Got up early this morning, and no, it was not to run. Instead, B. and I butchered a couple of chickens before he left for work. We have been so busy around here, and this morning was the only time that we seemed to be able to fit it in. We are hustling because the chickens are nearing 16 weeks, and if we wait much longer the meat may be tougher than we would like.
Now that we have a couple of butchering jobs under our belt, the actual butchering is not so bad. I posted about our horrendous first experience last fall, but now it really isn't a big deal. The plucking though, and the dressing is so tedious and so time consuming. I find myself picking out little pin feathers and cursing to myself. This morning we did two birds, and I was on the second bird when I heard M. screaming from upstairs. We butchered at about 6:30, and it was probably around 7:15 or so. I was hoping that the kids would sleep a little later today so that I could get everything done and cleaned up before they woke, but that was not the case. I had to prematurely shove the birds into bags and stick them in the frige for a little while so that I could get the kids fed and happy. Afterwards I finished up quickly, and now we have two birds clean and resting in the frige.
We still have one lonely Barred Rock cockeral waiting for his turn, but we just could not fit him in this morning. So hopefully this weekend we can get to him. Ugh, butchering is so unpleasant. I dread it. It is nice to have our own meat that we have produced ourselves, but like I mentioned before, the work involved is so tedious and time consuming that it is almost not worth it. I say ALMOST though, because the alternatives involve either buying substandard chicken from the store, or paying a pretty penny for organic chicken from a local farmer. So we choose to butcher our own, endure the unpleasantness and the mess, and just get it over with.
We had some really interesting cockerels this year. We hatched them all ourselves, so they were the offspring of our White Rock rooster and various hens. The best ones, the most meaty ones were the pure White Rocks, the ones with the White Rock mother. The ones with the Barred Rock mother were pretty good sized (this is all relative because they are all scrawny little things), but they had a little more fat on them, and the skin was a more yellow color. We also had a cockeral whose mother was a Buff Orpington. He looked like a true mutt. He was white, with muddy gray and black spotting on his neck, wings and tail freathers. He also had some gold feathers here and there. He had the albino-looking legs, but his skin looked like that of a White Rock. When he was a chick he looked like one of our Delaware chicks, and I wrote a whole post about how confused I was about his looks. I didn't know at the time that he was the offspring of the Buff Orp! We also had a cockeral who was the offspring of our buff colored, bearded Americauna (Easter Egger) hen. He had every attribute of a white rock except for his small comb and his beard! I snapped a picture of him here right before we butchered him. He was the first one we butchered this summer (at 14 weeks), bucause he was the biggest.
I am already missing the diversity those cockerels brought to our flock. B. wanted to keep one of the roos, but I had to remind him how the other roos ended up, and how much more pleasant things are now in the coop. We won't need a roo to give us chicks next year, as I am planning on hatching Welsummers and I am going to order hatching eggs from a breeder. Let's hope Welsummer cockerels are tasty-we'll be doing this all over again next summer!
Here is a picture of three of the boys in the holding pen. We seperated them from the rest of the flock the night before we butcher them in order to keep them from eating. We prefer to butcher chickens with empty crops! From L to R, Barred Rock, White Rock and Buff Orpington cross, White Rock.
