Meat! Oh yeah.

Today we finally got time to deal with the old hens. We processed eight of them, and also two rabbits. Dan was just refreshing his memory for when we do the whole batch of bunnies, which should be soon. We were so thankful that our good friend Lisa could come over and give us a hand with the slaughtering and cutting up of the hens. We haven't, up to now, butchered enough to remember what we're doing, so we were really glad to have a knowledgeable person present.
One of our old hens weighed in at seven and a half pounds before processing, and we found a strange surprise inside her. Over a pound and a half of yellow fat in her abdomen. Yucky! That's what gluttony gets you I guess. She's always been the "boss" and the first one to get anything good. Also, just as I suspected, she was a faker. She had no eggs in her at all, but usually spent some time on the nest each day and left bragging about...nothing. She never left an egg behind, just faked it. She did dress out nice and plump though.
We found a lot of egg yolks inside most of the hens. I forgot to take a picture of that, but I have a whole bowl full in the fridge, and I plan to feed them to my family for supper with some fried potatoes. Does anybody do that? I really don't know if I'm crazy for doing this or not, but I'm going to try it.



In this crock pot there are all the hearts and gizzards as well as the backs, ribs and necks, and the two rabbit rib cage sections. There are also garlic, onions and pepper corns. It smells wonderful in here! I'm getting hungry.




The rest of the meat; breast sections, legs, wings and thighs, fit into eight quart jars, and I canned them. I think some of the meat floated up and pushed the lids up a bit, releasing some of the broth. Bummer, because that stuff is good. I'm looking forward to making a good soup soon so we can try the chicken. It looks like it got nice and tender from the canning.

Tomorrow it's off to get my newest goat! Milking tomorrow night if all goes well! :) I'm also learning to draw blood so I can do that myself. It really pays for me to learn to do all I can since there's not a large animal vet anywhere within a 3 hr. drive of where I am. This way I'll be able to send blood in to the lab myself to test for disease or pregnancy. These tests are very inexpensive provided I can draw the blood and send in the paperwork myself.

Wishing all of you a wonderful weekend! Happy homesteading, homeschooling, homemaking...Happy "home" and all that means for each of you!