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Thursday, December 17th, 2009
backtotheland [ navytron89 ]	11:48a	Butchering Roosters So today, I along with my wife went out and butchered a few roosters at my in-laws place. My in-laws live in the wilds of Missouri (literally a gravel road in between two cow pastures). I had asked my father in-law how to do it, because as a city kid (I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago) I had no knowledge other than reading books about the subject.  Plus my wife and I had been watching the PBS series Frontier House and Pioneer House and had seen them do it. So it was a "well if these folks can do it why not me thing?" Its an interesting process and not for the squeemish Vegan/PETA types. I skipped breakfast to do it (just in case I did hurle). While we only butchered 2 of the 4 roosters we had planned to do, since the other 2 escaped. Its not as disgusting as I thought and was a very educational process for me to see it done. While its not the usual style like a mass-market farm is, my FIL showed me how to do it with efficency and also the least bloody way to do it. The hardest part to me was the actual killing which I missed the killing blow and had to do it several times, with the rooster flailing about, but I did manage to get it after the third blow with a matchete. I dipped it into a scalding water bath and managed to get the feathers off with the help of my wife who really didn't want to do it. I think it brought back a few bad memories since they did this with 4 kids as a group thing.  My MIL showed us how to finish the plucking and getting to the details. Cutting took a bit of time and was also hard but satisifying work. I brought my pipe and smoked in case I accidently cut into the guts/intestines and the smell can knock you for a loop. We then dressed them in the "Ozark" fashion and now the meat is in the freezer setting up and we'll have it for lunch/dinner in a day or so.  Overall it wasn't as bad as my wife had made it out from her childhood to be and as long as I had a detatched view of doing the butchering it was actually a fun learning experience for me to do if I need to or asked to. Plus since the wife had been saying that if PBS ever does another House series and she wants to try it, I'm game and won't look like a complete idiot when doing this type of work.   Current Mood: curious Current Music: BBCAmerica (8 Comments |Comment on this)