Dinner Is Served

Or will be, soon. A wee bit graphic below, regarding chicken executions; consider yourself warned.

I don't know how much ya'll know about our roosters, but lately they've become more trouble than they're worth. They've been fighting each other, and driving the hens crazy. The problem is numbers: 6 rooster, 8 hens. That's a horrible ratio; couldn't be much worse for the poor hens. We've always planned on butchering the roosters, but we were going to try to wait until the person who does that could schedule a day we could bring our roosters to her place. We only have 5 we want to eat, and she needs to get more lined up before she'll make the effort.

Well, after yesterday's impromptu cock fight, injuring one rooster, and the hens being chased all over the place, all the time, I got the hatchet today and headed to the coop. I did call everyone I could, trying to find someone to do this for me, but I had no luck. I never chopped the head off a chicken before, and I wasn't looking forward to it.

It actually wasn't that bad. I don't have any pictures of the process because it was snowing all morning (didn't want to get my camera wet), and you probably wouldn't want to see them anyway. We now have four butchered and cleaned roosters in the freezer. Well, two are in the fridge for dinner tonight. We tossed the one that got injured in the fight because I don't know what he could have picked up in the way of bacteria, through an open wound on its neck.

Once the feathers came off, the job got pretty easy. It looked just like the chickens you get at the store, except I had to yank the guts out myself. No problem there, for a Biology nut like me. I dissected all kinds of stuff in college, and actually got to give some mini anatomy lessons to some of the kids as we cleaned the chickens out. Tyler, of course, wanted me to cut up everything so we could look inside, to see what made a chicken tick. I only showed him the insides of the heart, lung, and liver.

Chicken Girl Kenzie did surprisingly well. She even watched one or two of the beheadings, and helped hold the basket down, over the flopping bodies, to keep them from running around "like chickens with their heads cut off". I never disbelieved that saying, but it is amazing to see, nevertheless. The fifth one did escape the basket and ran across the back yard, behind the coop. Luckily, it got trapped in a corner and didn't get too far. At that point, I shooed the kids away until I could recapture it. They didn't really need the trauma of seeing that. Not that I could keep their curious eyes away for long.

Kenzie says she feels weird, now. I told her she should feel a little weird. I do, too. You're not supposed to feel happy about killing something. But you also shouldn't feel bad about it, if you're humane and responsible in how you treat the animals God gave us to use as food. God, in making the first leather clothes for Adam and Eve (Gen 4:21), showed us that it's okay to kill animals for our use. It's the price we pay for sin, so it shouldn't feel good, even though it's sometimes necessary for survival.

Even on a day we take off from school, there is still so much to learn. For her, and for me.