No school today?

Snowflake looks like a really nice dog Rachel!!
How do you like that headless horse that Erinn is riding? That's Glory.

Wellll... no school today, but we were learning anyway!
We have about 8 or 10 roosters who are a never-ending source of aggravation to Mooky and Erinn. Mooky has them all penned up so they cannot harrass the hens, which they do whenever they can bribe a goat to jump on the pen and knock the lid to the cage off. Then Mooky has to go catch them all again. I never have to ask him to do this - he just cant stand to see them pecking the hens bloody. Having them in this pen makes extra work for Erinn as well who has to feed them separately from all the other chickens.
So, we've been saying we need to butcher them, and one thing after another kept stopping us.
Last night Kris sharpened knives for us and then went off to work today, wishing he could stay home to help with our butchering party.
First, Mooky caught a rooster.

Then we hung it from a tree and checked the temperature of the water to see if it was hot enough for scalding the chicken which makes plucking SO much easier!

The water was just right so we dispatched with the chickens head, but didn't take a picture because we knew if we did Granny Betty would never read this blog again. (haha!)


Then you dip the chicken in hot water to loosen the feather so you can pluck it easily. The trick is not to leave him in the hot water too long or the skin starts to cook and it rips when you pull on the feathers. OTOH, if you dont leave it in long enough the feathers wont come out easily!


These pics are taking FOREVER to upload so I will spare yall and not put them ALL up. This post is probably way too long anyway. Sorry about that!

All in all, we had a great morning! Got 10 pesky roosters into the freezer, and the kids learned how to bucher chickens! They enjoyed it, surprisingly, and next time I will teach them how to eviscerate. I did that this time, but Erinn really enjoyed cutting the feet off. :o)