We ate our first home raised chicken yesterday. It was awesome. The breasts on this bird were huge. I had to put them along with the thighs in the oven 20 minutes ealier than the wings and legs. I could not eat one breast at a sitting! I had to finish it for supper. the taste was awesome, it was tender. I was a little reluctant to eat one of my own, but it won't be a problem from now on.
Congrats. I too just got mine butchered yesterday. He didnt eat one yet, hubby said lets wait a few days! But I got to taste 1 that my sister did and it was tastey. Makes ya feel good.
Yep. I wasn't sure myself, but once I tasted one, it was a lot easier to look at them as "meat", even while they're still alive. How long did you raise them? I assume it was a cornish cross? We butchered ours at about 9 1/2 weeks, which resulted in some pretty big chickens (5 to 7 lbs dressed). Great for roasting.
Congrats!! We just ate our first last week. It took 2 of us through 2 dinners. So nice to finally get a chicken big enough to roast like a turkey. LOL!!
I picked up our Cornish meat and laying chicks from the hatchery on April 10th. We butchered 10 of them using a chicken plucker on August 5th which was 18 weeks. We butchered the first 10 at 14 weeks. These we skinned. We picked these 10 because they were having trouble walking. We never fed our meat birds anything but chick starter because I didn't want our layers eating meat gainer (is that what its called?). The birds were huge, but they weren't fatty like we were afraid of. Just a note: I much preferred skinning to plucking. When scalding the chickens to pluck, if we scalded them to long the skin split. (this only happened to two) We had to singe the feathers and had to find the right way to do this or the skin blackened. DH first tried using a torch but the heat was to intense, I don't know what the second contraption was but it reminded me of a flame thrower. It was harder for me to cut them up, the skin kept moving on me. I'm sure if I would have had a better knife that would have helped.
Quote:I was talking to Bubba yesterday and he said the same thing. He said skinning was much easier, and since he didn't eat skin anyway what was the point of plucking. I'm seriously thinking of getting some meat birds and giving it a go. I am amazed at how big these birds get so quickly. Cathy
