the carcass, like butchering a deer?

Before my 5 hens started laying I didn't have any issue imagining them in the oven. Now, not so much because their eggs are like eating an egg flavored pudding cup. Yummm! Yesterday, however, I was eyeballing my rooster and thinking that he was pretty hefty the last time I picked him up. At 7 months, he's probably just right.

 

[bobbi-j]

As in pressure cooker canning? Do you have to de-bone them? Do you gut them and all that first, or do you skin and then cut the meat from the carcass, like butchering a deer?

Before my 5 hens started laying I didn't have any issue imagining them in the oven. Now, not so much because their eggs are like eating an egg flavored pudding cup. Yummm! Yesterday, however, I was eyeballing my rooster and thinking that he was pretty hefty the last time I picked him up. At 7 months, he's probably just right.

Yes, pressure canning. You can de-bone them or not. The only meat we take for canning is the breast and leg/thigh. We peel the skin back far enough to expose the breast meat and thighs, cut the breast meat off the bone, disjoint the thigh, taking as much meat as I can with it, cut the yellow part of the leg off, and that's it. On my birds there really wasn't that much meat left that we didn't get. I de-boned the legs, but it was putsy and time consuming. Next time I might just can drumsticks in a quart jar and thighs in the pint jars (if they fit) and leave the bones in both of them. The nice thing about pressure-canning is that it tenderizes the meat of those tough old laying hens.