Chickens

centex · Apr 21, 2002

My parents always had chickens when I was growing up. I had to feed them and I hated it. When it came time to butcher them my parents would wring their necks. I think it killed the chickens as quickly as chopping their heads off but without all the blood. As a kid I could not stand to watch the chickens flop around after their necks were wrung. I do remember that they sure tased good.

Bird · Apr 21, 2002

eggs have to age a bit before they can be hard boiled

GlennT, I'll bet a lot of city folks don't know that, since they probably never bought any eggs in the grocery store that were fresh enough for them to notice the difference./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif And if they did get fresh ones, they'd just think the same thing your neighbor thought; something wrong with those eggs./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

soft shell egg

Al, it's been a few years since I've seen one of those; come to think of it, I haven't seen a double yolked egg in awhile either.

chopped the chicken's head off with a hatchet

Hmm, I've done that, but the chicken may move at the wrong time and you might miss. Never shot any chickens, but I guess that works, too. And I've seen my grandmother wring a chicken's neck. But we always just used a short (foot and half long or so) piece of pipe or a very stout stick (like an old hoe handle); held the chicken by both legs, let it down so its neck touched the ground, lay the stick across its neck, quickly step on both ends of the stick or pipe, and almost at the same time, pull up on the legs; pulls the head off in a fraction of a second, then toss the chicken out in front of you almost in the same motion so you don't get bloody when it starts flopping around.

And we never skinned a chicken; it was the hot water dip, pluck the feathers, singe the chicken over an open flame to remove the fine hairs (or whatever you called those things that were too small to call a feather or get hold of to pull out)./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif Then cut open the rear end to remove the entrails (the gizzard is still my favorite part of the chicken/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif).

chim · Apr 21, 2002

Back in my younger days, I ran with a volunteer fire department that held chicken corn soup sales as fundraisers. We were fortunate to have a local game farm that allowed us to use their equipment. Killing wasn't hi-tech. There was an old piece of timber with a pair of nails in it that you placed the chicken's neck in. Then you pulled the chicken by the feet to stretch the neck a bit, and gave it a whack with an old hatchet, separating chicken and head. The idea was then to hold the chicken for a minute till it stopped flapping. This spared the other workers a bloodbath. Every once in a while, one would "accidentally" get away to liven things up. Then the carcass was dipped in hot water, and held over a device that looked like a small rotating drum with a bunch of stubby rubber hoses protruding from it. The "hoses" plucked most of the feathers out, and they were then passed down to someone who did the finer or missed feathers. I can't remember if they singed them to get the smallest feathers or not. Then they were eviscerated (didn't want to offend anyone by saying "gutted") and cut for cooking. After cooking, the ladies boned them and did their magic..................chim

PS: Now I'm getting hungry for a good bowl of chicken corn soup.

bgott · Apr 22, 2002

We used to do a hundred at a time. I got to do the plucking. We had over a thousand layers for a while. I shoveled the s#$t. I don't like chickens.

Anonymous Poster · Apr 22, 2002

Gotta agree with bgott, and say I hate, lothe, despise and abhore chickens. When the old man got plastered one time, and decided we was goin outa the chicken business, we kild them dam things for a week.
Wound up with 42 cubic feet of frozen dead chicken cadavers, and I had to eat more dead chickens than I ever wanted to, due to limited market.
Only good thing I can remember about chickens was the time the old man got the WhizLiterator caught in a crack in the floor, and the machine threw him across the henhouse into the roosting rack. He was too stove up from that to kick my butt for laughing at him when it happened.
Any dang canabalistic bird that pecks at it's own crap and eats it should only be cayote, rat, and racoon feed. Free range chickens are just critters wandering around leaving minefields for people who ain't looking where they are walking.

Hillbilly · Apr 22, 2002

Franz,
You crack me up,you have a way with words.

When I was a boy we had a big old red rooster that would flog me,one day my dad was changing tires on 1 1/2 Chevrolet and the rooster attacked me,he chased the think down and thumped it good with a tire pump,he happened to have in hand,thing ran up under the building and died.

One other time he decided he was going to put Game rooster on the dinner table,he had an old 12 gauge and nailed the thing while I was in school and he hit a friends car front quarter panel and the rooster and it ended up being a pretty exspensive chicken dinner,by the time the body shop bill was paid.

Knight9 · Apr 22, 2002

but the chicken may move at the wrong time and you might miss. 

Guess I forgot to mention that we had a pair of nails partially hammered into the chopping block. Slide the head between the nails and it would hold the head still. Pull on the feet a bit and it stretches the neck straight. It was pretty impossible to miss. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Kevin

bgott · Apr 23, 2002

When I was about fourteen my mom sent me into one of our hen houses to get a few chickens. I was under the roost, crabwalking through the s#%t, dragging a couple of squawking hens when this big Barred Rock rooster we had attacked me. I didn't want to let go of the hens, or didn't think to, and I started yelling for my mom. She sticks her head in, wondering why the h I'm crying about a few little chickens and manages to slap him back through the perches long enough for me to get clear. That bird had spurs an inch and a half long, he nailed me enough times that both socks were soaked with blood by the time I got to the house and got my shoes off. I don't like chickens.

Bird · Apr 23, 2002

I think I may have posted the story before, but I never forgot the big old Leghorn rooster we had when I was about 12 years old that would attack every time I started to the barn. Dad thought it was really funny, but finally told me there was a simple way to break him of it. He said you know he's going to jump to get those spurs up; just grab him by the legs, then dip him in the cow's water trough. So I did; one quick dip and threw him as far as I could and he took off. But the next day, here he came again. So that time I dipped him in the water trough and held him under and watched the bubbles awhile. And when I threw him, he landed in a pile and just laid there awhile, then he started flopping around like his head had been chopped off. Scared the dickens out of me 'cause I knew dad was really going to be mad if I'd killed his rooster. Fortunately, after awhile, that rooster recovered, got up, and staggered off and by the next day was back to normal, but he never attacked me again./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif