Slaughter

Nothing to say today guys, I'll let the pictures do the talking, suffice to say that if you want to know what a real free range chicken is, look for the skinny, scrawny beast with long legs and a woody, tough taste, those lovely juicy birds with trussed up legs you get at Woollies are about as far from being free range as one can conceivably get away with it seems, and the eggs are bright orange as I kept telling the guys at the cheese shop at Carreiras but it never stopped them from continuing to sell the junk they have labelled as 'free range' under false pretences, lucky for them Joburgers are none the wiser when it comes to Au natural.

Hopefully these pics will encourage you to eat less meat towards a better and brighter world with less natural resources being depleted in our attempt to feed 7 billion people with an ever increasing diet richer in meat and animal products....

Monday morning dawns bright and cheerful and four cockerels and one pesky hen that could not keep out of the veggie patch are crated and ready for the chop

Katrina has number one, standing on his wings to hold him down.

With a tight hold on his head she slices through his neck in one quick flash.

She holds him down until he stops any erratic movement, he does still talk to us without a head but I am assured it is just air in the wind pipe, the chicken may disagree.

Once satisfied that her chicken no longer realizes that it has a head, she places him gently in the bucket and goes on to number two.

There is still some movement but again I am assured that this is just reflexes, the chicken agrees.

Hot water is pored over the two cocks, not boiling, but scalding, loosens the hold the feathers have on the skin.

The water needs to be at the right temperature or you end up taking 2 hours to do a 10 minute job, just ask Kevin....

The plucking begins, Katrina makes it look very easy and in about 5 minutes has her chicken almost bare to the bone.  

The final touches to make sure the last of the feathers have been removed, very good cleaning job, none of those pesky hard to digest bits left on like the wonderful pieces you get from KFC, so I'm told.

Hold the feet in the hot water to loosen the skin and then twist the flaccid bits off to leave clean smelling feet ready for the potjie pot that they will be going into for Katrina's evening meal.

Ah, there we have the scrawny, long legged cleaned bird waiting for his entrails to be pulled unceremoniously from his bosom to add to the dead looking head and feet pile.

Out comes the fatty neck and then we open up the ass and pull out the juicy entrails.

     washed in clean water to remove                                                        the last vestiges of unwanted blood.

The next chicken having his feet removed and legs cleaned.

The pile of juicy bits is getting higher with the addition of the third and fourth lucky chicken.

Ready to be taken inside and sliced up or trussed up and frozen for a lovely future dinner of a healthy and naturally fed young cock.

Katrina kindly cleans the liver and the stomach, skimming all the extraneous stuff and the fatty bits and leaving the household with usable offal to add to our next wonderful meal.

eggs in different stages of production from the that pesky hen that finally got her comeuppance.

the finished product, 5 chickens to freeze

     

The most important male bits remain to tell the sad story of what became of their owners. Enjoy your next roast chicken guys.