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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] composting chickens

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  • From: Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] composting chickens
  • Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 12:53:39 -0500

I've read that Joel Salatin composts the chicken "residue" from butchering, but I'm talking a whole chicken. . . .I have 2 horrible inedible roosters that need culling...

--Joanna in Whatcom County, WA

I've written before on the list about my maggot breeding setup for turning carrion into high-quality protein for the birds, and now there is info about my system up on the site:

http://themodernhomestead.us/article/Feeding-Chickens-Maggots.html

I would never use a sick bird in the maggot buckets, of course, but have more than once used a bird that died by accident. (I also process slaughtering day's entrails thru the maggot buckets.)

Old roosters still make a great chicken stock, so you might want to butcher
the rooster, skin it, toss the skin and feathers and head on the compost pile
or in it. After the carcass has been used to make a good chicken stock, you
can still put it and the veggies on the compost pile or in it. . .
Carrie
meat eating Okie

But I'm with Carrie: The stockpot is a much better place for a tough or ornery old bird that's begging to be culled. And note she said "skin." If I'm doing a proper slaughtering, I scald and pluck. But if I have just one or two birds to cull on the run, it's much faster to just skin, gut, and throw in the stockpot. But a better use of the stock-making residues, Carrie, is--feed them to the flock. Ain't nothing they like better than--chicken!

~Harvey in northern VA
www.themodernhomestead.us









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