What do you do with all your scraps?

my dogs like heads and feet. Raw of course.

 

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 bury it in the compost area.

 

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.

 

i feed it to the chickens ,, what they dont eat gets the compost

 

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.

 

Quote:awwww mannnn,,, lucky you!!

 

I'll have to try that with pheasant feet lol.

 

Check your local laws. I wanted to try it with some smaller stones and crow feet, but it's a no-no.