Preparing Butchered Hen

[Barnyard Dawg]

My wife cooked up a two year old + hen yesterday she had slowed down on her egg production. She butchered it and cooked the same day, this time she put the chicken in a roasting pan on a rack for an hour+ it was surprisingly tender.

 

[Cuban Longtails]

Dawg, you're making me hungry!

Did she brine it any or just go straight to the roasting pot?

 

[lilshadow]

How do I tell if the hen is non productive. I have about about 17 hens. I get maybe 4-5 eggs every other day. So how can I tell who isn't laying, I would hate to butcher the wrong hens.

 

[Cuban Longtails]

Best way to do it is to isolate them or go out and watch who's going in and out of the nest to lay. I'd wait until after the weather warms up, though. A lot of girls are just getting out of molt, adjusting back to the warmer weather and longer days.

 

[lilshadow]

Quote:
sounds good..on my next day off I guess I have a date with my chickens. I will sit out there from sun up to sun down if I have to....lol..Thanks bunches

 

[tenthingsfarm]

The best method I've found for cooking older birds is the pressure saucepan. I had some RIR that were about 2 years old, not laying, plus they were pretty mean to some of the other birds. So when I butchered my meat birds, I put the 3 RIR's in my freezer as well.

I just cooked on the other day - After thawing I cut it up into pieces and put them in the pressure saucepan with about 3c. water. Put the lid on, and once I was getting steam out the vent on the top of the lid, I added the weight. Once the weight was jiggling (that's when you know you have pressure) I let it cook about 30-40 minutes. I'm not sure on the time because I got distracted by a phone call.

When it was done, I put the saucepan in the sink and ran water over it to bring the pressure down. I took off the lid, removed the chicken parts to a bowl to cool, and then let the broth sit so I could skim off the fat. There was a lot more broth than the 3c. of water, and it was really rich and concentrated.

Once the chicken was cool enough, I removed it from the bone. I cut the white meat in fairly large chunks for chicken soup with carrots, celery and homemade noodles. I hadn't put any seasoning in with the chicken, so I added a little salt, pepper. parsley, onion powder and garlic to the broth. It was really good, also tender. The biscuits on the side were good too!

I shredded the dark meat and mixed it w/barbecue sauce and chipotle tabasco and we ate it as barbecue sandwiches. It was tender and yummy too! We had it with slaw, baked beans and sun tea.

Hope this is helpful!

 

[Sunny Side Up]

Oooh, my mouth is watering after reading this thread! I'm getting off this 'puter now & cooking up some roos I've had "resting" in the refrigerator.

What a nice term that is, to think these birds are peacefully relaxing after the rough day they had previously getting beheaded, scalded, plucked, & gutted. Now they're resting, shhh, don't wake them!

I like that tip about separating the cooked white meat from the dark, and the two different uses. I'm using standard breed roos who have lots more dark meat than white. I'll save that white meat for something special and use the dark in BBQ or chili dishes.

Better go now before I get drool on the keyboard...

 

[Buster]

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[Buster]

I would hang and gut the bird immediately after slaughtering. That way the blood doesn't get into the meat.

We soaked ours in a salt water mixture (1 tbs per pint) for 24 hours and then shredded it and made chicken burritos but it would have been fine for soup as well, or stew as the case may be.

Here is the link to how I processed my bird:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=36358

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
You can buy trap nests, that will trap a hen when she enters the nest box to lay an egg. The advantages are: you can keep track who lays what and how often, this is especially good if your breeding for a very productive strain or wanting to keep track of who produces what offspring. Disadvantages: you have to let the hen out, you have to buy(or make) enough trap nests for everyone(or almost everyone), and you have to make sure everybody is laying in the trap nests.

With trap nests you can just keep track of who lays what and when. You'll know who your most productive hen is and who isn't producing at all. If your working on a breeding program, you know what offspring came from which hen, therefore you know who your most valuable brood hen is.