Where did the Roosters go?

This weekend we moved the 3 week old meat birds from the garage to the small chicken tractor on the pasture.  In order to free up that chicken tractor, we had to move the Barred Rock pullets into the tractor where the 9 roosters were.  So where did the roosters go?  Well,  they went two different places.

First, I climbed into the tractor and caught the two, biggest, prettiest roosters of the nine and handed them to Benjamin and he released them to roam free on the pasture.  Why two?  Polygamy has been frowned upon in the United States and rightfully so!  In the chicken world, however, roosters have multiple "wives."  In fact, the proportion that you want to have is 1 rooster for every 10 hens. That will just about assure you that your eggs will be fertilized.  We hatch out a batch of chicks from our fertilized eggs each year to replenish our flock, so fertilization is important so we try to keep the 1:10 ratio out in the pasture of roosters to hens.

Roosters in the big tractor

The remaining seven roosters were loaded into a pet kennel on the back of a garden wagon and hauled out of the pasture.  These roosters will be moved into our freezer once we butcher them and be eaten.  It is not a particularly fun event, but these were never pets - they are farm animals.  We never name anything that we're going to eat.

Farewell roosters

I didn't get out the cones that I usually use to hold the roosters when they bleed out. Butchering only seven birds doesn't really warrant it.  We simply hung them by a rope from the pear tree and placed a bucket underneath them to catch the blood.

Using a sharp knife, we cut the jugular vein and let the rooster's heart pump out all the blood.  It doesn't take long at all.  The dead bird is untied and another is put in his place.

I got the crawfish boiling pot out, lit the propane burner and brought the water to scalding temperature of 145 Fahrenheit.  Once the birds were dead, we grabbed them by the feet and dunked them in the scalding water over and over.  When the big wing feathers can be pulled out easily, they are ready to be plucked.

Since we only had seven to butcher, I didn't use the Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker that we normally use to pluck the feathers off the birds.  We just pulled the feathers out by hand.  Benjamin provided quality control, picking the feathers out so that none remained, leaving a clean bird.  Tricia started eviscerating and I joined her once the birds were all scalded and plucked.

We first pull the heads off and cut off the feet. Sometimes we'll boil the feet and make a broth, but this time we saved all the feet to give to a friend.  

Of course all the guts and feathers get buried in the garden to add nutrients to the garden soil.  It's sort of a twist on the old story about the Indians teaching the pilgrims to bury a fish next to the corn for fertility.  We do the same with chickens.

We cleaned the gizzards, and saved the hearts and livers in the container on the right in the photo below, and in no time at all we had 7 roosters gutted and ready to go into the freezer.

We first cut them up and bagged them in gallon sized freezer bags and put them in an ice chest to let them age overnight.

The next morning we put them in the freezer.  Since they are roosters that are almost seven months old, the won't be as tender as other birds, but we'll use them to make soups, gumbos, fricassee, and other dishes that require long cooking times to make them tender.  There isn't near as much meat on these guys as the Cornish Cross meat birds, but that's okay.  These roosters will still provide some good meals that the family will enjoy.

That's where the roosters went.