05 April 2009

The circle of life

We have too many roosters.

Last week, we actually had a hen killed by the roosters ... there were just too many of the boys interested in her. After putting the poor hen out of her misery, we decided that it was definitely time to reduce the rooster head count.

So, today we did our first butchering. Three roosters had their heads suddenly removed from the rest of their bodies, then they were hung up to drain and were partially plucked, skinned, and the best parts of the meat removed. It's not as efficient as fully plucking the bird, eviscerating it and roasting it whole, but it is a workable process.

The result was about 2 pounds of ground chicken and two chicken breasts (cut into bite sized pieces) in the freezer, and enough cubed chicken for supper for the three of us, with leftovers for someone's lunch.

The meat is definitely tastier than store bought chicken - there's much more flavour to it. We cubed the meat, marinated it in olive oil and spices and then fried it up, dredging with flour at the last minute creating a nice crisp coating.

Rooster for Sunday dinner.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:31 pm

    do you think the rest of those roosters will be less aggressive now?
    Gram

    ReplyDelete
  2. It won't change the aggressiveness of any one rooster, but we've improved the ratio of roosters to hens, so they can 'spread their attentions out' better.

    So long as none of the hens get 'singled out' as the popular girl, they should be okay. We will keep watching and see how things go.

    ReplyDelete

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