I know that you can eat hearts, gizzards, livers and neck etc. I have even seen people eat chicken feet in China. What do you do with all the other stuff? Wet plucked feathers blood heads fat feet guts I throw all this stuff in a hole in the yard and burry it so that I do not attract predators. It' just seems like such a waste.
I compost the feathers and blood. Too many raccoons and coyotes here to compost guts or heads, they go in the green bin (compostables) for curbside pickup. Fat I mostly save for cooking. Feet I have thus far thrown out, but with many self-recriminations at my laziness, and next time I *swear* I will figure out how to scald them hot enough to peel the skin off (my problem hitherto) and use for stock and/or chinese-style chicken feet. Pat
I have a old barn that is about 500 yards from the house where 2 vultures have their 2 babies every year. I take all my chicken guts to the vultures.
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.
