I really need to know why all you folks refered to the recently deceased as MR. Bock-Bock? MR. Bock-Bock is usually all tough and stringy and not what you want on your festive dinner table. Besides being all tough and stringy, MR. Bock-Bock is essential to the production of baby Bock-Bocks and so you want to keep him around and in good health. MR. Bock-Bock is okay when boiled a lot and then used as the chicken part of chicken and dumplings, but only when he is old and unable to perform his baby chicken making function. For your everyday chicken delight, though, its MS. or MRS. Bock-Bock, as the case may be.
Absolutely.
There’s a huge difference between the layers and the broilers.
The layers are about 1/3 the size and can live up to 7 years as pastured birds.
They don’t really start laying until they’re 6 months old.
We keep Golden Sex Links (and no, I have no earthly idea as to why they’re called that and no, it is not advisable to Google Golden Sex Links)
The broilers are Cornish X’s and will reach an ideal weight of 5.5-6 lbs in about 7 1/2-8 weeks.
They’re pretty amazing little eating machines.
In fact, you have to be real careful about how much you feed them because they will literally eat themselves to death.
We lost a couple in our first run from weight induced heart attacks-they keeled over with their beaks in the feeder.
I guess they died happy.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I think people act a lot like chickens.
I mean, every recipe I see for wild vension says that you should either:
-soak the meat in milk to get rid of the “gamy” taste, or
-marinate the meat in spices to cover the “gamy” taste
Face it, and animal that has spent its life foraging and eating stuff like tree bark, is not going to taste very good…it will also be tough and muscular.
I can confirm that farm-raised vension tastes a lot better!
As an aside, a few years back a hunter friend gave us some saltwater ducks he had shot. We tried to cook them-but the kitchen stunk like rotten fish! WE threw them out-the meat was gross and tough.
You should see what happens when you tell a troop of Boy Scouts not to bring food for the next campout. Food is to be provided in the form of some donated C-rations. Then on the second day around dinner time, all the boys find out that the ‘C’ in C-rations stands for ‘Chickens’, live chickens.
I still have nightmares.
Mr. Bock-Bock is also good when liberally stewed in red wine, hence the traditional French peasant dish Coq-au-vin.
As an omnivore, I think I’d be hypocritical if I couldn’t deal with seeing my meat killed, though I never have actually had to do so. I’d be interested to find out if live-bought or bred poultry does taste better when cooked. On the other hand, I’d be thinking constantly of the scene in Giant, when the children suddenly realize that their dinner is Pedro the Turkey, and spend the rest of the scene crying. Crying children, always a bummer.
Yeah, it tends to dry 'em out and make 'em all stringy.
So, you won’t be having chicken on Saturday?
Just now, ten minutes ago, one almost the size of a medium sized dog tried to kill itself under my wheels. Scared the crap out of me - came out of nowhere, and I was on the far left lane of the interstate! Course if I looked like that I’d always be trying to commit suicide too.
You can eat possum - the old man who lived behind my granny when I was a little girl (this was in Camilla, GA) would catch them and feed them milk and bread for a week to “clean 'em out” before he killed and ate them. I don’t know if that helps or not. My dad ate a lot of them as a kid - they were extremely poor. My dad’s family, not the possums. Although the possums are short on worldly goods, too - they don’t even have quite enough fur to go around. Squirrel was preferred, but when you have eight kids and a runoff husband you fix possum if you can get it.
Granny used to kill her chickens by whirling them around in circles over her head. No kidding. I was a city child and rather… surprised by that, first time I saw it. One becomes accustomed.
You live where there just aren’t any. I didn’t see a racoon in person until last year. And I’ve only caught glimpses of possums (or maybe they were ratty cats?). I have seen sea turtles in person. They’re neat.
Chicken kisses
Damn!
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Hell, I just about died laughing when I was flipping through my mother’s copy of Joy of Cooking and I ran across a recipe for possum. In fact, I’m pretty sure it even gives instructions to feed them milk and bread for a week before killing them so they’ll taste better, just like the old man you knew in Georgia.
A few months ago I did wind up running over a suicidal baby possum. 
The babies are actually relatively cute, but it didn’t give me time to stop, so my options were to either hit the possum or hit the SUV coming the other way…
Supposedly (the answer I get from hippies)
is that fertilized eggs have more protien than unfertilized ones. I guess they have about a sperm’s worth more.
It’s very unlikely that you’ll get a visable fetus in an egg from a reputable producer. Almost all producers stick their eggs in the cooler the same day they’re laid, after washing. So, even if it was fertilized, the fetus would be more of a blastula and so small you couldn’t see it without the right tools. And after being in the fridge, it would be dead and wouldn’t grow any more.
You might get meat or blood spots, but these are actually little bits of tissue or blood from the hen that got trapped in the egg during it’s formation. They lower the quality of the egg, though, so producers screen them out when they grade the eggs. If you buy eggs from unusual birds or very small producers, they might not candle all of them for defects.
</hijack>
My mother (of steak & kidney pie fame-earlier thread) grew up in 1940’s Argentina where it was common to raise your small protein source at home and harvest/butcher it yourself. Dad grew up in small-town Georgia 1940’s too, small thing. The stories they told us kids as we were growing up mirror HlaneLee’s.
Life is just different now. Honest to Pete, I do not have the time to corner my dinner, chop its head off, pluck, clean, then cook it AND do everything else I need to do. That is why I eat “fast food”. And why I weigh more than I need to.
But maybe I would lose more weight if I had to track down, kill and process the protein sources I consume each day. However, my HOA has by-laws about livestock raising-don’t mention “do it yourself” butchering :eek: /killing. So I am resigned to purchasing the neatly wrapped packages at SuperTarget or paying a small fortune at a steakhouse for a meal.