Tim, I usually cook them in the crock pot, and the meat cooked in the crock pot is certainly still good to eat. Why wouldn't it be? But I also have slow roasted them in the oven, it takes 4 hours (could be longer, depending on age, size, and breed) for a bird to get tender at 300F, it's delicious. I use a clay chicken cooker with a lid, so it doesn't dry out. An oven bag would also work, or anything wit a lid so they don't get dry. I've pressure canned them, that's good, too. You can brown them in a skillet, them put them in a pressure cooker to get tender, then crisp in the oven or skillet before serving. I haven't done that, it seems like a lot of trouble, but it's in my pressure canner book. I think you put the pieces up on a rack in the cooker, and put water in the bottom, close it up, and cook a short time. You can also just cook them in a pressure cooker.
I take the meat off the bones when I crock-pot them, and use it to make tacos, sandwiches, enchiladas, burritos, tamales, stir-fry, chicken salad, chicken and dumplings, chicken pie, casseroles, or whatever else I think of. Somebody recently posted how her grandmother slow simmered them whole until tender, then put them in the oven with almost done root veggies and roasted until the skined browned and the veggies were done, it sounds great, and I'm gonna try it myself.
Limiting the use of older birds to "only good for broth and soup" is nonsense, and encourages waste of perfectly good meat. But I read that comment often, and I suppose that if somebody can't figure out how to put a bird in the crock pot and plug it in, they probably won't use the other methods, either.
