ilultham

 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...

Obviously this post contains pictures of dead animals so please don't read if that kind of thing upsets you.  I had planned to process a batch of Indian Game chickens for the freezer this week. I was then disappointed when I found out that the day I had planned to do it the children were going for a sleep over at my mum and dads.  This is how far things have come with the children, it's so much easier with them that I now plan to do it so they can help. So I made sure we all got up early that morning and got cracking before they had to go! I had considered keeping the hen from this batch but in all honesty they were so wild. I don't think I've ever had such a wild hatch of chickens before, even thought he children spent so much time with them when they were younger.  As a team we've become pretty quick at processing the birds. I normally set the water to boil while we're having breakfast, ready to scald them to make plucking easier. So by the time we've disp...