This may be kinda gruesome to some of you so you may want to skip this post. Thursday we went over to a friend's house to help them process their chickens. Hannah showed broilers for 4H, and they had 40 chickens that were ready to be butchered. We didn't finish them but we got most of them. In case you're feeling sorry for the chickens, just know that these particular chickens have been bred to get really big really fast, and all they do is eat. So to keep them alive is cruel because they will eventually get too big for their legs to support them, and many times they will die of dehydration because they won't (or can't) get up from the feed dish to drink water.
I told my kids that they all had to do it so Jessi wanted to go first to get it out of the way. At first none of the kids wanted to do it, but after a couple were done they got over the shock & disgust. Jessi ended up butchering 3 or 4, Rachel killed 2 and Jimmy did 2 or 3. Matt killed about a dozen and I did one (I was taking pictures). I was very impressed with all the kids - they did most of the work & they did it well!
Jessi managed to pull out the intestines in tact, as well as a set of lungs so afterwards some of the kids drew a picture of a chicken on cardboard and pinned the innards in place, then labeled everything. All in all it was a successful, in-depth and very hands-on science lesson!
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