Culling extra roosters and stocking up on chicken soup
We finally got an egg incubator this year to start rebuilding our chicken flock. A fox cleaned us out a few years ago and we thought we could rebuild the flock by the broody hens hatching eggs. It didn't work out, we only ended up with a handful of chicks that would make it to maturity. So we got an incubator to hatch some more chicks. With the hens came roosters as well. We let them grow all summer and now the time has come to turn them into chicken soup.
Seven roosters skinned and rested in the fridge for a week, good for over 15lbs of meat (no skin). Pressure cooked and soon to be pressure canned into a few gallons of soup. Resting them in the fridge seems to have done well for the texture of the meat. In my experience, I find pressure cooked meat to be a little more tough, chewy and dry than I expect. These chickens turned out better than past chicken soup batches. Maybe the extended resting time had something to do with it.
#homesteading #permaculture #permies #meshtadel #chicken #rooster #harvest #chickensoup
