Best option for butchering older roosters?

[FunClucks]

Wow, I wouldn't have guessed that it would take that long. But I've never done this.

Dumb question... how can you tell when rigor has passed? Like I said, I've never done this.

Rigor had passed by 5 days, but I wasn't able to cook it until seven. I wouldn't recommend waiting after 5 days to cook it, but my bird smelled fine, and it tasted fine, so all was well. I rinse the bird all the time when processing, and bag individually in gallon Ziplocs before placing in ice, to limit cross contamination - I guess I did some things right. If anything smells off, don't eat it. For Cornish cross, butchered around 8-10 weeks, rigor only takes maybe up to 3 days to pass. Or for roosters that are 4-6 months, I think 3-5 day rigor is usual. Remember, the grocery store chicken has already had rigor pass when it gets to the store, so it's 1-3 days old, because all of that is CX around 4-8 weeks. Once you buy it, it sits in the fridge for a few days before you eat it, so from slaughter to cooking, some of those may very well be older than 5 days, but I don't know. I understand now why chicken from the grocery store seems to go bad so quickly.

When you try to move the leg when it's connected to the thigh, and it doesn't move, or only slightly, with a lot of resistance, it's still in rigor. When you move the leg connected to the thigh (bend the bird's leg) and it moves easily like the grocery store chicken, you know rigor has passed. You can also test by poking the breast meat, but you kinda have to know what you're looking for already there. moving a joint is easier to check for newbies I think.

If you take longer than about an hour to process the bird, rigor can set in while you're still processing it. All of a sudden, the joints that moved so freely when newly slaughtered are tight - I had to break the joint between the back and legs to push the legs out to the side so I could eviscerate with the chicken on its back for my year old rooster - it took 2x as long as the CX did to skin it. Plucking would probably have taken 2-3x as long, since it had 3x more feathers. The CX had a nice broad back to lay on the table upside down, but the production red had a much narrower back, and kept trying to flop over onto its side. Yours will be small roosters I think, so you may run into this. I was parting out the birds anyway, so I didn't care that I had to break the joint, it didn't hurt anything.

I skinned and pressure cooked with chicken stock veggies and had the most incredible broth and tender chicken. I used the instructions for making chicken broth and just added the whole skinned chicken into the pressure canner.

 

[Sally PB]

Thank you for the explanation.

 

[Molpet]

Once you buy it, it sits in the fridge for a few days before you eat it, so from slaughter to cooking, some of those may very well be older than 5 days, but I don't know. I understand now why chicken from the grocery store seems to go bad so quickly.

I looked it up years ago and usda had 10 days from slaughter to sell by date.

 

[NatJ]

...I don’t want to clean the meat and prepare it for people and it be the shittiest tasting, leather like chicken they’ve ever had....

Grinding the meat, or chopping it finely, is one way to deal with tough meat.

Some people like to make sausage from old chickens.

I've never had a meat grinder, so I fall back on chopping. Any time I cook meat by any method and it is too tough to chew easily, I chop it up. That can mean chopped chicken in soup, or chicken salad, or chicken in chili, or chicken in gravy, or whatever else works for you. The idea is to chop across all those tough fibers, so cutting thin slices for a sandwich can also work fine, as long as you cut the slices the correct direction.