Processing Day Support Group ~ HELP us through the Emotions PLEASE!

[jajeanpierre]

jajean.... we slaughtered our first 'silkie' on Saturday, he is actually a barnyard mix, mamma is a Silkie, daddy was one of our barnyard roosters who is not... but the cockerel looked just like his mamma. His skin and bones are black, we haven't cooked him yet, but I expect to find the dark streaks like you described since everything else was black except his organs were black streaked.

I totally agree with the line I bolded above... lf someone wants to buy a bird off of me as a flock rooster that is great, but I won't give away my roosters. If someone wants free meat they can look elsewhere. My roosters are worth at least $5 in meat, and I will do them myself if that is the case.

Your black-meat Silkies are worth up to $40 a carcass in the Asian grocery stores.

The dark streaks are very fine, almost like a dark thread running through the meat. I just wanted people to be prepared for it. Silkies are not the normal "meat" bird for North American chicken keepers. They tend to fall into the pet category. If you are eating your pet, anything odd about the meat will hit a lot harder.

 

[piglett]

In Asian markets black skinned chicken sells at a premium..... I don't know, it just looks WEIRD!

This is nothing though, you should see the ones they sell in Asia (usually Ajam Cerami)... talk about black!

Probably tastes like chicken.

you ever had a silkie?
black skin, meat. even bones
i will not eat anymore
but we had too many roosters so had to thin them on out

 

[Beekissed]

jajean.... we slaughtered our first 'silkie' on Saturday, he is actually a barnyard mix, mamma is a Silkie, daddy was one of our barnyard roosters who is not... but the cockerel looked just like his mamma. His skin and bones are black, we haven't cooked him yet, but I expect to find the dark streaks like you described since everything else was black except his organs were black streaked.

I totally agree with the line I bolded above... lf someone wants to buy a bird off of me as a flock rooster that is great, but I won't give away my roosters. If someone wants free meat they can look elsewhere. My roosters are worth at least $5 in meat, and I will do them myself if that is the case.

I agree. I often wonder about folks who cannot bear to kill and eat their own roosters and spent hens but will offer them for free "to a good home". What's wrong with the home they have now? Not good? And how will they really insure that their birds will indeed go to a "good home"? If they go to a good home and those persons don't want them either, will they too advertise them to go to a "good home" and so on and so forth?

The free roosters I picked up this winter for canning came from a pretty crowded and horribly dirty, filled with poop cooping situation though they were allowed to free range most of the time~they were infested with lice so bad you could see them crawling through the feathers without even a close inspection. The fellow had picked up over 40 roosters from the local ads for free roosters to a "good home only". He himself had butchered as many as he could but grew tired of it and deer season was here. The roosters were all ages and breeds, half were very old, half were young, one was a fluffy and pretty standard Cochin~who looked like a debutante at a hillbilly mud bog rally in the company of all those other roosters.

Fortunately they landed in a good place, with good food and got dusted for lice and treated for their scale mites. Most of them had frost bitten combs and also pale, dry combs that indicated anemia from infestation. They got to eat fermented feed for over a month while they recovered from their past. Then they were humanely killed and canned up.

A good home is relative to the judgement of the person receiving the free rooster as to what, exactly, constitutes "good". I've learned my lesson about trusting my birds to other people and what they consider is "good".

 

[Tomtommom]

I actually did rehome my Ameraucana rooster to a 'good home'. Lady had three easter eggers and wanted a man around the house for them. She works at Tractor Supply and spent two weeks building him a separate coop. Pretty sure he's not going to be eaten soon.

I have eaten two of my roosters, but this guy was too good looking and well mannered to eat.

But I totally agree..... most of those 'free to good home' just end up in a pot, unless it's an exceptional bird... anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

 

[Beekissed]

I actually did rehome my Ameraucana rooster to a 'good home'. Lady had three easter eggers and wanted a man around the house for them. She works at Tractor Supply and spent two weeks building him a separate coop. Pretty sure he's not going to be eaten soon.

I have eaten two of my roosters, but this guy was too good looking and well mannered to eat.

But I totally agree..... most of those 'free to good home' just end up in a pot, unless it's an exceptional bird... anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

Yep. I kept the "debutante", though he is not anything exceptional for my purposes. He was just one of those rare animals that God has placed in my path that I was supposed to meet...that's happened to me just a handful of times in my life and never has any pattern or any impulse of my own that triggers this. Most often it's when I don't want any animal and especially not that kind. This bird has a humble and gentle nature that marked him from the beginning and made him stand out, then God told me to just keep him for awhile, though he has no purpose whatsoever for my flock goals and is not a breed that I would ever have. And so I did.





His name is Fat Cochin and the pullets fell in love with him, they preen him and follow him and he breeds them gently for such a young cockerel. He doesn't have any genes I want to perpetuate but for now he's the flock's boy toy.

 

[fisherlady]

Yep. I kept the "debutante", though he is not anything exceptional for my purposes. He was just one of those rare animals that God has placed in my path that I was supposed to meet...that's happened to me just a handful of times in my life and never has any pattern or any impulse of my own that triggers this. Most often it's when I don't want any animal and especially not that kind. This bird has a humble and gentle nature that marked him from the beginning and made him stand out, then God told me to just keep him for awhile, though he has no purpose whatsoever for my flock goals and is not a breed that I would ever have. And so I did.





His name is Fat Cochin and the pullets fell in love with him, they preen him and follow him and he breeds them gently for such a young cockerel. He doesn't have any genes I want to perpetuate but for now he's the flock's boy toy.

He is beautiful.... and I've seen that hens seem very content when they have a fellow like him around. Our hens love to groom their chosen roosters, we chuckle at it frequently during our evening visits to put the chickens to bed. And happy birds are healthier and heartier I do believe, though I don't have any scientific way to prove that.

 

[Tomtommom]

Boy toy

Most folks just hang up a cabbage to keep the girls busy....

My fellah was funny. All my hens turn 1 year old in a few days, he was 21 weeks. He was TERRIFIED of those girls... he tried to woo them a little, but everytime they turned around, he'd run away. He pulled a few tails, shook his shoulders at him.. but every time they actually took notice, he'd run like heck. He didn't like me picking 'his' girls up, but we straightened that out quick. I could pick him up and carry him around.. he didn't love it, but he condoned it... which to me is important in chickens. I have a few that are IMPOSSIBLE to hold, which makes health checks hard.

New owner actually gave me a call the next day to tell me how he was doing. Her girls were VERY interested in their new man. Who knows, maybe I can get me some grandbabies some day.

 

[Beekissed]

Boy toy

Most folks just hang up a cabbage to keep the girls busy....

My fellah was funny. All my hens turn 1 year old in a few days, he was 21 weeks. He was TERRIFIED of those girls... he tried to woo them a little, but everytime they turned around, he'd run away. He pulled a few tails, shook his shoulders at him.. but every time they actually took notice, he'd run like heck. He didn't like me picking 'his' girls up, but we straightened that out quick. I could pick him up and carry him around.. he didn't love it, but he condoned it... which to me is important in chickens. I have a few that are IMPOSSIBLE to hold, which makes health checks hard.

New owner actually gave me a call the next day to tell me how he was doing. Her girls were VERY interested in their new man. Who knows, maybe I can get me some grandbabies some day.

Well...I had a very aged rooster that was no longer fulfilling his flockly duties so he was culled and eaten and new guy was slid in to a flock with 6 young pullets and 3 old matriarchs and I think everyone was pretty much too shocked about the shift in the flock matrix to care about the new guy. All they knew was that he was fertile and interested in their feminine wiles and that was way over due.

I had tried to keep him as a "teaser roo" to bring young pullets into lay but the old guy kept kicking his butt, so the flock got a change of scenery. The concept of getting a young, virile male in the group to entice the females into sexual reproduction is often used in other species of livestock so I thought I would give it a try with chickens...and it worked.

Cabbage just couldn't do all that.

 

[jajeanpierre]

I agree. I often wonder about folks who cannot bear to kill and eat their own roosters and spent hens but will offer them for free "to a good home". What's wrong with the home they have now? Not good? And how will they really insure that their birds will indeed go to a "good home"? If they go to a good home and those persons don't want them either, will they too advertise them to go to a "good home" and so on and so forth?

I think the most upsetting advice I ever got about what to do with my unwanted Silkie cockerels was to just set them free. I was told that the birds will hang around for a few days and then just go away. I couldn't believe someone who loved their cockerels too much to humanely dispatch them themselves could do that to their birds. They deceived even themselves over what happened to their birds.

 

[Beekissed]

I think the most upsetting advice I ever got about what to do with my unwanted Silkie cockerels was to just set them free. I was told that the birds will hang around for a few days and then just go away. I couldn't believe someone who loved their cockerels too much to humanely dispatch them themselves could do that to their birds. They deceived even themselves over what happened to their birds.

I agree. You have no idea how prevalent that idea is out here in the country. When someone has chickens that have grown too old to lay or that they no longer want, they just let them run around unattended and often without any food or water other than what they can find on the land and say they are letting them "die naturally". Some even call this attrition...as in, "I'm letting them die by attrition." Attrition around here has become a euphemistic term for neglect, poor management or simple abandonment. Some will even purchase more chicks than they need to account for this attrition...in other words, they are already counting on losing birds to predation before they ever write the check out to purchase them.

I can't wrap my mind around that. If they know their system causes that much death from predation, wouldn't a person then improve their system to prevent that loss before ever getting another bird?
I've never obtained a single animal in this world with the thought in my mind, "Oh, well, might want to get more than I need so I'll have plenty left over in case I can't keep them from dying."