We buy eggs from a smallish egg ranch in the country near here. I noticed that they sell their old worn-out laying hens cheap as stewing chickens, but they sell them live. For some reason, the idea of butchering my own chickens intrigues me - not for some bloodlust reason, but because up until my mother’s generation, all my rural ancestors did this.
Still, I don’t think I could quite bring myself to wring a chicken’s neck and scoop out the guts, so those old laying hens are safe from me. Beheading and gutting fish I can do - chickens, not.
Does anyone here butcher? Why do you butcher your own meat?
Did this once as a kid. My dad bought some old laying hens from an egg farm. They were the toughest chicken I’ve ever eaten.
Building a suitable coop and raising my own poultry or rabbits is one of those projects that I keep saying I’m going to do “next year” but never actually get around to doing.
The reasons I’d like to do it are:
[ul]It’s cheap. Rabbits can eat the weeds I pull out of my garden. Sure, they will need some alfalfa pellets too.
Fertilizer. I can winter chickens on my vegetable garden and let their feces lie where they fall. They will also eat weed seeds off the ground, minimizing the weeding I have to do next year.
Clean Meat. No hormones, dyes, etc in my meat. All organic.[/ul]
both my parents came from rural backgrounds. My maternal grandmother used to grab a chicken by the neck, give it a nice sling and break it’s neck in less than a second. As farm folk, they were barely getting by, and I remember gathering eggs when we visited there as a child.
nessecity is the mother of invention, ie, if you’re hungry enough, you do the dirty work yourself, and to me, it’s a much more honest way of appreciating what your putting in your mouth eh ?
I used to hunt squirrel, rabbits and deer, and I still fish. People kill and butcher animals because we are meat eaters. To me, the question is, why do people go load up a cart in the market with bacon without giving a moment’s thought about it’s origins.
Somebody had to hang a pig upside down and slit it’s throat so you can have your nice plastic wrapped sizzlers.
Killing and butchering your own (mind you I don’t do this anymore, except with the fish I catch) can potentially give one a greater appreciation of the process and perhaps shed some light upon our role in the ecosystem.