Okay to eat bird that has been killed by bobcat?

[enola]

After an animal dies, any wounds can't fester. Natural decomposition sets in. But, since you were butchering the hen within 5 minutes, she certainly wasn't even decomposing yet. There is nothing wrong with deciding to eat her. I am a whole lot more squeamish about feathers on the table than I am about your family eating her.

 

[tcstoehr]

No.
Bacteria could be building up in the bird from the attack. Our bacteria s becoming more aggressive . My husband in October experienced a small cut to the arm and it was so aggressive that he spend several days in hospital. The doctors said it was a bacteria that could not be battled by penicillin.
Tho it was not an issue of eating an injured animal...the example is to warn of our new bacterias.

OK, yes, there are new bacteria all the time. Meat is cooked with the assumption that it could have all kinds of nasty bacteria on it. I have always figured proper cooking would kill all bacteria, aggressive or otherwise. Was this assumption wrong? Will some bacteria survive a trip through a 350 degree oven? Not to my knowledge but I am open new information.

 

[enola]

The only bacteria present on a hen that died 5 minutes ago are certainly going to be killed by properly cooking the body. In other cultures poultry is hung in open air markets before selling them, these birds are not even gutted, only plucked. They call the process 'aging'.

No one has asked, so I will...... Did she taste good?

 

[woodlumn]

Oh my goodness she tasted great! Truly fresh, free range chicken is fantastic, as you well know I was amazed by the yellow globs of fat on her...we give our flock scratch during the cold winter months, I assume that accounts for part of it.

This was my little girl's second favorite hen. When she woke the morning after the attack, she said she was glad the sussex didn't get killed by the bobcat. We had to break the news to her, that the cat had come back in the night, but that we were able to get the hen back and process her. She thought about it for about 2 seconds and said, "that's okay, at least she didn't get wasted." Wow, what a kid. And, to quote her as she picked a drum stick clean, "thank you Speckled Sussex!"

 

[Ridgerunner]

They do have flavor don’t they? And cooked properly they are not tough at all.

Before a hen starts to lay she builds up a reservoir of fat. That fat they store up is what a broody hen mostly lives on when she spends most of her time on the nest. A broody still needs to get off and eat and drink, but because of the fat they can stick on the nest long enough to hatch eggs. It wasn’t your scratch that caused that, it’s just the way hens are. I’ve butchered enough to know and I don’t feed scratch.