Chicken Farmers, Extraordinaire!

Last week, we took our meat chickens into a poultry processing facility to be processed. 

Originally, we started off with 20 chickens.  When all was said and done, we had 14.  14 large, supple chickens (the processing facility guy's words, not mine!) 

I left at 5:30 am to drive these bad boys, all alive, and in the box of the truck, to their place of death.  I unloaded them and drove the hour and a half home.  Later that afternoon, we headed back to go and pick up our flock, now wrapped and chilled. 

When we picked them up, we were talking to the owner of the facility, and he was quite impressed with our birds.  They actually had some problems bagging them because they didn't fit in the chicken bags, and were too small for the turkey bags.  He told us that he's never seen chickens this big, and normally, with big chickens, they're quite tough, but these chicken's meat was nice and supple.  Hooray for us!  When Art told him this was our first time raising meat chickens, he couldn't believe it!  He asked us what we did....and he told them....Put them in the chicken mansion and feed them!

I think it was the mansion.... they really liked the mansion.  They had a high quality of life in the mansion....

All of our chickens were 10-12 lbs. once they were processed, so I think they will serve our family well. I have yet to roast one of these bad boys, but I'm going to next week, when we have some company to help us eat this big boy!

The funnest thing about the whole experience (other than being rid of those ugly birds) was that you get to choose what you have put on the label.  Here's what ours said: 

I think that we need to change our occupation, because frankly, I feel like a Chicken Farmer, Extraordinaire!