Pat, the tough outer membrane (cuticle) on the feet peels off without boiling, most of the time. Once in a while I get one that won't peel, But it's rare. On the ones that have a callused dark spot on the sole, I trim off any discolored tissue, then the foot is ready to boil up to make soup stock.
Fat, I save to cook with. We eat the skin.
The various bits like the lungs, spleen, kidneys, and liver (neither I nor my DH like the liver) I boil up for my dogs and cats. I should boil the heads, too, maybe next time I will. I don't feed raw heads, feet, or other parts, to the dogs, because I'm afraid they may decide to harvest their own. It took a lot of work to teach them not to bother the birds in the first place!
I save the prettiest feathers for crafts, the rest I compost. Next year we'll have pigs, so most of the scraps will go to them, except maybe not the feathers. Those I'll still compost.
Feet that I don't need for crafts will be soup stock. I dehydrate some of them, dye them with black walnut hull, and use them to make some amazingly pretty protection charms. (Yes, people will buy them.)
The first one's a guinea foot, undyed, holding a hematite sphere. The other's a chicken foot, dyed w/ black walnut hull, holding a labradorite sphere that doesn't show up in that crappy photo. That one wasn't finished when I took the pic. (They're fuzzy because I couldn't get a good pic with that camera.) I place semi-precious stones in the claw, so the foot holds the stone. Don't ask me how, it's a trade secret.
