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Monday was the day to turn our six Cornish crosses into meat. It had to be done.  The breed is meant for meet and has to be butchered at 6-8 weeks.  Their skeletal system can't take the weight.

I wanted to learn how to do this.  I figured if I was going to raise chickens for eggs, sometime, they'd have to go into the stew pot.  In the past, I'd been "fortunate."  All my hens had met their demise via dogs or varmints.  But I was hoping my luck would change and they would live to become old hens with plenty of egg laying behind them.

So I took the plunge and bought the chicks.  Like with children-- once your pregnant, there's no going back. Once purchased.... butchering was required.

So we gathered the supplies and reviewed the videos on http://butcherachicken.blogspot.com/  tables for cleaning and gutting, ice chest to hold the finished birds. Bucket for waste.  Heat for scalding.

I thanked them for their lives as I carried each chicken over to be hung by its feet and its throat slit.  Tom... he kept trying to be gentle... and therefore ineffective.  I figured the most merciful thing to do was to do it quickly.

We had hot water we scalded the chickens in.

Plucking took time, but it wasn't that bad. Next to the killing, I thought the plucking would be hardest.

But actually, removing the innards was the least delightful part.  Still, by that time, you're dealing with something that looks like meat.

By chicken #4 we were tired.  Perhaps emotionally, but also physically.  Um, too bad for us.  We had two more chickens to do.  The Cornish Crosses were too fat to move quickly.  But the other chickens were very alarmed as one-by-one chickens left and didn't come back.

They continue to be more skiddish than in the past.

What have we learned? We can do it. We can turn chickens into meat. By doing six of them, I think we learned it such that we'll remember how.  We also learned it's a lot of work!  It's cost effectiveness is questionable.  So these guys better taste REALLY good.

We stored them in the frig and the next day cut them up and froze them.