THE CHICKEN DANCE!@#?

Tania's View

It was a beautiful bright, sunny warm spring morning when Sarah and I arrived at Liz's place, in full support of the new, emotional, and admittedly just-a-little-bit-daunting experience that was soon to take place.

Twelve chickens, who were currently running about content and free with not a care in the world, were about to be 'prepared' for the cold depths of the FREEZER! Liz was very apprehensive, as to be expected, after tending to them for two years and havingnot done this kind of thing before!

Of course Sarah and I calmly 'distracted' the situation by suggesting we could celebrate later with RASPBERRY drinks, STRAWBERRY biscuits and CHICKEN chippies... much to Liz's disgust (amidst laughter)!

Then Veronique turned up! Boy was she ready for action! Chicken Commander V took control of the situation, as soon as her brand new black farm boots hit the ground. Gloves on, apron ready, strategy set and they were off... Liz's face still looking kinda pale... offers V a coffee first! ha ha stalling Liz - nice try... But V is now on a mission!

Sarah most kindly and conveniently offered to LEAVE and get some desperately required supplies from home (plastic bags, buckets, morning tea) and I, Tania, the ever-so-famous-Home Educator (loving my day job NOW... more than ever)volunteered to stay inside and look after the children! We even expressed our admiration and support of the two mummmies entering the brave battle ahead by performing... you guessed it... THE CHICKEN DANCE!

So as I sit here writing this, listening to the kids and watching them playing so nicely together I have come to the conclusion that we ALL make one fantastic team!...and that I truly did get the best part of the deal!  Happy Tuesday!

*****************************
Liz's view

It has taken two years to work through the horrors of converting my chicken flock into future dinners.

Originally I owned bantam chooks with pretty feathers at the feet. They were absolutely stunning and if I had had success raising them then this day would never have eventuated.

Two years ago my friend Sarah told me about this lady who lived up the peninsula who was selling 2 year old ORGANIC chooks for ultra cheap. The lady prefers to find 'good homes' for the hens instead of sending them all to the abatoir. At the time it sounded like a fantastically cheap option for getting eggs. This worked out swimmingly of course, in that I was able to supply my family (and friends) with eggs as well as sell some to cover the costs of keeping the birds.

We tried having them in the pen, but they ate all the grass and reduced the area to a mud pit. Then we tried having them out and despite the great thrill we first got in 'searching' for the eggs it fast became a 'loss' - finding some in nests they'd built IN the trees - not just under them - or my personal favourite, right by a german wasp nest (no we never retrieved these ones). Of course my all time favourite was all the fantastic black/white parcels they left on my deck... it was time to renew the flock by culling the 12 remaining birds.

The day approached with trepidation. Thankfully I had found friends to help me. Some with a little experience and others with sheer guts.

As Tania says V was fearless and bold. Adept with a knife and having Googled the process the night before she was keen to have a go. We worked out the best way to keep the old girls as calm as possible by using the lean-to next to the coop to string them up and perform the obvious task. The work has begun.

I have to say I was quite surprised that I was not horrified by the carnage', mostly because... there really wasn't any. V was lovely - apologising to each chook and telling them what great egg layers they were. Aside from the red pool beneath each and the odd 'extra' fluttering, they drifted off 'peacefully'.



We got the first seven started, then felt the need for that coffee I had offered V earlier. By this stage, Sarah had come back with the required buckets and biscuits.

Boiling water on the stove, we set up for the next part of the process. The remaining five birds 'put to sleep' and plucking to begin. Trina arrived around the time we finished off the final five birds and kindly offered to help with the next part of the process.

After dunking them in hot water for 12 seconds or so we started pulling feathers. Not too difficult a task but all felt it could be easier. "Let's get it hotter"... success... it was like cutting butter with a hot knife. Trina even announced that her in-laws have a plucking machine (which got us on the subject of doing it in bulk and saving all of our families a nice bundle of $)... lets face it, the idea of saving $12 for one chook is not that exciting, but saving $120 for 12 is a bit more of an incentive.

It was about this point in time when my daughter came around the corner - having seen a large number of feathers flying about. At first Tania tried to keep her away, but in the end I thought... nah, she'll be ok, she'll feed off my vibes anyway and I was by now rather ok with it all really. At first she was 'wary' and a look of 'what are you doing that for!', but after about 5 seconds she was more curious about having a go and decided she would pluck a few feathers out herself.

ANYHOW, it came time for the gutting stage, and everyone was starting to think of collecting their older kids from school. This did make me feel nervous again... I'm not the kind of person who likes to experiment with gross stuff on my own, so I very cleverly handed Trina the scissors (having made it obvious earlier that she was quite ok with cutting off heads, legs and wings) and said, how do you think the insides come out.

Initial disgust for the messiness subsided as sheer fascination of the chickens reproduction system took over.

I remember Jason's (my hubby) nana saying that this part of the process stinks... lucky for me I have a particularly poor sense of smell, which made this my niche.

After the first one, I was on my own, having asked Trina to pick up my two boys from school. By the time she found the eldest one in the play ground and managed to get him to get in the car to come home, I had burried most of the evidence.

All in all the process took six hours for 4 inexperienced and trepedatious mums to work through. It took one bucket of cast off body bits, a 3L pot full of unusable entrails (which the pigs got stuck into), 5 hard eggs delightfully discovered during the gutting stage and a 15L bucket full of dry feathers for the compost... although I did have designs for a feather pillow.

All in all, the experience reminded me more of an American Quilting Group than a chicken slaughtering session. Which just goes to show, anything can be made into a great time when done with friends.

For those of you who are interested... here is the video that was taken of our experimental time of gutting the old dears. Incidentally, this video was taken by Tania (our camera queen) who by this stage had worked up the courage to leave the house. :)

Enjoy - if you dare!