Back in April, Norseman and I bought 24 one day old chicks. They were all supposed to be females (pullets). While waiting for them to grow up he and I built a chicken coop, and bought 6 laying hens and a rooster (Braw) off an old woman. When our baby chicks got older we realized we had ended up with 5 roosters. Last week thanks to Norseman, we are back down to 1 :)
Below is Noseman's YouTube Video "Culling the Flock"
Off with his head!
Skinning process
Carbon fiber Trapper from www.survivalhardwarellc.com
One of our dearly departed roosters. :(
We miss you Two Tails, but you sure were yummy!
Poor Braw, he knew his day had come.
R.I.P
Braw was a tough old bird. We cooked him up for dinner but the smell of his meat cooking was horrible. We ended up feeding him to the dogs. We learned a good lesson from him, and will rotate our flock much younger than we had planned on.
Remember Chance?
Our baby chick that Norseman saved from getting his head bit off from our little black devil dog. He grew up to be a beautiful and friendly rooster. He is now the "Cock of the walk" at Ydalir!
Somebody is sucking up to Norseman...I think she is worried that she might lose her head!
Norseman says..."Start laying or start praying"!
TA-DA!
I hope you enjoyed my chicken pictures, don't forget to check out Norseman's "culling the flock" video at the top, and his many other video's on YouTube.
I would just like to add, to any of you sensitive types, that our chickens were happy, healthy, free range chickens. They were bought for the purpose of feeding our family, and died humanely serving that purpose.
~Angel
Good post.
ReplyDeleteThank you :)
DeleteSad thing is that you can't eat rooster. I've tried, and it's nasty...
ReplyDeleteI threw one of the young roosters in the crockpot, and made a chicken & rice soup. It turned out really tasty. The rooster was only 5 months old though, I think that's what made him so yummy. A month or two older and he would have been dog food! The older rooster Braw was disgusting! He must have been over 5 years old, even though when we bought him we were told he was only a year. His meat stank even when we were skinning him, it was almost purple in color. I never cooked rooster before so I figured I would give it a try and I didn't want to be wasteful. Big stinky mistake!
DeleteNo, but roosters make a wonderful chicken stock. Great flavor. Throw away the meat, or feed it to the dogs.
ReplyDeleteI completely blanked out that day and threw all the chicken backs to the dogs, without making a chicken stock. I won't make that stupid mistake again!
DeleteCaponize!
ReplyDeletethen the meat is tasty, and some will even brood eggs for you.
Castrating a chicken requires minor surgery but is not that hard.
may take a few tries to get right, but if your culling the rooster anyway mistakes are not such a big deal. Do it at 7 or 8 weeks, and before 4 months for sure. Practice makes perfect, and the very young birds have tiny testes, older birds have bigger testes but are harder to feel as they get squishy.
Afterwards they slowly get big and even act like hens sort of, and the meat is not ruined by the "manliness" of a rooster.
I had one that got huge tail feathers, quite lovely.
I culled one of our 4 month old Roos today to start thinning out the flock. It was very intense and it made me introspective and thankful for the lives of those birds.
ReplyDelete