What we did with 55 Chickens

Just over a week ago, we said good bye to some of our feathered friends (read my post HERE emotionally explaining WHY and HOW)… and I’m sure many of you where curious as to what we’d do with 55 chickens! We aren’t a “farm” We don’t raise chickens to “sell” Chickens aren’t “income” for us…We did giveaway a few to our friend that helped us and shared some with family… In actuality we kept 43 for ourselves… Each chicken averaged 5 pounds, so we have about 215 pounds of chicken. These, along with a few more in the fall, will be all the chicken we’ll have for an entire year….. We try to use every part of the chicken, it’s not just good for our pocketbook, it’s also respectful for the sacrifice that was made. Really.. it wouldn’t be respectful to just have a bunch of boneless skinless breast and toss the rest!

Some we kept whole, some we cut in half, and others we cut up into pieces…  When you cut up chickens into pieces you end up with extra bones, skin, fat, etc.. I took the fat and rendered it (melted/strained) into Schmaltz that we’ll use as a cooking/seasoning fat.. the bones and other bits I simmered for 3 days total, into chicken bone broth, which I then canned (click HERE to learn how to can stock/broth)

All of the chicken that is in the freezer I packaged in Poultry Shrink Bags (buy HERE) They were very easy to use and yielded professional looking packaging 🙂 The most wonderful part to packaging up food for your own freezer is that you control the quantity in each pack, since it’s just 2 of us smaller packs are perfect, and we really like having 1/2 chickens to grill or roast instead of whole birds.

Here’s our Chicken Total:

• 13 Whole Chickens (11 roasters, 2 soup)
• 20 Half Chickens
• 18 Packs of 2 Boneless Skinless Breasts
• 2 Packs of 4 legs
• 9 Packs of 2 Thigh/Legs
• 7 Packs of 6 full wings
• 6 Packs of gizzards (1# each)
• 3 Packs of hearts (1/2# each)
• 7 Packs of Livers (1# each)
• 21 Half-Pints of Canned Chicken (click HERE to learn how)
• 16 Pints of Schmaltz (rendered chicken fat)
• 3 Packs of 5 necks (other necks were roasted for stock)
• 24 Pints of Canned Chicken Bone Broth (click HERE to learn how)
• 6 Quarts of Canned Chicken meat w/Stock
• 110 Chicken Feet (for our raw fed dog)
• 55 Chicken Heads (for our raw fed dog)

We are very please with the entire process and are going to raise another 50 Freedom Ranger Chickens next year!