Butchering 101

We had our first hands on lesson in butchering today.  Our meat birds were looking nice and fat, and kinda having a harder time moving around.  So we decided it was time.  As soon as the boys headed off to school we turned on the babysitter (TV) for Riley and blocked the screen door so she couldn't surprise us.  

And then we began.  (I tried to keep the graphic images to a minimum.  Sorry if I upset anyone, but we were butchering live animals.)

We unceremoniously just picked whoever we could catch first to be the first one in the tube.

The first slice.  It was hard to watch, I'm sure tougher for Hubby to
 do than me to watch, but still.  Mostly, I was hiding behind the camera for this part.

We gave many thanks, silent and aloud, to these lovely creatures for giving their lives for our nourishment.

After a dunk in warm water and a soak in cool water while the rest
were killed, we started pulling feathers.

A quick rinse to see if any spots were missed.

Hanging out in the sink, waiting to be eviscerated.

Pulling out the guts.

I would have liked to have helped with this part more.  Riley began to be concerned that we had killed all of the birds, so I took her out to talk to her about which ones were still in the yard and which ones weren't.  We got to the laying birds, and she told me we could kill them, too.  I asked her where we'd get our eggs from if we killed them and she answered that we could keep that one, pointing to the closest bird, and that we could kill the others.  She was very gung-ho about the whole thing.

After the cleaning and soaking, ready to be vacu-sealed.

Roo came in at a very nice 6.32 lbs.  The rest were 5.5 to 5.7 lbs.

Interestingly, it wasn't as upsetting as I thought it would be.  Maybe because we talked about it before we brought them home.  Maybe because we didn't really name them, aside from Roo, but even that was just short for rooster.

I definitely think we'll do this again.  We might wait until the temperature goes back down, or not.  I don't know.  I worry that it'd be hard to keep them cool in the heat of the summer.  We'll take a break for now, that's sure.

We are thinking of roasting two birds.  One that we already had in the freezer from the store, and one of ours.  Just to do a taste test and see how much of a difference there really is.  I think we can both say we've never had a chicken this freshly butchered before.  I can't wait to try it.