We did it!

We said good-bye to two of our chickens today, one hen and one rooster. We didn't do it over the weekend because I had a horrible cold. Today I felt well enough to go to work, and when I got home we decided not to put it off any longer. So, we have two chickens in our fridge.

One of our hens, we called her Crooked Beak because, well, she had a crooked beak, was having a hard time eating.We knew that the humane thing to do was to end her life. We also knew that since she was an Easter-egger, we weren't going to get much meat off of her. We decided to butcher her first knowing that if we ended up doing something wrong there was less meat to waste. We used the video from another blog, Weed 'em and Reap as a guide. Ron was more comfortable with the slaughtering part and I was more comfortable with the cleaning part, so we worked well as a team.

I still think that slaughtering is the hardest part. Making sure that you cut deep enough in one cut to make it humane feels like a lot of pressure, but Ron did it.

The kids did most of the defeathering with a little help from me to get them started. I was afraid that it would be hard to pluck out the feathers, but the hot water bath really did make it easy. The kids were just fine with the whole process. We have been talking about it for so long, I think they were well prepared. We hadn't named any of the brahmas which probably helped. There are a couple Easter-eggers that the girls have named and they did say that they don't want to kill those chickens, which we will respect and will let those chickens live a long full life with us.

As for cleaning out the guts, I was very worried about cutting the intestines or gall bladder by mistake, which would contaminate the chicken, so it took a lot longer than it should have, but I wasn't grossed out at all. It was actually pretty cool, like dissecting the cats in high school anatomy. The brahma was definitely easier since it was bigger. Everything took a while being my first time, but I think I did OK.

We still have two more roosters to butcher, but we need to wait until the weekend because it takes way too long to do after work and I am not doing that again. By the end, it was getting pretty dark and we had to clean up in the dark - not fun!

While I was sick over the weekend, Ron and the kids were very busy planting and finding snakes. I will write all about their adventures next time!