Coram Deo

Chicken Killin Day

Tomorrow is the first day of butchering.  We ordered chickens at the same time as two of our friends and the deal was that we would all go to each house and help butcher.  Tommorow we go down south to the Roberts'.  Tomorrow is 8 weeks on the dot and they weren't about to buy another bag of feed :)  Turns out it was a good call though, because last night I got a call saying that 2 of theirs had died of heart attacks and 3 others were barely hanging on and would be dead in an hour or so.

I'm tellin you, these birds are just not natural.  It is so strange to be raising layers that are one day older along with these brooders.  There really is no comparison.  You have to take their food away at night or they will literally eat themselves to death.  They drop dead of heart attacks all the time.  The truly just live to eat!  49 birds are eating 50lbs of feed every other day.  And these are birds raised on grass and moved once or twice a day to fresh pasture.  Imagine these birds in a factory setting.  Judging from the amount of "waste" my 49 produce in a day I can see why people living in places like Owensboro, KY are complaining that they can't sell their houses due to the odor hanging over the town and the rat problem.  With an average of 22,000 birds per house, their manure has really become a problem. 

I am grateful that we have the opportunity to raise some of our own food.  I'm grateful too that my children notice and talk about the way that the very "chickeness" of the bird seems to have been bred out of him in order to make an eating machine that will deliver the most bang for your buck.  Ya know, I hear tell that chicken used to have a flavor.  I'd really like to try raising a meat bird other than the cornish X and doing a comparison.  But we eventually hope to do this for profit, so it has to make sense on at the bottom line.  And people have grown real partial to the big breast in the cornish bird. 

And I know the model is more important than the type of bird, our birds will be far healthier and healthful than what we get in the grocery store, but I'd still like to have them act a bit more like....Well, chickens!

Untitled Comment

10:25 PM, Nov. 7, 2006 .. Posted by DanielleW

Happy butchering. That will be so nice to be able to eat your own birds. That is weird though how they drop off like that.

Untitled Comment

12:07 AM, Nov. 9, 2006 .. Posted by babymakers

I was just reading about how they slaughter them for commercial sale. I read that they cram them into boxes. The chickens get covered in fecal matter. Then they put them on one of those belt things by the feet/foot and get killed. They they need to get the feathers off so they boil them all together to loosen the feathers. This is really gross because think of all the fecal matter that is now absorbed into the meat! Then there is the mechanical processing..........blah.

Good post.

Untitled Comment

9:25 PM, Nov. 9, 2006 .. Posted by babymakers

First of all, thanks for commenting over at my blog. I do appreciate it. I responded to it and wanted to tell you that. You can see my response by clicking here.