Farm Fresh Meat Chickens

Meat Chickens - 4 weeks old

When we learned we would be moving to TN and have the farm we had been hoping for, the first thing I wanted to get was chickens.  I wanted to get layer hens for fresh eggs but I also wanted to raise meat chickens for our own consumption.  I learned as much as I could about raising meat chickens and got our first Cornish Rock X chicks in March. These type of chicks are very fast growing, it only takes 7-8 weeks for them to get to full size and be ready to butcher.  We waited until they were 7 weeks old and decided to butcher them.  I won't go into details but the butchering went well and we ended up with almost 21lbs of meat from 5 chickens. 

I do have to mention that we had chicken for dinner the night of butchering, not our own but store bought.  I had a little trouble eating it just from knowing that I now know the process that the chickens goes through to get to my table.

Meat Hen (girl) Chicken on butchering day

Meat Hen (girl) Chicken, cooked beer can style on the grill

The above chicken is the first of the meat that we ate.  We grilled it beer can style on the grill as we all love the chicken this way.  The skin was nice and crispy and the meat was juicy and moist.  This may sound funny but I expected it to taste different. I really don't know what type of different but just different.  Well it wasn't, it tasted just like the chicken I buy in stores.  Of course Jamie had no trouble eating it, neither did Hailey. Drew we weren't to sure about so we didn't tell him it was one of ours until he finished eating, surprisingly he was fine with it and said it was tasty.  Now me on the other hand, I had trouble eating it, less so than butchering day though, which was a good sign.  I just kept thinking about taking care of it for 7 weeks and then just killing it so I can eat. 

I have put a lot of thought into that chicken since Saturday and have realized since eating it that I would rather eat chicken from my own farm than from the store, to know that the food I am putting into my families body was raised by me in the most healthy way gives me satisfaction. By taking care of these chickens everyday, I know that they are eating the best food, drinking the cleanest water and living in the cleanest conditions because I feed, water and clean the coop everyday.  I also know that they are not crammed into tiny cages all day and night because I always make sure to let them out of the coop every morning to they can run around out in the chicken yard and pick and scratch till the sun goes down.  I also know that they are not suffering at butcher time because Jamie makes sure that they go as humanly and quickly as possible.

With all this said we will continue raising our own meat chickens for us to eat, plus I already have 22 more meat chicks in the coop already growing and another 25 more coming at the end of June, so I will just need to get over it. I'm sure I will, I like eating chicken more than I like not eating chicken.  I'm hoping that these 2 sets of chickens will get us through the winter and then we will do it all over again next year.