My EE Roo Crowed...

[MicMoo]

Back on July 1st, I said:
Quote:
Well, bright and early this morning it happened. He started crowing his head off. It was kind of a surprise as I'd heard others say that their roosters sounded pretty 'pathetic' on their first crowing attempts. Nope, not our roo - he was just a-crowing up a storm and (as predicted) he had a barnyard accident.

I'd be lying if I said it was 'no big deal'. Even though I've handled livestock before, been hunting, cleaned carcasses, etc. it was still kind of a difficult thing to do. But... the motivating fact was that I'm not ready to tick-off the neighbors and get a citation from the city. Therefore, I moved quickly to get things ready and get the deed done before 10am (leaving myself no time to back out).

Our family had an agreement (from day one) that all of our chickens are work animals and not pets. We thought we had 4 bantam EE hens and named them Drumstick, Bucket, Nugget, and Omlette, with the understanding that if any of them turned out to be roos, they'd end up in the pot.

It went pretty well. I didn't have a traffic cone, so I modified an empty plastic milk jug. I needed to change the be bedding in their tractor so I partially filled a bucket with some of the waste shavings and bled him into that (I also put the guts and feathers in there too.

For simplicity sake, I went ahead and just skinned the bird and here it is after spending 30 minutes in the ice bath:

We're making dumplings for dinner on Monday.

 

[PineBurrowPeeps]

Why on earth is it so dark? Is that a breed trait?! Bruising?! Blood?!

 

[MicMoo]

These Easter Eggers are blue-skinned chickens. Their legs, comb, earlobes, etc are all blue... and apparently so is the meat.

 

[chickenfanatic]

not all of them are that dark but even the ones that are are still very tasty goooood job

 

[MicMoo]

Wow!

I was surprised how that little bantie produced more meat than I'd expected. After tossing him in the pot, making the best stock I've ever had, and then de-boning, I got about 1-1/2 cups of meat - complete with blue highlights.

Originally, we were going to have dumplings for dinner tonight, but that stock just smelled too yummy so we threw in an onion, a bunch of carrots, celery, and noodles and made soup.

For my first non-commercial chicken dinner, I'd have to describe it as delicious. The chicken was just a little more chewy that what I'm used to (not bad at all, just more chewy) and the taste... well, "chickenier" is the only way to describe it.

We got chickens for eggs, but now I'm trying to think of a way to raise a meat bird or two.

 

[Mahonri]

Congratulations.

I'm expecting my Delaware mix to crow any day now... He's 14 weeks old.

Milk jug... I like the idea. that would make it easier.

 

[coffeelady3]

Quote:
You know, there's just not enough blue food in the world.

 

[EngieKisses]

Maybe if there were more blue foods in the world that would not look so odd!