Comments on Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis: Plucking Chickens

I love this site. I hope one day I may be able to...

2010-11-05T18:08:05.938-04:00

I love this site. I hope one day I may be able to kill 30 free range or organic chickens at one time. I do not have a machine to pluck the feathers, I do it the old fashion way. Right now I only kill one bird at the time. Then I make chicken and pastry.

Cornish crosses... they're just the typical br...

2010-07-21T20:55:15.670-04:00

Cornish crosses... they're just the typical breed that folks raise for meat. They get big relatively quickly (though not as quickly as the almost upsettingly gluttonous Cornish Rocks).

Very interesting and I like the practical guide to...

2010-07-21T18:53:28.930-04:00

Very interesting and I like the practical guide to chicken slaughter and plucking. Many years a vegetarian I now eat meat - mostly chicken - and I'd far prefer one of yours to the ones from the butcher that she says are 'ecologic' but you just never know. Do you have some COrnish connection or is it just the chickens? Kate

I don't know how you can kill them. Poor thing...

2010-03-25T10:44:08.162-04:00

I don't know how you can kill them. Poor things!

We started out with laying hens, partly so we woul...

2008-11-03T22:29:00.000-05:00

We started out with laying hens, partly so we wouldn't have to slaughter any right away. But we ordered roosters as well since we didn't know they would send us some extra roosters automatically. We ended up with six roosters and by February (we got them in May) they were so awful to the hens that I was totally ready to get rid of them. In fact, I did the slaughtering that first time. I was so mad at them :)

And once we did it, and realized we could do it, it was a big relief. Like we could really do this animal thing. It took us a couple years to work our way up to meat chickens, and I wouldn't ever do it as a business or even too often, but once a year, or maybe even twice, really isn't so bad.

I was really happy with this new breed. We had tried the "Cornish Rock Crosses" which are the typical meat breeds. They get very fat very quickly but are also lethargic and rather slovenly and pretty much refuse to go outside.

The Colored Range Chickens that we got from JM Hatchery were great. They lived out in a portable coop, went foraging around in the grass, and were so much cleaner than the Cornish ones. And they still got nice and fat. I really recommend them.

We have three old barns on our yard and one of the...

2008-11-03T21:24:00.000-05:00

We have three old barns on our yard and one of them has a chicken koop in one end. Hubby keeps trying to convince me we should raise chickens, but I don't know if I'm interested. It's pretty much exactly the butchering that I'm not thrilled with, but you do a great job of making it sound like it's not too big a deal. And I sure do like the sound of having 30 chickens in the freezer!!!