Chopping the clucky chook for dinner

Since the clucky chooks are easy to grab, just sitting there in the nest, it seemed like a good time to reduce the population and get a meat dinner. Two birds with one stone as they say.

The only thing left to do was determine if there was any good reason not to eat a chook that is in this state, some kind of hormone issue etc. Some rigorous internet searches failed to expose any warnings about eating clucky hens so I decided to ask my mother, a long time chicken raiser and fairly knowledgeable on the subject. Her only concern was that, depending on how long the bird had been clucky, it might be rather thin. I guess they don't eat much when they're sitting on eggs.

Our unfortunate specimen had only been acting up for a couple of days so hadn't a chance to loose weight. Also, I thought it might actually be an advantage, making the guts and crop less full and therefore easier to extract. I followed the standard procedure, grabbed the hen, stretched the neck, hung it to bleed out then plucked and gutted before leaving it 24 hours in the fridge prior to roasting.

It tasted good. For anyone else out there considering this as a method (albeit rather drastic) for dealing with an unwanted broody hen, I can fully recommend and endorse.

Chopping the clucky chook for dinner

Chopping the clucky chook for dinner

So, our chooks have started going clucky (broody) on us again. That means fewer eggs and the usual dramas of trying to get them 'unclucked'. Since we have been considering downscaling our operation due to the excess of eggs and the damage caused in the garden by the aggressively scratching fowls it seemed like an opportunity to have a chicken dinner.
January 24, 2011
  cook  eat  kill  clucky  broody  hen  chook 

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