- Sep 22, 2009
- 303
- 7
- 121
And it was easy. We did the big one by cutting the jugular and the other by a swift chop to the neck and off with his head. Bleeding them out was easy also. Even though the one kept flopping.
The plucking however... well the bird that had not hit rigor mortis was easy to put in the water. the other however was stiff as a board and short of breaking his legs and spine there was no way he would fit in the pot. Soooo I dumped it on him!
Needless to say my big fat water dunked bird was easy to pluck and stayed just as limp as could be the entire time. The other bird however was a nightmare, tried to pluck, tore skin, said oh well and skinned him instead.
By the time I went to cut the feet off of the fat one I got the surprise of my life. His foot curled around one of my fingers! I nearly dropped the bird the knife and nearly needed a change of pants. Turns out since I bent his leg his foot closed automatically.
Well.. turns out the birds were not quite starved before butchering.. full crops.. ICK!!!
I learned the hard way that a full crop is not too easy for a first timer to remove but plenty easy to find.
The first one was the hardest. It took me ages to figure out what to do. Could I really just pull everything out? Why wouldn't it pull out easy? Well.. After a while I got tired of fooling with him and yanked a bit. It came out finally. It was after that I realized that I really cut the neck to long and had a stub of neck sticking out the front end of my bird.
Good grief!
I cut that off and looked inside the bird. Well.. I could see through it, did not LOOK like anything was left. Hmm.. but from my clumsiness with the crop undigested food had gotten on my bird. Ick again! Had to thoroughly wash all of that off!
First birdie! Done! Did it really take nearly an 45 minutes for one? Yes. Was it easy? NO!!! I kept thinking I was going to hurt the dead bird.
The second one I had already skinned and found there was not much meat on him. I ended up sectioning him up and tossing the carcass over the fence. Bye bye roo!
Brought everything in the house for a final washing and found out rigor mortis had struck again! Could not get the whole bird in the baggie without lots of help and some fighting. I thought I was going to have to break his legs to make him do what I wanted. Thankfully that was not the case.
What did I learn from this? Chickens are not fragile. Predators are stronger than I give them credit for. Rigor mortis is a pain in the
.
I also learned that the whole process makes a person want to really toss that bird on the grill and have some bbq chicken untill said person realizes they could use the chicken for a baseball bat and needs to age the chicken in the fridge a bit.
The plucking however... well the bird that had not hit rigor mortis was easy to put in the water. the other however was stiff as a board and short of breaking his legs and spine there was no way he would fit in the pot. Soooo I dumped it on him!
Needless to say my big fat water dunked bird was easy to pluck and stayed just as limp as could be the entire time. The other bird however was a nightmare, tried to pluck, tore skin, said oh well and skinned him instead.
By the time I went to cut the feet off of the fat one I got the surprise of my life. His foot curled around one of my fingers! I nearly dropped the bird the knife and nearly needed a change of pants. Turns out since I bent his leg his foot closed automatically.
Well.. turns out the birds were not quite starved before butchering.. full crops.. ICK!!!
The first one was the hardest. It took me ages to figure out what to do. Could I really just pull everything out? Why wouldn't it pull out easy? Well.. After a while I got tired of fooling with him and yanked a bit. It came out finally. It was after that I realized that I really cut the neck to long and had a stub of neck sticking out the front end of my bird.
Good grief!
I cut that off and looked inside the bird. Well.. I could see through it, did not LOOK like anything was left. Hmm.. but from my clumsiness with the crop undigested food had gotten on my bird. Ick again! Had to thoroughly wash all of that off!
First birdie! Done! Did it really take nearly an 45 minutes for one? Yes. Was it easy? NO!!! I kept thinking I was going to hurt the dead bird.
The second one I had already skinned and found there was not much meat on him. I ended up sectioning him up and tossing the carcass over the fence. Bye bye roo!
Brought everything in the house for a final washing and found out rigor mortis had struck again! Could not get the whole bird in the baggie without lots of help and some fighting. I thought I was going to have to break his legs to make him do what I wanted. Thankfully that was not the case.
What did I learn from this? Chickens are not fragile. Predators are stronger than I give them credit for. Rigor mortis is a pain in the
I also learned that the whole process makes a person want to really toss that bird on the grill and have some bbq chicken untill said person realizes they could use the chicken for a baseball bat and needs to age the chicken in the fridge a bit.
