meat birds – My Little Country

We were watching Jerry Clower one night, and the late and great Mississippi-bred comedian was talking about times when people in the South got together. Oh, there are pea-shellins, corn-huskins, and taffy-pullins, sure. But no one really gets excited about chicken-pluckins. Here’s why:

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Broiler chickens are nasty.

I love animals, but broilers AKA meat birds AKA Cornish crosses are just….gross. They can hardly help it, I know, because they were bred to make one thing: chicken nuggets. (Well, other things, too, but “nuggets” is just a funny word.) They eat and then they poop. Continuously. And then they laid in said poop. If you are familiar with chicken poop, it’s obviously gross, but there is no poop like broiler poop. Imagine Old Faithful. Need I say more? Yes, it really is THAT bad. Please see above photo for reference.

Anyway, last fall, my dear friend Big Rig and her husband, PeeDee, brought over a passel of meat birds to send to chicken Jesus in the sky. Big Rig was to the point where so many of us find ourselves with farming: either the chickens had to go or she was moving to a new place where you never had to move a chicken tractor much less see a chicken ever again.

So, because we have chicken processing equipment, they came to our farm and we got everything set up. Now, Big Rig and I haven’t ever done a ‘chicken-pluckin’ together, so this was a whole new experience. You have your cages full of ‘pre-nugget’ AKA live chickens, your ‘killing cones’, a giant pot of boiling water, and then a processing table. Obviously, chickens go in the cones first and that’s where it’s “off with their heads”. But anyway.

Big Rig volunteered to put the first chicken in a cone. They go upside down and their little heads stick out of the bottom of the cone, and their feet out of the top. Ideally, they don’t wriggle around too much, but, this isn’t always the case. As Big Rig went to put the wildly thrashing nugget with legs in the first cone, something terrible happened. Remember the visual of Old Faithful? Yes friends, at the very moment chicken was going IN, something else was coming OUT in a steady stream RIGHT ACROSS BIG RIG’S MOUTH. As I looked up, there was a weird strangling noise and she was wildly gesticulating with her hands, eyes as wide as a turkey platter. Her lips were so pursed, I thought that maybe she had lost them permanently. With arms flailing and loudly throat-screaming, “MMMMMMMGGGGGGGDDDDDKKKKKKKKMMMMMM”, I grabbed a roll of paper towels and threw it at her. PeeDee and Jason had a horrified look on their faces which quickly dissolved into a fit of doubled-over laughter.

It was a day to remember, that’s for sure.

Revenge of the Nuggets.

Then, as if I didn’t get enough of fecal-laced lip balm, when my friend Dubyacee called and said she would have about twenty more nuggets to process, I immediately said, “Yes! Bring them over!” At least I had given myself 6 months to recover.

This day went without any face-painting incidents, but I did learn that I never want to skin a chicken ever again. It was a long, gross, wet, and feathery day, but in the end we had twenty or so little birds in the coolers. The only issue was, I hadn’t bought enough ice. When you are butchering birds, you really need to live next door to an ice factory. I don’t care how much ice you buy, it isn’t enough. You will always, ALWAYS be short by 2 or 3 bags.

So, I got in our truck and drove down to the little general store down the street. Before I got out, I took a look at myself. My mud boots were soaking wet and covered in things we won’t discuss, but that did include feathers. My freebie t-shirt and shorts were sprayed with who-even-knows what. My hair was sweaty and in a tall bun that looked like I had slept in it for two days, not to mention looking like I had grabbed a hold of a bare electrical wire in my sleep. Make-up free, I was the perfect advertisement of how NOT to go out in public. I grabbed my purse and fumbled around in my side pocket. Grabbing my candy red lipstick, I smeared it across my lips. Because, I may be a grubby old chicken processor, but I’ll be danged if I’m going out without my lipstick.

Lipstick & gizzards. Welcome to my life.

So for today, let’s meet the M.L.C. chickens, shall we? It’s been long overdue. Let’s start with the roosters, or perhaps more correctly,the cockerels.

My pure-bred Silkie cockerel, Mr. Pufflepants, to the mid right. He was hatched last March and came from Ideal Poultry in Cameron, TX. His color is called ‘partridge’. Though I had several males in the group, he struck me as the best looking. The things I look for are fully feathered feet, as little ‘hard’ feathering as possible (esp. in the tail and feet), and a small frame with upright stance. As you can see, he really thinks he is HAWT, as they say. Really a stud. Never passes up an opportunity to do what roosters to best, besides crow, that is.

And now, we have Ernie the Wonder Chicken. Ernie was a wonderful gift from our fellow animal lover, Heather. I’ve talked about him in past posts, but Ernie is a ‘Showgirl’ chicken. He has the naked neck gene borrowed from a Transylvanian Naked Neck chicken with the silkie feathering of….a Silkie, of course. He is the father of all of the Showgirls that I have hatched. Funny, the older he gets, the more he looks like he has a mullet. Oh well.

Now for the newest addition, thanks to another chicken addict such as myself! I traded some Showgirls for a couple of little bantams. This little guy (he is as small as a dove, almost) is named Moe Banty. If you don’t know old country music, then you’re just on your own when it comes to figuring out where his name came from. Anyway, he is 8 inches tall and bulletproof. Classic ‘short man syndrome’. He is just a pet and that’s all. No baby bantams planned. Still not certain if he is an Old English Game Bird or a Dutch, as there are very similar color phases in both, but it really doesn’t matter anyway. He was only born this year, so he has a LOT of filling out to do still. Ought to be a very pretty boy over the next year.

And now for some hens. I do not name everyone; only the ones that strike me with their personalities for some reason or another. Here is my current favorite Showgirl, Lolly Popp. I’m sure you can figure out the name. Looks like a licorice lollipop attached to her body. I’m planning on hooking her up with Pufflepants for more lollipop looking babies. She is still young and ‘feathering out’. Ought to be a pretty stunning bird when it’s all said and done!

Now for my hen of choice #2. This is Phyllis (after Phyllis Diller). She is Lolly’s half sister. She is from a January 2012 hatch.

Ah! almost forgot my #3 hen. I haven’t named her, but she is out of Mr. Pufflepants and is Ernie’s favorite, too. Her mother was unfortunately killed by a fox last year. She is a bearded partridge Silkie. She is almost a spitting image of her mother, but even better! Her tail and feet feathers are very full and silky textured. Exactly what I’m looking for.

Now for some of the older hens in my old laying flock. The youngest birds I have in that pen are 2 years old. Here is my very oldest hen, a Plymouth Barred Rock called Doris. There WERE 3 Dorises (Dorii?), but now we’re just down to the one. She was rescued from a hoarding situation in July of 2009, and I believe that she is 4 years old, possibly 5. She has the somewhat annoying habit of pecking your legs, but it’s only for attention. In fact, all of the Dorises I rescued did that. My new Barred Rocks do not. She also has a very distinct call that differentiates her from my other Rocks.

Now, here is Buffy the Buff Orpington. Buffy was the sole chick I kept from a group of B.O.’s that we raised for a friend back in ’09. She has never, ever thought of herself as a chicken. Or a human. Or anything. She is her own self, and NOT a group player. It took me weeks to get her to finally hang with the flock and quit running off. She still lays a nice brown egg.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (I just wanted to say that) Here is our pair of geese. They also came from the hoarder’s house. I believe that they are also 4 years old. I thought for a very long time (years, actually) that I had a male and female. Well, they certainly ACTED like one was a male and one was a female. Now we just call them Ellen and Portia, and sometimes, Oprah and Gayle. You know, whatever. All I know is that this year both geese are laying, so it’s twice the eggs for me. I do feel sorry for them, though…they want a baby soooo bad. I did let them hatch out a tiny duck once which they promptly squished.

And here’s one of our broiler chickens. We butchered them at 8 weeks (a couple of weeks ago now), so they have now gone to that big coop in the sky. Actually, the deep freezer in my barn. Anyhoo, they are delicious, let me tell you. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, like home-raised meat.

To finish, here is my little cutie pie, Abraham. Abraham Lincoln, to be exact. The kids said it looked like Lincoln to them, so Lincoln it is. I said I would never, ever get another Polish after the whole Wayward Jones saga (If you don’t know about Wayward, just do a search in my blog for her stories) I have no clue why I chose to torture myself with another Polish chicken. I just couldn’t pass up that little face though, ya know?