fattening chickens for sunday dinner

[maree t]

hi all
we are hatching our own birds in an incubator and intend to eat the excess cockerels. we have been doing that with last years birds but are finding that they have very little breast meat. at the moment all birds are let out on 5 acres during the day and fed pellets twice a day. i dont mind confining them a bit but want them to have some sort of life before the sage and onion. any hints on adding meat as naturally as possible would be welcome. we thought about cooking up potatoes ?
thanks maree

[alan refail]

Maree

The more you feed them, the fatter they'll get. You don't say what breed they are, but you must remember that what are available in the supermarkets, with big breasts (sorry ) are Ross Cobb or similar, which have been bred to fatten up very quickly - and have an appalling short life. If you want your cockerels to have a good life, you'll have to accept that they will be relatively skinny - but they will taste brilliant. I tend to leave our spares to 10-12 months, then casserole or curry.

Here's one of our own hatching who escaped the pot - Gwynfryn is his name - usually referred to as the Handsome B*****d":



Happy eating

Alan

[Alison]

We have several cockerels which need culling as they are vying with each other to see who can be noisiest and they all deserve a prize!
We killed one a year ago, and although it was nothing like as large as supermarket ones and probably slightly tough from a year of running around, I cooked it a la French style Poule au Pot, and I have to say the flavour was out of this world. It fed four reasonably and the stock made a fantastic soup.
The only thing that's holding us back is that Brian's wrist, bust last September, is still a bit painful and he is worried that he might not be up to killing them as quickly as humanely possible.
Alison.

[Primrose]

Although I would love to be able to keep chickens, when I see photos like Alison's handsome cockerel and Chantal's special pet, I'm glad we don't because I simply wouldn't be able to cull them when the time came. Which makes me a hyppocrit really because I'm perfectly able to purchase chicken from the butchers. I think it's the close relationship I can't hack. I had to get up a leave a posh restaurant once when the gentleman on the next table to me got the waiter to select his live trout from the in-house tank to kill it and cook it. Good job I don't live in China, isn't it, where they don't like eating dead meat and buy it all live and the market and take it home to kill it and eat it.

[Primrose]

Although I would love to be able to keep chickens, when I see photos like Alison's handsome cockerel and Chantal's special pet, I'm glad we don't because I simply wouldn't be able to cull them when the time came. Which makes me a hyppocrit really because I'm perfectly able to purchase chicken from the butchers. I think it's the close relationship I can't hack. I had to get up a leave a posh restaurant once when the gentleman on the next table to me got the waiter to select his live trout from the in-house tank to kill it and cook it. Good job I don't live in China, isn't it, where they don't like eating dead meat and buy it all live and the market and take it home to kill it and eat it.

[gloworm]

Meat breeds for meat. Years ago I reared Cobb chickens for Christmas, in the days when chemical caponisation was allowed. I had quite a few big birds, the record was a cock which dressed out at 16 lbs