Chicken Cull

 This posts contains pictures of dead animals, if you don't like that then please don't click to read more of the article. 

Despite the bad weather this weekend just gone we needed to prepare the chickens for the avian flu lockdown. This meant lots of shuffling of chickens to different pens and the processing of 6 cockerels.

The girls, as ever, were keen to help. We've got it down to an art now, so long as the water is at temperature we can do six birds in about an hour - which was a good thing as it was pretty cold on Sunday! 

If you read this blog then you'll know that having the children help is nothing new, in fact I've got to the point where I won't do it without them if I can help it. They work hard, are good company and make the time fly. 

I haven't weighed the birds yet but I'm so pleased with the size of them. Full breasts and great legs, one of these birds will be our lunch on Christmas day. I love that they didn't have much fat inside them, often a problem when processing Ross Cobb birds. 

My Middlest child also helped with the full clean up as well (the eldest got squirted with poo (and I mean a lot of poo) when gutting a bird - at pressure as well, so she went in to get cleaned up). There isn't a single bit of these girls that is squeamish! 

I feel lucky they're keen to help me. They also helped move birds around in the dark that night to change the flock dynamics as pecking orders were upset anyway! 

What did you have to do to prepare for the avian flu lock down that came in force yesterday?