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!

Too Many Roosters!

We thought we were only getting two roosters, but turns out we have four. That is at least two too many for us. At this point, they aren't fighting or hurting the chickens, but the crowing does get  a little annoying sometimes. It can be fun to watch as each rooster tries to out-crow the other, but less fun when it's 5:00 am. They are a little over four months old now, they just started crowing and trying to mate with the chickens. The chickens are not laying yet however and they usually get away easily. I don't know how much this will change as they get older.

We have one cuckoo maran rooster and three brahmas, we thought we had ordered one cuckoo maran and one Easter-egger. Right now the plan is to butcher two or all of the brahmas. While, I love the brahmas, they are the biggest and they have really cool feathers on their feet, we weren't planning to raise more of them. They are supposed to be a good dual purpose chicken, good for eggs and meat, but they are not supposed to be the best egg layers, and that really is our primary purpose to having chickens. The Easter-eggers are our favorites because they come in so many variety of colours, and we are looking forward to the blue and green eggs. I wasn't that big of a fan of the cuckoo marans at first, but now that they are getting their patterned feathers I like them a lot more, and the cuckoo maran rooster is just beautiful.

The plan is to butcher the roosters this weekend. As neither Ron nor I have ever butchered a chicken, we are a bit nervous about doing it. We keep watching videos and are learning about the most humane way to kill them. I am also a bit nervous about removing the guts because you have to be careful not to cut the intestines or gall bladder or you are basically poisoning the meat and then you've just wasted a chicken.  Wish us luck and check back next week to see if we follow through!