Chicken's to love or chicken's to eat?

That is the real question isn't it?  My youngest daughter would say we need to keep them to love.  My husband would say they are to eat.  I am somewhere in the middle.  I love our hens and the fresh eggs they give us.  The roosters (or "roos" as some people call them) are a pain.  I wish I could say something nice about them but they are mean.  They also fought with each other and hurt our hens.  We found hens missing feathers and bloody from their roo encounters.  Several weeks ago, I had had it with them.  I informed my husband we would be butchering the roos ASAP. 

Once I made the announcement I started hearing stories.  Stories of horror and gore.  What had I gotten myself (and the rest of my family) into?  I can now say it was not as bad as I thought it might be.  Here are some of the stories I heard and what our experiences were:

1. Blood squirting EVERYWHERE:  I can say that the way my husband put down our boys, there were no headless chickens flopping around.  In about 2 minutes it was all over and the roos didn't act like they felt a thing.  We did have to remove the heads once we were sure they were dead but that was very quick also.

2. The stench:  I think people have memories of being at Grandma's and smelling the hot, wet feathers.  I have to say, there wasn't a lot of odor when we plucked our fellas.  Part of the reason could be that it was fall.  It might be a smellier job in summer.  I also made sure we did almost everything outside.  I did not want a bad odor in my house that seemed to hang around for days.  What we did had to get over, was the feel of the feathers and how they stuck to our hands.  Yuck. 

3. Dealing with the insides:  My husband gutted the boys for me.  I had heard that we needed to be careful when cleaning the innards out as not to contaminate the meat.  My hubby made it look easy and did a great job.  We saved part of the innards but I am not sure what we will do with them.  (Maybe that can be a post in the future...how to cook with chicken guts.)

Overall, the job wasn't bad.  Next time, I will get a different breed of roosters that fattens up faster.  We got very little meat for the amount of food our roos ate through the summer.  We will also try skinning them so we can save the plucking step.  I think they will be cleaner when we are done if they are skinned.  We will also do all of the work outside next time.  This will help save my kitchen from most of the mess.

If you are thinking about getting some chickens to butcher my best advise is don't be afraid.  Go to YouTube and watch videos on "how to butcher chickens" and you will be able to move forward and feel prepared.