How to Skin a Chicken

***WARNING***

Graphic Photos are following.  If you are not able to view them, please don't.  This is a pictorial on how to skin a chicken.  

We have been raising our own meat this year.  We wanted to have our own control over how our chickens (ducks, geese and goats) were raised, what feed they were getting, how they were treated, and how they were housed.

We knew going in that our animals are not pets.  They are respected, treated well, but ultimately they feed us.

My friend stated the other day as she was standing under her apple tree:

"I stood under an apple tree this morning that I planted and tended for about 15 years now. It's hard to explain, but I felt a wave of gratitude, kinship and history with this tree as I picked it's fruit and munched on the occasional one ( a mutual giving and receiving relationship). I felt I knew it and it knew me."  

Isn't that beautiful?!  It sums up my feelings so well.

I have been feeling a great connection to my food for a couple years now, and as a result this has been our next step into becoming more connected and responsible to/for our food.

We do not glory in the death of the animal (or veggie, etc) that has given it's life to feed us, we glory in the fact that we could care for it, raise it, and later use it in such a way to give us life.

We also have taught our children to be involved, having some beautiful teaching opportunities about the sanctity and beauty of life.

Because we got into raising our own chickens for meat, we knew this day was coming.  We knew we would be harvesting our own chicken, but three roosters just came a little faster than we were planning.  They were so vicious they couldn't wait till the normal 20 weeks for a chicken.

I searched and searched all over the internet for a pictorial on how to skin a chicken.

I didn't want to pluck because it stinks and it takes FOR.EV.ER!!  I also can't eat chicken for a couple weeks after because of the smell.

I heard that skinning is easier, quicker, and less stinky.  I am all for easy so I wanted to try it out.

Because I couldn't find a decent tutorial, or pictorial on skinning, I had my son take some snaps as we did ours.  Here it is if you find yourself needing a guide to harvesting your chickens.

Get your space ready.  We don't have a beautiful stainless steel sink and worktable like some, and we are still old school with a chopping block, but it all works great.

Some essential things we have found you need:
A super good axe you can handle with one hand.  MUST have a super sharp edge.
Bucket for after you remove the head.
Plastic to keep your area clean.
Gloves (optional, but nice to keep your hands clean, they are easier to change than washing your hands each time they get dirty)
Garbage bag for feathers and skin.

Super sharp skinning knife.

I didn't post removing the head, but if you want to know how to do that, contact me and I will tell you.  I was trying to spare some people's sensitivities.

After your bird has been dispatched, remove the feathers from anal to rib cage.  This is so you can access the gut area.

Carefully cut into the skin.  You will cut through a layer of skin, then fat.  Stop there.  Your guts are right under that and you don't want to pierce any of them.

 Separate your skin by easing your finger in between the meat and skin.  It comes off really easy.

Get some legs out, and the breast, cutting skin where needed to access the meat.

Place your hand into the cavity and work your fingers around the insides.

Remove them all.

It should be totally empty when finished.  If you didn't grab all of them, go in and get the rest.  Carefully so as not to puncture the organs.

The easiest way to remove wings and legs are to break at the joint.  This will also remove all the skin and feathers.  It just slides right off when you have the breast and up to the joints exposed.  Just slide it all off and dispose of it.

When you are done it will look like this.  You may have a few feathers on your skin, but we just wash them off as they were just strays, not actually attached.

All done.

Finished weight will depend on the breed and age of your chicken.  These three averaged about 6lbs.  They were Cochin roosters (which are supposed to be incredibly docile, but these three were not) at almost 17 weeks.  The feathers were a pain to take off, and I am so glad we skinned instead of plucked as these little men had WAAAAY lots of feathers!!

There you have it.  I am kind of in love with skinning as it only takes us about 7 min start to finish for one bird.  Plucking takes us about 20-30 min per bird.  I am all about time saving so skinning seems to me to be the better option!

Cheers

What I Have Been Up To...

Hatching new babies in my incubator...

...and admiring their beautiful new feathers.

I have two new breeds to test out, Barred Plymouth Rock and Giant Black Cochins.  Both have beautiful babies.

Harvesting my first crop of radishes.  So far we have baby beet greens, baby lettuce, and radishes.

 Discovering my now favorite "go to" recipe for soap.  I have made 4 batches (with variations) this past couple weeks and EVERY. SINGLE. ONE worked!  That is awesome and the soap lathers so nice.  It also looks pretty.

 

Weeding the giant garden that some wack job (me) thought would be fun to have!  It is huge, but lucky I have 3 wonderful helpers!

Getting awesome presents from my friends! (because I really have one - Crappy Little Kitchen that is, I have a couple friends!  :D)

Meeting some lovely ladies at the Hutterite Colony next door, and getting some awesome salve out of it.  It is supposed to help with my arthritis...we shall see.

Harvesting some herbals for this coming winter, and making some infused oil out of it.  I used some of the dandelion oil and Balm of Gilead I made earlier in my soap, so I am looking forward to making some first aid salve out of the fun things I acquired last night.

I also have been harvesting some plants on those trips to put in my yard.  Wild Licorice, Bee Balm, Roses, etc.  So awesome.

I have been so blessed to have found a group of women that accept me in and let me tag along on their foraging trips!  It makes it so much better when you can have a group and not do it alone!

I am also a really bad mom and didn't take any photos of the SUPER SPECIAL weekend that my boys had.

My baby turned 8 and chose to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was a beautiful day.  He is an amazing young man and is such a good example to us all.  We had many members of our family, and some great friends attend.  Ice Cream supper after topped it off!

Then, my oldest was ordained to the office of a Teacher in the Priesthood the next day.  He is also a wonderful example and such an amazing young man. We had friends and family out for dinner after.

It was such a great weekend and a witness to me that my boys are growing up good.  They make choices that are good and right, they have friends that come to support them and see them grow, they have such amazing personalities and I am blessed to be their Mom.

So, although I have been busy, I have been keeping track so I could come tell you all about it.  :)  Enjoy your summer!

Cheers

My New Babies

So, remember how I told you we were getting goats?

Meet Rosy, she is our milk goat.  She gives us just about a liter a milking (close to a quart for you Americans!).  She is getting used to her new home so her milk production dropped a bit, but we are slowly growing on her so she is giving us a little more milk each day!  

She is super sweet and loves to have her neck scratched.  She thinks I am her mom and follows me around rubbing up against me for love each time I stop.

This is Ali.  She is pregnant and due to kid around May 17th.  The lady we got our goats from thinks she has twins in there, so we are hoping for two nannies!

I call Ali "Greedy Pig".  She will eat anything that I give her, and eat A LOT of it!  She is crazy curious and is a holy crap escape artist.  Where Rosy is content to be where we tell her to be, Ali will test the boundaries and try to push them to the limit.  She is adorable and I love how naughty she is.  For some reason that makes her more enduring to me.

We took our neighbours to meet the "goat lady" as we call our goat source, and while there the goat lady showed us her new chicks.  She was telling me that she didn't like the Cochin's and was probably going to get rid of them.  She didn't like how the feathers were all over their legs.

I told her I loved the way a Cochin had feathers all the way down and was actually looking for a place to buy them!  So...I inherited 9 little baby chicks!

We were pretty much set up because of this:

Yup, that is right, it is an incubator!

I picked it up a couple weeks ago and was saving eggs for a while.  It takes 41 eggs to fill it, and so between the neighbour and I we filled that baby and turned it on!

My chicks are due on the 20th of April.  One day before my birthday.  I think that makes a pretty darn nice birthday present, don't you?!

We marked each of our eggs, my neighbour has an "X" on each of her eggs so we can tell if both of our roosters are doing their jobs.  If you remember, I actually got the chickens from a friend.  We split his flock in two and each got a roo.  We want to know if our 3 year old roo's are doing their job fertilization wise so this was an easy way to check it out.

I had all the stuff ready for the new little chicks and so we were quite happy to take the Cochin's and test out our ability to raise them till we can put them outside.

By the way, chicks REEK!  They are about the stinkiest thing ever.

I totally understand why you would love it if your chickens go broody.  I am hoping that next year we have a couple that want to raise their babies so I don't have to!

Cheers

Enormous Eggs are Perfect Pickles

Ok.  That was a cheesy title, but the duck eggs really are enormous!  :)

The other day I walked into my chicken coop to give them some greens and saw this chicken sitting in a new hollow.  I knew it was a bit tall for my littler egg pickers, so I chased her off and checked inside.  

JACKPOT!!

There were over a dozen eggs in there that I could see just without reaching inside to check.  I had thought that my chickens had stopped laying for about a week.  I thought they had gone through shock from moving homes (which they are supposed to do) and thought that was why I wasn't getting eggs.

I called my friend who knows everything about birds (or so it seems!) and she told me what to watch for if that hen was broody.

Turns out she wasn't.  So I had the boys go out and steal all those eggs.

After, they brought in 17 eggs!  I checked them out.  We did the float test and all of them passed.

Holy Crap I had a lot of eggs in my fridge then.

I already had a dozen and a half in there...and add another 17, that adds up to more than I can use fast!

Enter my brilliant brother.  He mentioned to me when I first got my chickens that it would be awesome if I pickled some.  I am not a big pickle fan, but DH also seconded that nomination.

I thought of it today when I was trying to figure out what to do with all these eggs.

So, all but 2 eggs got pickled today.  Aren't they perty?!

Here is a recipe if you want to make some of your own:

Pickled Eggs

1 Large jar or 3-4 quart sized ones
30 (or so) Hard boiled eggs - peeled
3 Onions
1/2 C (or more) of Pickling Spice
2 Tbsp Crushed Chili Flakes (more or less depending on your heat tolerance)
1 Tbsp Pickling (or Kosher) Salt
1/4 C Brown Sugar
2 C Cider Vinegar
1 C White Vinegar

Boil your brine.  Pickling spice, chili flakes, salt, sugar, and vinegars.  Stir to dissolve.

While it is coming to a boil, cut your onions into rounds.

Place some onions in the bottom of each jar.  Place a layer of eggs and repeat until all eggs and onions are used.

Pour your brine over your eggs and onions.  Run a wooden spoon down the sides to ensure spice in all layers.

Store in refrigerator   These are ready to eat after one day, but to have super pickley (that is a word I just made up!) eggs and onions, keep for at least a week if you can handle it before dipping in.

These make amazing egg salad, super good to eat like they are (if you like that sort of thing!), awesome topping noodles, etc.  A great way to preserve eggs if you have an over abundance!

Cheers

On The Seedy Side

Brain Dump time again...you have been warned!  :)

• When reading posts the other day, (I really, really, really love google reader.) I came across a totally awesome idea.

I like seeds.  

Pretty much all seeds.  

I am always looking for new and yummy ways to use them in my cooking and this is a great way.

She has a shaker filled with seeds of all kinds.  She shakes it on all sorts of things.

I figured I would make some and shake some on our pancakes this morning and they were soooo yum!  I am keeping it around for more shaking fun.  (and just so you know, I DO know you need to crack the flax to get the nutrition from them.  I just like the crunch they add so I didn't)

• I made some chicken breasts the other night.  I had some leftover rice, bacon and chicken so I slapped it all in my frying pan with onions, mushrooms and some coconut oil.  MAN was it ever tasty wrapped in a tortilla!  We gobbled it down so quick.

Fridge is good!

• Remember the other day when I mentioned DH and I spent date night in the barn?  

Here is what we did:

There are 3 separate enclosures that we keep different fowl in.  I still need to build a roost of some sort for my chickens, but for now, they are all quite happy in their homes.

It used to look like this side of the barn:

This side will eventually have a goat enclosure where you see the boards.  We are going to re-enforce them and add a couple more so our goats will have a pen.

I am excited though, our barn is totally starting to look like a barn!

Speaking of barns...

• We added a rooster the other day.  He was separated from his girls.  He escaped from his box inside the barn, outside of their enclosure.  He heard them clucking and flew over the 5' fence to get into them!  He was so thrilled he vented on each one of the girls and cock-a-doodle-doo'ed about 700 times.  He keeps them happy and protected though and it is so awesome to see how much he loves his little ladies.

They all seem so happy together.  (and chickens mate WAAAY less violently than a duck...let me tell you!  Birds and the bees take on a whole new meaning now!)

And speaking of chickens (because I was...)

• I called every store in the surrounding towns that sold produce.  

It is apparently against Canadian Food Standards to sell garbage produce.  

Who knew?!

I found two tiny stores that will sell me "trims" of the veggies that normally they will throw away, but they will charge me.

I am still trying to decide if it is worth the $2 that they charge me to get this much (plus another half bag) of trims.  I am not so sure it is.  The chickens and dirty ducks like it lots, but I can feed them layer rations and the gobble that as well, so I am not sold on the cost of this green stuff... 

I can hardly wait for my garden!  

Those chickens are going to eat all my garbage and be so happy!

• I went to the temple with some women from my branch yesterday.

I was so excited to go, but as I looked at each of them, I realized how crazy blessed I am.  I have made some wonderful new friends in such a short time here.  

Going to the temple is a great place for me to realize my blessing apparently.  

We have had such fun getting to know people here and gaining new friends and knowledge.  I wish each and every one of you (who I know in real life and virtually) could come be my neighbour.  Wouldn't we have fun?!

Cheers

Hello Blogger My Old Friend

I know I said I was done...

...but I just don't write anything down as a journal.

I really want to keep a journal.

So I am back.  With limits.

This will be just for me.

It will be a journal of sorts for me to record whatever I want, whenever I want, with whatever photos, recipes, lists, etc. I want.

It may not make any sense.  It may be a ramble.  It may only be once a month, or four times a day...

...but it will be just stuff I want to remember.

If you want to follow along on that journey, I would love to have you, but be forewarned...I am weird and my mind takes dangerous turns!  :)  (and I probably will put emoticons once in a while as well!)

So on we go...

This is the first of many "brain dumps" as my friend Carrie calls it.

My sister is my supplier.  She knows I am in love with the lip balm/gloss at Bath and Body Works.  When it goes on sale I snap it up.  I don't wear lipstick so something like this goes everywhere with me.  I have one in every vehicular, coat, purse, room and place I visit.  Truly.

Anyway, the last time she picked me some up, she grabbed me this one.  It is beautiful.  Nice and thick it stays on all night but soaks in and doesn't leave it all gummy feeling in the morning.

I even wear it in the day time sometimes!  *gasp*

The other day I had my plastic packing wrap out to wrap our tiny little Christmas tree up for storage.  My oldest likes to taunt me, so I told him I was going to wrap him as well.

He sometimes thinks I am joking.

I am not!

So I gave him a mermaid tail (yes, a merMAID) and told him to escape.  He sat like this for a while figuring out how to do it until my Mom took pity on him and helped him start.

I would have let him stew until he had to pee!  (she is a good woman!)

Driving through Medicine Hat the last time we were there, I saw this sign.  It is so true.  And now we are penniless.  Canada no longer has the penny as of yesterday.

Crazy to think.

A couple weeks ago we got some ducks.

Being a list maker and planner, this was kind of hard for me as this was not on my list.

They are so awesome though.

These are Muscovy's.  They are primarily for meat as they only lay 50-150 eggs per year.  They are supposed to taste similar to veal in texture and taste.  Apparently good for making sausage, I am excited to see what happens with them this year.  I plan on hatching as many as they will lay and hatch for me.

When you get animals though, you need some stylin farmer boots.

Rubber in particular.

So, we all traveled into the city to buy some.  These are mine.

I think they might even be nice enough to wear to church... :)

We get some spectacular sunsets (and sunrises) off our own back deck.  I am constantly amazed at the beauty our Father in Heaven gives us through these little things I often overlook.

A couple weekends ago DH got to meet up with his sibs and his Dad.  I think it is so fun to watch them together because they are all so very similar.  You watch them do and say things and think it is just so funny that they all do it the same way!

I really am blessed to have married into this family though.  I have gained some really good friends as well as family members when that happened over 15 years ago.

Last week I went to Medicine Hat to pick up some chickens.  A friend was giving his away and my neighbour and I were going to split his flock.  (There are rules here about how many animals you can have, so I thought I better obey them! :D)

These are some of the ones I picked up.

They are Americana's and are great little layers.  I am hoping to get some chicks from them as well so we can cull this flock.  These ones are just over 3 years old so I want to gather some younger ones to keep it going.

The next day, I got an egg!

I was so excited I took a photo! (or more...)

Then that afternoon we got 4 more!

I thought they were so happy with their new home.

Then I talked to a friend and she said that chickens lay all the eggs that were forming inside then they have a period of no laying (up to 3 weeks) and start up again.  Then I thought, Hey - how many am I going to get?

So, did you know that a chicken has 8-10 eggs forming at any given time?!

So, I am still getting about 5-8 eggs per day, but I expect that will be done at the end of this week or so.  I hope that it will only be a week or so of non egg laying, but I will prepare myself for more.

They eat TONNES of food though and cluck with glee when I feed them "treats" like oatmeal and sprouted wheat grass.

When I picked up the chickens, we also got a dog.

She was a surprise.

My friend is getting ready to sell his house and needed to get all his "critters" gone for that.  He had this puppy and she was lonely.  She used to have 6 kids to keep her busy and entertained, but then she didn't so she was alone almost all day.  He offered her to me.

DH had just been looking at dogs on Kijiji and was really leaning towards these Blue Heeler/Lab crosses he had found.  When I asked our friend what his dog was, he said she was one of those!  That is when I knew I had to bring her home too.

Unexpected and kind of awesome.

She is a good dog, but holy smokes is she ever crazy!  I am hoping that she will calm down as she stays a while longer and gets a bit older.

On Friday night for date night, DH and I went out to the barn and built enclosures.

I know, super romantic right?!

So, we were building the outsides (the part you see in the background of the photo) when one of the Muscovy's decided she wanted to roost on the 5 foot tall wall.  That was not OK, as the chickens were going in next door, so we added 5 feet more of the fence.

She roosted on that as well!

We added a piece of wood to the very top so it touched the roof and she was MAD.  So we had to add another roost in her pen.  Since then she doesn't roost anymore!

Ducks!

We got the pens all made though, and now our barn is starting to look more like a barn.  We now have three pens ready for fowl.

Just in time too because on Saturday night we picked up some Welsh Harlequin ducks.

These little babies are egg layers and will supplement the eggs the chickens give us.  Right now we are getting about 2 eggs a day.

The eggs are a bit different in taste and texture than chicken eggs and are interesting as we try them out in our cooking and eating.

So all my birds out in my barn need things to eat.  While I want to free-range them, right now it is full of snow and there is no place to pasture them on nice days, so I am sprouting things for them to eat.

So far their favorite is a wheat/flax seed mixture.  I have tried a couple different things, but that is by far their favorite.

I have a couple trays of their scratch coming up though so I will see what is the best after that.

For breakfast we had french toast with 100% our eggs!

It was an even for sure!

The eggs are different color, the texture is better and to be perfectly honest, I love that I didn't spend any $$ on buying them!  I know feed costs money, but I am so thrilled to be getting eggs from them that the cost is almost negligible for me.

I am super excited to keep this little farm adventure going and am looking forward to more excitement.

Cheers