Heritage Large Fowl - Phase II

[thedragonlady]

Honestly....meat from the grocery store is tasteless long before it even gets to the store...JMHO

AMEN. Has anyone not seen the inane Perdue chicken Ad on TV ? "An all veggie diet" . What? Chickens are omnivores.If my birds didn't get their ration of worms, bugs, mice,and snakes a week, they'd probably go on strike.Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Quote:
Thanks. My other 2 RIR hens look bigger but looks are tricky this time of year with the feathers all puffed up due to the cold. I should have weighted the cull tonight before processing but I did not think of it. Then I could have compared the other two's weights later this week.

 

[brahmabreeder]

AMEN. Has anyone not seen the inane Perdue chicken Ad on TV ? "An all veggie diet" . What? Chickens are omvivores.If my birds didn't get their ration of worms, bugs, mice,and snakes a week, they'd probably go on strike.Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[Zanna]

Happy New Years to All! Thank you for all the help, support and conversation. I will be making a toast to Bob tonight. Hard to believe how much I miss someone I only knew on an internet forum. Cheers!

 

[bnjrob]

It would either take a very open mind or the process of being raised in an open culture. I have a little bit of both. Growing up my mother owned an appliance store. One of the customers and family friend was a Vietnamese woman. We would go out to work on her appliances and occasionally visit. She always cooked everything other than the digestive organs. So while I never ate the dishes she made, I watched her preparing them.

I am also a type of person who understands what the parts are, how they function, and what they are composed of. All a shank is, is flesh and bone. All a head is is flesh and bone. All a comb/wattle is is flesh. To me, they are no different than skin or liver or heart or meat.

Although I heard shanks are on a level of their own, and make some wonderful cooking stock. The thick gelatinous kind.

I know that the comb/head etc is all meat but I am still a weenie. But hubby is happy that I'm not as much of a weenie as I was. I'm a nurse, I can stick my hands in all kinds of gross human body fluids, cavities, etc but animals have a special place in my heart so it's been a challenge to do some of the things we do now with butchering our own chickens. But I am determined to improve our self-reliance and being able to use all the parts of an animal is less wasteful and something I hope to be able to do at some point.

Have not used feet/shanks or combs/wattles, but I have made excellent stock with the bones and organs - my pressure canner has been getting a workout the last few months. I don't strain out all the fat and "gelatin" like today's canning recipes say to do. But the flavor can't be beat compared to the thin stuff you get in a can.

 

[maryhysong]

I have a very hard time eating chicken from a restaurant/grocery store anymore. The texture of mush, the amount of water that cooks out of it, the lack of a flavor. I just can't handle it much anymore. I spoiled myself. I got back into birds in May 2013, since then I decided I'm just going to have to hatch enough to freeze a lot of culls.

Also, I've posted this elsewhere. And as we are on the topic it may be a good idea to ask.

Do any of you keep parts such as feet/shanks, combs, wattles, whole heads? A lot of places around the world reserve these parts for soups and stocks. Some include the parts in dishes. I'm all about eating, and I'll eat just about anything. So I really want other peoples input on what to make with extra parts. I plan to make a lot of stock this year by way of cooking down feet/shanks.

I have not bought meat at the store in over a year; (except occasionally bacon on sale) Just eating cull chickens and ducks. Sometimes if they are full of pin feathers I just skin them and cut into pieces- breast, legs, thighs, the rest goes in a bag for soup along with necks and feet. At first the thought of chicken feet was kind of gross, until I found out that the skin and toenails will slip right off after a dunk in boiling water so no worry about how dirty they are. All those parts along with leftover roasted carcasses are souped in my big soup pot. Makes really wonderful broth! Hearts and livers I usually eat for lunch or dinner on processing day. Really fresh liver, just dredged in seasoned flour and fried in butter with onions until *just* done (still a touch pink in the middle) is a far cry from the shoe leather most people serve.

 

[Beekissed]

Heads become dog and cat fodder here. When we're scalding and plucking, the feet and legs are soup stock...when just skinning and not doing the hot water scald thing, the legs are dog fodder. Great for his teeth and a good addition to the variety of his diet. He works to guard them, he needs the rewards.

Testes and pancreas go to the flock and they will wait patiently by the processing table for these goodies, as well as any livers I managed to mangle as I pulled the guts...I've found that no one likes the lungs..not even the dog. The bones get cooked down in stock and then are given to the dog. Heart, liver, gizzard, kidneys are stock and soup meat and I leave the kidneys in the back of the bird~ those are my very favorite organ meat. I always call dibs on those.

The blood is consumed by the flock and they will lick that tree and the soil until it is all consumed as much as possible...then scratch up the bugs and other critters that come to eat the blood in the soil the next several days. The skin and intestines are slowly carried off by the woods critters.

Got stock cooling on the stove as we type...tomorrow it will be canned up with the meat and my processing of chickens will be done this year. Over four dozen jars of meat and stock to keep us in soup for the winter. I don't think I can recall better tasting birds than this year.

 

[NanaKat]

Currentlty breeding the senior cock over the older hens and a few of the daughters.  Fertility is good and the first small test batch hatched yesterday. 

Question from a discussion last week about breeding hens instead of pullets.  At what stage does one consider a pullet breedable?  Do you go by size, age, length of laying or all three? 
Reason for the question:
Wyandotte pullets that started laying at age 6 - 7  months are now 9 - 10 months, finished full molt and are laying again.  They have reached mature size.  Two are attempting to go broody.
These are some of the daughters under the senior cock.  If I should pull them from the breed pen until they are a full year of age, there is time in the hatching schedule to allow for that change.

Interested in the advice...please.

Bumping this question because I think it got lost

 

[call ducks]

Personally I wait a month after a hens first egg. To allow time for the egg to reach a good setting size for the breed.

 

[ronott1]

Question from a discussion last week about breeding hens instead of pullets. At what stage does one consider a pullet breedable? Do you go by size, age, length of laying or all three?

Bumping this question because I think it got lost

For just plain hatching success, 52G to 70G has the best hatch rate.

For Standards? When the pullet is old enough to know her good and bad points.