Freezer camp for the young Roosters

[AmericanMom]

There was probably nothing wrong with your older hen. Internal fat in chickens is a bright yellow. The older the hen is the more yellow fst dhe will tend to have.

LOL.. Joke is one us then, We wasted a perfectly good chicken

Stinking Newbies

 

[enola]

If that is the biggest chicken raising mistake you make, you will be just fine .

 

[Ruthster55]

Next time, collect the yellow fat in its own little bowl. Put in fridge and when you have time, render into schmaltz.

Delicious for frying potatoes.

Non-productive hens often have a bunch of this.

 

[AmericanMom]

Next time, collect the yellow fat in its own little bowl. Put in fridge and when you have time, render into schmaltz.

Delicious for frying potatoes.

Non-productive hens often have a bunch of this.

I pride myself about not being squeamish, I have handled raw meat, helped my husband butcher his kills etc.. This was totally something we had never seen, I had just assumed that ol girl had gotten an infection or something... I'll know better next time we butcher our older birds...and yes, she had quit laying late last summer, the other hen (same age) that we butchered didn't have that yellowish stuff except for around her shoulders.. I was so freaked out by it I didn't even stop to consider what it was

I'll have to look up Schmaltz ... I'm thinking its just a lard/grease??

 

[Ruthster55]

If a mistake is made while culling a laying flock, you might find developing eggs inside the hen. These can be used in a sort of Oops-Soup. Add a little bit of thyme, rosemary etc. Actually, this is seen as a delicacy in France.

Schmaltz is rendered chicken fat. Lard is rendered pork fat. Lard takes longer to render than chicken fat but the result is also yummy. Commercial lard such as is marketed in stores (might be sold as "Manteca") has been chemically altered and hydrogenated (yuck!).

If a non-laying hen is culled, you might get plenty of that yellow fat rather than developing eggs. Make schmaltz by heating the yellow fat in a pyrex or Corning-casserole-type dish under LOW heat in the oven or the toaster oven until it melts. You have just rendered it into schmaltz. Make sure to use low heat!! Might take a little while as you're doing something else around the house. You're not trying to burn anything.

You can put the result into the fridge for later use.

It will melt in a frying pan under low-to-medium heat into great stuff for cooking 'taters (and onions if you like) into the best home fries ya ever tasted....

....or I think it would be good for greasing cookie sheets too.

 

[enola]

Check hens pelvic bones before butchering. If the tips of the bones have a 2 or 3 finger wide gap between them, the hen is still laying.

 

[AmericanMom]

If a mistake is made while culling a laying flock, you might find developing eggs inside the hen. These can be used in a sort of Oops-Soup. Add a little bit of thyme, rosemary etc. Actually, this is seen as a delicacy in France.

Schmaltz is rendered chicken fat. Lard is rendered pork fat. Lard takes longer to render than chicken fat but the result is also yummy. Commercial lard such as is marketed in stores (might be sold as "Manteca") has been chemically altered and hydrogenated (yuck!).

If a non-laying hen is culled, you might get plenty of that yellow fat rather than developing eggs. Make schmaltz by heating the yellow fat in a pyrex or Corning-casserole-type dish under LOW heat in the oven or the toaster oven until it melts. You have just rendered it into schmaltz. Make sure to use low heat!! Might take a little while as you're doing something else around the house. You're not trying to burn anything.

You can put the result into the fridge for later use.

It will melt in a frying pan under low-to-medium heat into great stuff for cooking 'taters (and onions if you like) into the best home fries ya ever tasted....

....or I think it would be good for greasing cookie sheets too.

Yes, our old brown sexlink had a few yolks in her, Funny because for the last several months she has laid yolkless eggs... I actually had watched an episode of Bizarre Foods where they took the yolks and make a kind of soup....Yeah, no thank you

Anyhoo, I told hubby that she was probably getting ready to start laying again, whoops..... The white hen was past her time, which by reading this, the bright yellow fat that filled her body cavity gave evidence to that.... I doubt we will be culling old hens for a while now, our other three (all BA's are now laying again) and the rest are around a year old and younger... the information I have gathered from this forum and good folks who know what they are doing is priceless... I'm so glad there is a BYC

 

[Elke Beck]

Hens can have yolks inside, but not be laying. If you see a developed egg, then you have taken a layer, but just having yolks does not mean the bird is laying. I have had birds that lay a few times a year, so they had yolks, but they were very poor layers and should have been culled.

 

[AmericanMom]

Hens can have yolks inside, but not be laying. If you see a developed egg, then you have taken a layer, but just having yolks does not mean the bird is laying. I have had birds that lay a few times a year, so they had yolks, but they were very poor layers and should have been culled.

Oh ok... then I'm back to not thinking I took away a layer...lol... she had yolks but like I said, had been laying yolkless eggs for months.. She had no developed eggs in her and it had been a few days since we got one of the yolkless...

These chicken facts are hard to keep up with...lol... always having to rethink what I thunk in the first place

 

[SlipsWife]

Got the 9 chickens done, one of the older hens we didn't keep, when we opened her up a thick yellow fat like substance filled her body cavity, we threw her out, none of the other chickens had that... It went pretty smoothly, Hubby made a couple homemade killing cones out of buckets.. Two of our rooster were of a silkie mix, there skin and meat is a greyish black, anyone tasted those before?? Not the most appetizing to look at but will try it anyways.

All in all, from start to finish took us 3 hours, Not bad for a bunch of first timers

I've read somewhere (I'm sure it was on BYC) that silkies are a delicacy in oriental cooking? I wish I remembered more. It could have been on a hatchery site that I saw it. My husband and I were thinking that it seems like a lot of work to butcher such small birds (I've seen standard size silkie pictures but haven't found any hatcheries that sell them) but then he's hunted quail/dove and even squirrel before.