I'll Spare you the grisly details

We did some chicken butchering recently. Since before thanksgiving, we have been talking about slaughtering a few chickens and guineas. The chickens had gotten to the age where they no longer laid eggs. They were some of our first and favorite birds, but we had new guineas we hatched over the spring and summer and we'll getting new chickens for 2008. We need the eggs. This fall we have resorted to buying eggs, which I really hate. Unfortunately, we need to make room for the new birds and that means we need to slaughter the unproductive birds, however much we liked them.

I had been putting off the deed for over a month. Last week we had a predator kill three birds. This is the first time we have lost birds to a wild predator (we did loose some to a domestic dog in 2006). Since we free range our birds and they sleep in a unlocked coop, I always felt blessed that we had no predator losses. Luckily, we lost three unproductive birds and non of our current layers. But it brought the need to slaughter front and center. As bad as it was to kill a chicken we liked, allowing it to potentially die by predation and missing out on the butchered meat was worse.

Slaughtering chickens is not my idea of fun. There are probably a lot of ways to kill a chicken. I have seen chicken killing devices and read about techniques. Not sure I know any I particularly like. I just try to be quick and as painless as possible. I try to keep the bird calm up to the last instant. A quick neck wringing and then slit the throat. A chicken beats it's wings as the last bit of life leaves the body. I don't allow it to run around. I don't do it in front of other animals. Stress at slaughter is supposed to be bad for meat quality.

If slaughter is bad, butchering is worse. I hate plucking chickens. It's not a pleasant business. I have tried scalding the body, but either I didn't get the water temp right or I am just no good at it. I generally end up tearing the skin at least a little. And getting all the feathers seams impossible. After plucking, I removed the digestive tract and organs. The dog gets some of it. The feathers go every which way.

We ate the birds this afternoon as a holiday meal. I wish I could say that all the work that went into them made them taste sweeter. They actually tasted fine. But they were a little on the tough side. Especially the legs. But even the breast was a little chewy. I think next time we'll stew them instead of roasting them.

Although eating the birds was not a glorious end, the chickens and guineas have been a successful experiment. They do a good job of cutting down on the bugs in the yard, particularly ticks. And the fresh eggs are fabulous. We'll just have to look up some recipes for older birds.