As this is for posterity, and not just for entertainment, those who might be offended by some "good old fashioned" farm life, might want to just skip this entire post. If you choose to keep reading, please don't comment on the "cruelty" of what we did -- the fact of the matter is, we have or will use these chickens for meat. The chickens were bred specifically for meat, and if you think less of us, don't tell me here -- k? Thanks.
Can you tell, we have had opinions given? Good.
So, back in November, we got 50 meat chickens. Some died, but only maybe 5. We took the corn that we grew in our back quarter acre, and dekerneled the cobs, ground the kernels, mixed the ground corn with a supplement (don't know what that was), and fed these 50 chicks, plus our 14 laying chicks for the past few months. It has been a lot of work for Jake and some work for the boys. Not so much for the boys. The effort for them was put in and we did have some luck. So, here we are now. The baby chicks are about 8 pounds now. So, it is now time for them to go to our freezer.
Last Saturday, Jake started killing them. He killed about 14. It took a long time. We had some "helpers" come over. They were grossed out, but fascinated. They/I learned about how much work it is to defeather chickens, and that it is nice Jake can degut them. I'm not too impressed with that -- glad Jake is around.
The boys worked hard. Some harder than others. Something about a fire, that will distract any boy, but I think the ones that came learned a thing or two. Hopefully, it was a good experience.
I didn't take pictures the next time we had boys over, but we had twelve Deacons/boy scouts over on Wednesday. The thing that was impressive about Wednesday was Jacob wasn't afraid of the chickens.
I'm looking forward to not having all of those stinky chickens in my back quarter acre, but I hope my boys have learned something in the meantime.
The 6 pound chickens we have been roasting and eating have been pretty nice too. Not quite sure what I will do with 30 more! Aaaagh!
4 comments:
I remember during my childhood in Tonga there were no chickens to buy in the stores; you had to take care of them yourselves. Chickens ran wild and I actually don't know how you were supposed to tell which were yours. I still remember when they had to get the feathers off; that was quite a process and not fun. I'm impressed with how efficient your chicken operation was. Producing food is a complicated, and natural, process that this generation doesn't quite appreciate. It's good to see you teaching your children some of these basic, if not always as pleasant, realities of life. Keep it up.
Thanks for the post.
You are a better woman than me!! I can't even buy the chicken that has the skin on it! (I just got the chills as I typed that). One time I got some chicken thighs w/ skin on it, and I could see the little hair follicle or feather follicle, or whatever the heck it was, and that was enough for me. NEVER since! I'm such a weakling for stuff like that!!!! So if we live by you again someday, we'll stick to picking/eating your oranges. ;) Good for you though!!
I remember doing that! :) I actually was so slow (and probably pretty little) I only had to pluck one chicken the other kids got to do the rest. :)
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