Dealing with Unwanted Roosters

A few weeks ago I agreed to take four cockerels off The Allotment Doctor's hands. He'd been sold ten day-old chicks by a local rogue who promised faithfully that they were all hens, and who was lying through his teeth; twelve weeks later these four were bouncing around, squaring up to each other and all but shouting 'cock-a-doodle-do'. They had to go, but there was one problem; Mrs Doctor wouldn't let hubby kill them. In the end he persuaded her that he knew a nice man in the country who would give them a good home. And I did.*

One of the four decided on first sight of me that I intended to kill him, and yesterday I proved him right. Three of the four were dispatched, processed and frozen in about forty minutes**. Now real smallholders may scorn at that amount of time for so simple a task, but it's a real turbo boost for me; it normally takes me about twenty minutes to pluck a single chicken and with gutting and all the rest of it I'd have been lucky to have anything left of the morning. This time, however, I knew there wouldn't be enough meat for roasting, and so no need for the skin; and if I didn't need the skin, I didn't need to pluck.

Instead, I skinned the chickens which is much, much faster. I bled out the birds all at once (no need to do them one at a time; they won't have time to get cold). Then the procedure was this;

• Remove the feet at the joint
• Remove the wings at the first joint out from the body***
• Put the chicken on its back, head away from you
• Pinch and lift the skin in the middle of the breast up, and make a cut through it big enough to put your fingers into
• Pull the skin open (like opening a small, feathery set of curtains)
• As if removing a jacket, pull the skin off one leg. Use one hand to hold the skin, the other to work between the meat and the skin.
• Continue to loosen the skin round the back of the bird.
• Take the skin off the wing on the same side.
• Do the same for the other side of the bird: leg, then wing.
• Cut the loose skin from one side to the other, just below the wings.
• Pull the upper section right up over the head, leaving the neck exposed.
• Pop your knife between the top neck vertibrae and twist; the head should then pull off easily.
• Find and loosen the windpipe, oesophagus and crop from the neck. Don't try to pull them out, just loosen them from the muscle.
• Pull the lower skin section down as far as it will go - to the tail and vent.
• Cut a little hole through the thin muscle just under the ribcage, and enlarge with your fingers to expose the entrails.
• Get your hand up over the entrails right to the top of the body cavity, and gently scoop out the whole mass.
• Carefully pull the windpipe and gizzard/crop/oesophagus down through the neck.
• The entrails are still attached to the vent, so all that remains is to cut the tail and vent free of the carcass. Fetch out the liver and heart, if you use them.
• Have a grub around in the body cavity to scoop out the spongy 'lights' (lungs), and rinse the carcass inside and out.

Job done. If there's enough meat to bother with, take off the breasts and leg portions; otherwise the whole thing is ready for the soup pot. Sorry for the lack of photos here, but I was on my own and not about to touch the camera!



*It's called 'the freezer'.

**The forth has bought a stay of execution because of excess cuteness. He's a bantam cream legbar (allegedly) no bigger than my hand, and with his peculiar topknot and beady eyes he strongly resembles a novelty slipper. We've called him Eric, and instead of the quiet chat round the back of the shed he's earned himself a stay with the Feathery Ladies until I'm ready to breed from the Lincolnshire Buffs, probably in the summer.

***You lose hardly anything, and it does make it much faster.