Stacey and I processed our first chicken a few weeks ago. We had 2 extra young roosters, so we thought we'd try our hand at producing our own roaster. Our largest Buff Orpington rooster provided dinner with our girls!
I spared you guys any real graphic photos. Overall, It went very well and we are excited to taste the fruits of our labors. Plucking turned out to be extremely simple after dipping the chicken in 150 degree water a few quick dunks. Eviscerating it turned out to be rather simple as well.
Since our birds truly free range, there's a chance the meat won't be as tender as caged birds, but worse comes to worse, we just make soup in the future. I'm just glad to have the chickens and enjoy them having free reign on the property. They are very relaxing to watch and the eggs the hens provide are the best! Now, if the rooster roast turns out to be a winner, I think we'll have full utilization of a chicken flock and teach our children a good lesson in providing the simpler basics of life for ourselves.
I'll update with pictures of dinner with the girls! Here are the processing pictures!
UPDATE: We enjoyed our first free ranged chicken meal. The chicken was extremely tender and tasty. We all agree that the chicken tasted as good or better than any chicken we've ever had. I was very pleasantly surprised after hearing many stories about tough and less than tasty home butchered birds.
Our bird, a 25 week old Buff Orpington rooster tasted absolutely wonderful. I can't say enough also about our family making another small step towards our ability to live self sufficiently.
The girls raved about the flavor. Even Jackie, our youngest daughter, who had initial reservations about eating a bird we raised, helped pick the bird clean. I think she liked it the best.
Special thanks to Stacey and Austin, who helped prepare such a wonderful meal and thanks to Buffy, the rooster, who lived 25 weeks as a "cage free" free range bird for providing the tasty entree. Even though butchering your own food sounds unpleasant, it's nice to know that one less bird in the world had to be caged to provide our family of six with a meal.
We plan on continuing to raise a few birds next year as well, hens for eggs and roos for meat.
Here are the pictures of our homegrown chicken dinner!
I spared you guys any real graphic photos. Overall, It went very well and we are excited to taste the fruits of our labors. Plucking turned out to be extremely simple after dipping the chicken in 150 degree water a few quick dunks. Eviscerating it turned out to be rather simple as well.
Since our birds truly free range, there's a chance the meat won't be as tender as caged birds, but worse comes to worse, we just make soup in the future. I'm just glad to have the chickens and enjoy them having free reign on the property. They are very relaxing to watch and the eggs the hens provide are the best! Now, if the rooster roast turns out to be a winner, I think we'll have full utilization of a chicken flock and teach our children a good lesson in providing the simpler basics of life for ourselves.
I'll update with pictures of dinner with the girls! Here are the processing pictures!
UPDATE: We enjoyed our first free ranged chicken meal. The chicken was extremely tender and tasty. We all agree that the chicken tasted as good or better than any chicken we've ever had. I was very pleasantly surprised after hearing many stories about tough and less than tasty home butchered birds.
Our bird, a 25 week old Buff Orpington rooster tasted absolutely wonderful. I can't say enough also about our family making another small step towards our ability to live self sufficiently.
The girls raved about the flavor. Even Jackie, our youngest daughter, who had initial reservations about eating a bird we raised, helped pick the bird clean. I think she liked it the best.
Special thanks to Stacey and Austin, who helped prepare such a wonderful meal and thanks to Buffy, the rooster, who lived 25 weeks as a "cage free" free range bird for providing the tasty entree. Even though butchering your own food sounds unpleasant, it's nice to know that one less bird in the world had to be caged to provide our family of six with a meal.
We plan on continuing to raise a few birds next year as well, hens for eggs and roos for meat.
Here are the pictures of our homegrown chicken dinner!
