Chicken for Dinner

Last week, after a lifetime of eating store-bought meat, we finally got to experience what goes into getting a real live chicken out of its run and onto our plates. After much consideration and discussion it was decided that two young roosters, one old rooster and two old hens would be culled from the current flock of twenty-five chickens.

The two roosters you see in front are the young ones that got "culled"

Wolfgang and Sean set out in the morning and fetched the chooks from their coops, and began to kill them one at a time. Each chicken had its neck broken and its head chopped off (or neck slit and then chopped) before it was dunked briefly in hot water and plucked.

Everything you need

Once all were feather-free, headless, and footless, they were taken inside to be butchered. As a veterinarian, Wolf was the perfect teacher, showing us exactly how to cut into the belly and extract the organs.


It was a fascinating anatomy lesson, seeing the heart, kidney, and intestines. The gizzard was especially interesting to see cut open to reveal a load of tiny stones, which the chooks eat to aid digestion. The chickens that were destined for stock were cut into big pieces and frozen, while the two chosen for dinner that night were left whole.

Cleaning it out

Nothing was wasted. The feathers, feet and inedible parts will be turned into a liquid fertilizer to be used in the garden, some of the less appetizing meat was given to the dogs, and the blood was used immediately to fertilize the citrus trees. While it was hard to do, it was truly amazing to be involved and responsible for the meat, which we cooked later that day.


We prepared a great dinner of roasted potatoes, onions, lemon-garlic chicken, fresh garden salad and homebrew. Between the roast and the soup that was made the next day from the stock, the chicken fed us for several days. In the future the frozen meat will be used to make more stock for soup, and now there is room for more chicks to join the flock. Thank you Pukahu for another invaluable skill!