Which Came First

When we got baby chicks back in the spring a couple of them turned out to be roosters even though we ordered all hens. I don't want a rooster because they make a lot of noise (crowing at 5am which is annoying) and I don't need one. For those non-farm people out there, you don't need a rooster to get eggs from the hens. The only thing the rooster does is make the egg fertilized (kind of like people) so you can make baby chicks. But back to my story....So the chicks are now grown and I still had one rooster left driving me crazy crowing at 5am. I finally decided to do something about it today. I have never butchered chickens before but I thought I would give it a try. There are two ways to do it, one is to pluck them which involves putting the chicken in boiling water and plucking out all the feathers and from what I hear is not fun at all and stinky. The other way is to skin them like you would any other animal when you butcher it. This is the method I chose. It actually was not too hard to do and turned out pretty good I think. First I cut off it's head, then let the blood drain, cut off the legs, tail, and part of the wings. I then skinned it and gutted it. Here are a few pics, don't worry they are not very graphic.

Here he is, he has no idea what awaits him.


Here he is after cutting his head off, he flopped around quite a bit and then I hung him up to drain the blood.


And here is the finished product. I think we will boil him up and make a big pot of chicken and dumplings. My favorite.