We skin cockerels (technically only partially skin) and only use the breast meet for ourselves. The raw leg quarters go to the dogs. If you process them after they have reached sexual maturity (after 4 months) the meat will have to be pressure cooked or slow cooked. If you butcher them by 4 months you can use them as fryers. Skinning cockerels is easy and straight forward, and a very forgiving method. We do not gut the birds before we harvest the meat. You don't have to gut them at all using this method. We just field dress them basically like wild turkeys. You just pick up the skin over the breast and make a small incision with your knife, then pull the skin off the breasts, with a really sharp fillet type knife you cut each breast off each side of the keel. You then cut and disarticulate each shank at the knee, cut the shanks off, push the legs backward against the table at the hips, dislocating the hips, pull/cut the skin off each leg quarter and then cut each leg quarter off at the hip joint. My son then harvests the gizzard, heart, liver, etc for fishing. We dispose of the rest of the carcass.
We only ever pluck broiler chickens or turkeys we plan to use as roasters. Otherwise skinning is the quickest and most efficient method for regular sized cockerels because there just isn't enough meat to them to fuss over scalding them, plucking them, and keeping them whole. It is a very easy method, and if you are careful not to open up the abdominal cavity when you are cutting out the breast meat, you really can't mess it up.
