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It's rendered down chicken fat. I use it to roast or pan fry vegetables. Here is a thread I started about chicken fat and about mid-way through describes with pictures how I made it. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/talk-to-me-about-chicken-fat.1140873/

I'm trying to manage my flock to be self-sufficient in both meat and eggs. If I hatched enough chickens so that the roosters could fulfill my meat needs, I would be overrun with hens and buried in eggs. I toyed around with the idea of selling excess pullets, but for a variety of reasons I...

We finally got around for processing the last of this years meat bird project. I hatched 26 chicks this year using my Naked Neck rooster over assorted hens (some slow growing broiler variety and some traditional heritage). 15 were cockerels, and all got butchered between 13 and 16 weeks. 11...

That's interesting. I recently read "The Dirty Life" which talks about a city girl marrying a farmer and throwing herself into the business farming. She mentioned that the birth of a female cow is always celebrated on the farm because, aside from the milk, they are far better tasting to eat...

I'm interested in hearing what you think of the taste and tenderness. The fact that we found the pullets to be such good eating, makes me feel better about hatching and raising them as meat birds. Some people just like to complain.

I'm another chicken keeper who butchers pullets. So far this year we've butchered an 18 week old who was on the verge of laying, and a second one, at 6 months, who had been laying for a few weeks. On the why pullets? Like @Ridgerunner, I do not have the space to raise 2X the number of...

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Me too! I guess I could try to monitor how many loose feathers I see around the coop to gauge how much molting is going on. But, for cockerels, I'm much more interested in trying to hit that sweet spot between reasonable size, tenderness, and how much chaos I can tolerate in my coop...

The juvenile molting does mess with butchering. It seems I'm always dealing with annoying little pin feathers. That's what I do. Once cooked, I can't say as I remember ever seeing or thinking about them. I can see the challenge from a marketing perspective. Having an abstract idea of...

Forgot to add. @Parront -- based on the green legs and lack of a monster comb, if that chick hatched from my flock, I would be almost 100% certain it was a female.

It is! I had the same trait when I had an ameraucana rooster, and I was very surprised to see it with the NN/RR crosses. And, I haven't hatched enough of the NN over Slow White Broilers to be 100% sure, but so far, with a sample of 4 chicks, the same pattern is holding for that cross as well...

How old? One thing I've noticed with my NN/RR crosses, is that the cockerels show a lot of comb very early. By 4 weeks it is quite obvious when comparing hatch-mates who is a girl and who is a boy. The other oddity I've noticed with my particular NN and RR combo is that the girls always have...

You've given me a lot to think about. One one hand, it would be pretty easy to acquire of few new slower broiler type hens (red rangers, etc.), each year, and keep crossing my NN to them to supply my meat needs. But, I'm more intrigued with a long term solution. I do have to sort out my...

Lots of great processing going on in here. That is fascinating. I would have loved to see that little bantam with her babies. So fellow meat birders, I'm finding myself in a rooster dilemma. I'm torn between keeping my current rooster another cycle or replacing him, now, with one of his...

Fellow wing nuts I see! I do love the wings and dark meat on heritage birds.

That jerky looks great. I love dehydrating apple slices with some cinnamon sprinkled on them. It's like a bite of apple pie when it's done.

That's me as well. I love crispy chicken skin. I've also gotten faster at plucking over the years, so it doesn't seem like a ton of work to me now. We've actually never skinned a chicken before. Once, when I mentioned off hand that some people skin their chickens to save time, my husband...

I agree, it's an interesting discussion. When I've purchased chicks where I had the option of getting a Marek's vaccination, I've always opted for it. I really can't say why, except it was cheap, and I thought, "why not?" I still have a handful of these hatchery birds bouncing over my...

I've got a broody as well -- BO/EE mix. It's hot as blazes her. I've got a fan trained on her and am keeping a close eye. I'm actually wondering if meat birds retain more broody instincts than other birds, simply because at least some of the strains they use were not bred for egg laying. My...

I'm a little under 2000 feet, and I've not had problems with the CX.