50 Dangerous Things: 50.1 - Grow and Butcher Your Own Chicken

In the book 50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do the 50th activity is a create-your-own. We haven't finished each dangerous thing, but this is our first documentation of something dangerous not found in the book.

Several weeks ago we went to our friends' house and butchered some chickens they were raising for us. This was our first foray into killing our own food. I've even only been fishing a couple times and I never gutted a fish - I watched because I had no idea what to do. Our friends butchered their first chickens a day or two before they invited us over so they were new to this as well, though they have butchered their own cows. Not that I think those are related, I was just saying ...

We like the idea of growing our own food. We try and have a small garden every year. We want egg laying chickens in our backyard. It's been on the 'to do' for awhile, but I need to go around my neighborhood and get signatures supporting chickens in city limits, then go to the city and get that city law changed.

I don't like the imbalance of power that is created by current farming practices. Whoever controls food controls the people. It doesn't make sense to me that the government decides what is best for my children and the thousands of other school children to eat. Have you seen what most kids eat at most schools? It's fast-food. I haven't thought about it long enough to hash out the details but I think there are too many commonalities between public school systems and industrial farming systems. Jamie Oliver and Ann Cooper put things fairly well in the following TED talks.





Apparently there are people who think growing your own food is dangerous because it is "unsanitary" - what about the bugs, dirt, and germs? My wife and I don't have our food handlers permit, and I don't think our friends do either, but we used basic best practices for handling knives and raw meat :-). I think the most dangerous part of this new experience was using the hatchet to chop off the chicken heads.


The other day we watched the movie Food Inc. and I like how one of the farmers had metal cones to put the chickens in head first so that just the head was showing out the bottom. Maybe I'll help fashion some of those for next year.


Myles says that his favorite part was NOT when the head-less chicken chased him because it almost got blood on him. I thought that part was really funny. I know the chicken did not know where it was going. Obviously, it's head was in my hand. But it looked as if it knew it was chasing those boys!


Ethan's favorite part was plucking off the feathers. Interestingly, this was not my favorite part. Normally I can handle doing mindless, tedious activities. I suppose feather plucking is the exception. I love to just sit and do nothing. I guess I'm thinking while doing nothing, but not about anything focused.


For dinner our friends invited us to have a bowl of chicken-noodle soup. It was delicious!