Friday, July 12, 2013

The end of an adventure

Here's the final, week 8 comparison picture between our broiler birds and our newest laying hens.





Slaughtering took a lot more time than we anticipated (26 birds took about 6 hours), but we finally got a little assembly line system going. We estimate all of the birds gave us anywhere from 5.5-7.5 pounds each. We were even able to give the chicken feet a home (apparently they're a delicacy in China and a co-worker was ecstatic to take them all off our hands... evening preparing them and sending a few back for us to try!). I'm slow cooking up the bones to make chicken stock. The only parts we didn't use were the heads and the feathers, so I'm very happy with that. And, since we know exactly what they ate and how they were raised, I'm going out on a limb to say mine are better than organic+!



Before we parted most of them up and froze them.


My poor refrigerator was bursting!

This was a pretty cool experience, but was a LOT more work than I anticipated. I think specifically because Mr. was gone for a few weeks and cleaning, feeding, and watering multiple times per day fell solely to me. Will I do it again... hmmm... ask me after I've eaten a few of these and the memories of the poo and flies fades.